- Course Documents
- Course Summary and Key Take-aways
- Part 1: What is UX? What are UX Research and Design
- Part 2: UX Research Overview - Part 1
- Part 3: UX Research Overview - Part 2
- Part 4: UX Design Overview - Part 1
- Part 5: UX Design Overview - Part 2
- User experience can be a difficult concept to understand because it's easy to have a feel for what makes good UX (i.e. useful, helpful, easy to learn, fun, etc.) and what makes bad UX (i.e. stressful, confusing, ugly, etc.)
- But getting UX correct is hard
- User experience generally defined is the experience people have when they interact with your product
- This broad definition covers many areas BESIDES just using the product (i.e. acquiring the product, learning it, fixing the product, etc.)
- One of the key take-aways of the course is that you can make UX easier if you do these four things:
-
- Follow an iterative, prototyping process
-
- Apply user-centered research and design methods
-
- Understand a bit about human behavior
-
- Apply common sense
-
- For the first one, understanding that you must iterate is important. The general UX Process is:
- Assess (what should I build?) then...
- Design (what should it look like/how should it function?), then...
- Build (build it and test it with users)
- Understanding user-centered research and design methods can be further broken down into two parts:
- UX Research: Interviews, Observations, Surveys, User Testing, Inspection Methods
- UX Design: Personas/Scenarios/User Stories, Sketching and Ideation, Storyboarding, Mapping and Navigation Design, Comparative Research, Prototyping
- There are certain things about how people work that are 'known' and can be learned:
- What can people perceived? How they extract information from visual stimuli?
- How do people do things?
- How does emotion play a role?
- Understanding the Components of UX provides a good baseline but feels very intuitive. The benefit to this list of items is that I won't have to derive it; to just get started, go through those four components (value, usability, desirability, and adoptability) and see how my product does in each one of those.
- CM: I believe there are some questions for each component in the course documents
- The Basic Methods of UX Research include Ask, Observe, and Inspect. This is a super-broad classification that, again, feels very intuitive. All three make sense but I can probably build my knowledge of each one (i.e. best practices for each)
- The "Ask" category of research feels most basic but there are probably some best practices with surveys that I could easily learn and build upon
- The "Observe" category of research involves the two main areas that I was most interested in before doing this class: User Testing (which is covered here, here, here, and here) and User Analytics which we didn't really touch
- I must come back to this because the user testing parts have great info on how to do user tests, how to set it up and talk to users ("we are testing the system, not you"), close-ended vs. open-ended tasks, writing up a task list for participants, and the debrief.
- I should spend just one hour and just get down on paper a basic "process" for how I would write up a task list, gather and talk to test users, talk to the users and administer the test, and then debrief. Even if it's just like 5-10 bullets for each, just to get a "process" down
- The UX Design section starts with a few definitions of the word "design" that are clearly trying to get us to think of design beyond just what it looks like but rather how it works
- The UX Design process is also pretty familiar because I've ready many blog posts, articles, books on these things but it's good to see a list and breakdown by "step" in the process
- The discussion of Prototypes and Sketching are good but also very intuitive. The most interesting part was the "lateral thinking" suggestion during the Generation phase in sketching.
- Learn about the skills needed for UX research and design
- Understand how UX researchers discover and assess user needs and assess possible designs
- Learn how to conduct a micro-usability test
- Understand how UX designers use sketching and prototyping to develop design concepts
- Understand how to incorporate a user-centered focus into the design process
- What is Good UX?
- usefule
- helpful
- easy to learn
- accessible
- attractive
- fun
- connected
- delightful
- What is a Bad UX?
- Stressful
- Confusing
- Ugly
- Distracting
- Inefficient
- Tedious
- Condescending
- Inconsiderate
- Frustrating
- Why does it matter?
- A successful experience is the overlap of "what users want to do" and "what you want your users to do"
- The Whole User Experience
- UX = the experience people have when they interact with your product
- using the product
- choosing the product
- acquiring the product
- learning how to use the product
- fixing the product
- upgrading the product
- etc.
- UX = the experience people have when they interact with your product
- Why is UX hard?
- You are not the user?
- you don't represent ALL users
- Computers are weird
- translating what is easy for computers into something that is easy for humans
- Software is (usually) complex
- You are not the user?
- How to Make UX Easy
- Follow an interative prototyping process
- Apply user-centered research and design methods
- Understand a bit about human behavior
- Apply common sense
- How to Make UX Easy
- Follow an interative prototyping process
- Apply user-centered research and design methods
- Understand a bit about human behavior
- Apply common sense
- Fail Fast
- you won't get it right
- get it wrong quickly and as often as possilbe
- Assess => Design => Build => Assess (again) and so on
- circular
- the "Spiral Model"
- UX Research in the "Assess" phase
- UX Design in the "Design" phase
- Key Methods: UX Research
- Interviews
- Observations
- Surveys
- User Testing
- Inspection Methods
- Key Methods: UX Design
- Personas, Scenarios, User Stories
- Sketching and Ideation
- Storyboarding
- Mapping and Navigation Design
- Comparative Research
- Lo-, Mid-, and Hi-Fidelity Prototyping
- Understand How People Work
- What can people perceive?
- how do they extract information from visual stimuli
- How do people do things?
- How does emotion play a role?
- What can people perceive?
- Common Sense
- Good and Bad UX
- Components of UX
- Value, Usability, Adoptability, Desirability
- Value
- Usability
- can users do what they need to do?
- Desirability
- Is it fun, attractive and pleasant to use?
- Adoptability
- How easy is it to start using the device?
- example: DuoLingo => start learning right away.
- Assessing UX: Questions
- Value
- What do users need?
- Does this design fulfill the need?
- Usability
- How do they do it now?
- Value
- UX is not just about usability, attractiveness, etc.
- Let the process be your guide; ask questions and iterate
- Homework:
- Discuss 1 example of good UX and 1 example of bad UX. Answer these questions:
- What was your goal of using the interface?
- What action did you intend to perform?
- What features of the interface made it easy or difficult to perform the action?
- How would you make it better if it was a bad design?
- Discuss 1 example of good UX and 1 example of bad UX. Answer these questions:
- Three basic methods of UX Research
- Ask
- Observe
- Inspect
- Ask
- interviews
- surveys
- questions distributed to focus groups, diary studies, experience sampling
- Observe
- Ethnographic obsesrvations
- User testing
- ask them to perform specific tasks to see how they use the product
- Usage Analytics
- analyze large scale traces of system usage
- Inspection Methods
- guideline-based
- Walkthroughs
- Comparative Analysis
- Combo: Watch and Ask
- User testing
- Contextual Interviews
- ask questions while observing "natural" activities
- When to use What?
- Ask when:
- observation is infeasible (infrequent, long, private)
- values and motivations are key
- (Surveys) Large numbers and high certainty are needed
- Observer when:
- Self-report will miss information (memory, tacit knowledge)
- Process and communication are important
- (Analytics) Large numbres and high certainty are needed
- Inspect when:
- you have a product to inspect
- Ask when:
- What is User Testing
- Watch representative users try to accomplish importants tasks using a product
- AKA "usability testing"
- Why User Testing?
- You learn a LOT from watching people use a system
- What works and what doesn't
- Why things work and don't
- User needs you missed
- Why not just use your own experience?
- You know too much about the sytem, AND...
- You know too little the users and their thinking
- You learn a LOT from watching people use a system
- Basic Idea
- Find potential users
- Ask them to do some stuff
- Observe
- Ask some questions (debrief)
- Write down what you learned
- Potential Users
- People who fall within the target audience
- attitudes
- behaviors
- characteristics
- NOT current users
- OK if current users of the system but not for selected tasks
- People who fall within the target audience
- Tasks (what you ask them to do)
- i.e. for Amazon
- buy a coffee maker
- write a book review
- i.e. for Amazon
- Choosing tasks
- pick taks that most users need to do
- Close-ended tasks
- have a clear end point
- have a verifiable outcome
- Often has an expected path
- Open-ended Tasks
- Allow user to judge when complete
- May not be verifiable
- Allow following alternate paths
- Examples:
- find some books that you might like to read on vacation
- CM: find some skills that you'd like to learn
- Which are Better?
- Close-Ended
- less natural
- control for motivation
- control for interpretation
- Assess for success
- Open-Ended
- More natural
- varying motivation
- Varying interpretation
- Success is unknown
- You can use both!!
- Maybe use close-ended tasks initially to see that people can use it
- Close-Ended
- Task Sets
- Progress from easier to harder
- Cover a range of critical task types (browse, search, buy)
- Can include open and close-ended tasks
- be careful to avoid "ordering effects"
- if your tasks are set in a sequential or quasi-sequential order, they'd have help doing something that they normally wouldn't have
- Task Wording
- don't lead the witness
- Not good: "Put three books in your shopping cart and buy them using standard shipping"
- Better: "Choose three books and buy them"
- Avoid ambiguity
- Not good: "Use a list to find a gift for your 10-year old nephew"
- Better: "A friend told you about Amazon's list feature. Use an Amazon list"
- Include context and motivation
- Not good: "Buy a book and have it shipped by Monday"
- Better: "Colleagues from Japan are coming into town and you need a book on Japanese business practices by Monday to brush up on business etiquette"
- Pilot Test
- it's very hard to get right on the first try
- Try the tasks out
- Yourself!!
- with a friend or two
- don't lead the witness
- Think Aloud
- participants to say (out loud) what they are thinking
- Thinking includes
- looking for something
- Reading text (have them read aloud)
- Hypothesizing about how the system might work
- Interpreting system options
- Interpreting system feedback
- Explaining decisions
- Feeling frustrated, happy
- Advantages
- hear how the user thinks about the task
- learn what the user actually sees and notices
- hear how the user interprets options, feedback
- Disadvantages
- timing will not be realistic
- attention to detail will not be quite realistic
- need to determine "rules of engagement" for questions, mistakes, etc.
- are you not going to act like a normal person and just NOT answer them? State that up front
-
Debrief (after tasks)
- Review problems, get more information
- Ask about usefulness, value
- Ask about perceived usability, aesthetics, credibility
- compare to known alternatives
-
Making Sense of the Test
- Capture "critical incidents"
- errors
- expressions of frustration
- breakdowns
- something took a really long time but should've been quick
- roundabout processes
- pleasant surprises
- Assess success/failure
- usually a spectrum
- Capture overall reaction & reaction to specific aspects
- Link incidents, success/failure, and subjective reaction
- Capture "critical incidents"
-
Learning from the Test
- Quick! Write it down!
- Critical Incidents and WHY they happened
- mental model mismatches
- misinterpretations
- invalid assumptions made by the system
- missing user needs
- too little flexibility
- too little guidance
- Here are some more high-level questions for them?
- What is your overall impression of the product?
- Do you think that the product would be useful for you, personally? Why or why not?
- If no: who do you think it would be useful for? Why?
- What do you like best about the product?
- What do you think needs to be improved?
- Follow-up with some questions about the specific product that is relevant to THEM as a person. Here is an example of some of those questions using Doodle as the product:
- How often do you schedule meetings with other people?
- How do you usually go about scheduling such meetings?
- Have you ever used any sites or apps that you think are similar to Doodle? Which ones, and how much experience have you had with them?
- How many hours per week would you estimate that you spend online?
- Problems => Severity: impact on...
- success/failure
- did the problems affect the success or failure of the task? Some problems are show-stoppers and others are not
- subjective experience
- how did they problems affect their experience? Did it completely ruin it?
- product goals
- did they use the product in a different way than you expected?
- success/failure
- Other UX factors
- usefulness
- desirability
- credibility
- Wrap up your de-brief with a summary of the following items:
- Participants: who they were / kind of users they were
- Basic Results: how well did the test go, did they succeed? Did all participants succeed? Any partial or complete failures?
- Findings and Recommendations:
- report major problems and try to diagnose the causes
- Focus on the few significant observations, not a long list of minor things
- What worked well? What didn't? What were the most confusing / frustrating parts?
- Support findings with your EVIDENCE
-
One Other VERY IMPORTANT Thing
- participation is voluntary
- participants can stop at any time
- you are testing the system, not the participant
- you need to let the participants know this
- make them feel comfortable! The system is being tested, which means that they're struggles are really the struggles of the system
-
What's "Micro" About This?
- relaxed recruiting
- people close enough to target audience to be able to imagine
- A.K.A. "Hallway" usability test
- Fewer tasks
- < 30 minutes rather than 60-90 minutes
- Little or no data collection
- no recording
- no questionnaires
- no logging
- Off-the-cuff analysis
- relaxed recruiting
-
For the assignment, I need to prepare two test scripts (or one script with two versions):
- Moderator Script - one for MY reference with the tasks, my notes and tips, etc.
- Participant Script - this contains ONLY the tasks to be shared with the participant
-
Make sure the assignments are timed; you don't have to rush through them
-
Debrief
- write down your notes about their performance
Hi, my name is Stanley,
Thank you so much for coming. How are you today? Today we’d like you to help us understand how well the site Cars.com help people explore and find cars they want. So, we’d like you to do a couple of tasks using the site and collect your feedback. Specifically we’d like to know what you think about the site, and what works and doesn’t work for you. Your feedback will help us learn how we can improve the site.
Before we start, here are several things I’d like you to know. First of all, we’re testing the site but not you. There’s nothing you can do wrong. So don’t worry about making any mistakes. If you cannot get something to work, or you think there’s anything broken or wrong or weird or confusing, it is not your fault but the system’s fault. Please let us know exactly what you think about the site. You can be honest. You won’t hurt anyone’s feelings if you say something bad about it. This is actually why we are bringing you here today to let us know which part of the site doesn’t do a good job.
I’ll tell you what tasks to do using the site. After you start, please try to focus on the tasks, but I may ask you a few questions during test. You can also ask me questions, but I may not be able to answer all of them, because we’re trying to observe what people do when there’s no one sitting next to them. But I’ll try to answer questions you still have when we are done.
As we go along, I’m going to ask you to think aloud, which means that you speak all of your thoughts while you’re using the site, for example: what you’re looking at, what you’re trying to do, what you’re doing and thinking, why you’re doing and thinking that way. If you can’t find a way to complete a task and you think you’re stuck, let me know and you can move on to the next one. For each task you’re asked to do, tell me “I’m done” when you think you are done.
Do you have any questions for me before we begin?
Before we look at the site, I’d like to ask you just a few quick questions.
-
First, what’s your occupation?
-
Roughly how many hours a week would you say you spend using the Internet, including email and messaging?
-
How often do you shop online, and what types of products do you purchase online?
-
Can you tell us a couple of your favorite sites for shopping?
Now I’m going to ask your experience of purchasing vehicles.
-
How many vehicles have you owned
-
How many times have you purchased vehicles online?
-
What factors do you consider when you buy a vehicle?
Follow up: which factor is most important to you?
- How far are you willing to travel to a dealer to buy a automobile?
Read Description (20 seconds)
Now I’m going to ask you to do some specific tasks. I’ll read each one out loud and here’s a printed copy for your reference.
And again, it’d be much helpful if you can think out loud as you go along.
A family member of yours asks if you can find a car for her using Cars.com because she has been very busy recently. She wants to buy a used Honda Civic that:
- Is not older than 3 years
- Uses automatic transmission
- Is under $20,000 US dollars
- Is either grey, white, or black.
- She also doesn’t want to travel too far away from home, and she wants the car to be as cheap as possible.
Find two cars based on her preference.
Great thanks, here’s the the second thing I’d like you to do
You are in the market for a new car. You have saved $4000 for a down payment and have determined that you can afford a monthly payment of at most $400 towards a five-year car loan. Figure out the maximum price you can afford for a new car.
You want to buy a new car using Cars.com that fits into your budget (as determined in the previous task). Use Cars.com to find a car for yourself, using using your own criteria, such as price, appearance, and engine. Find at least two cars that you’re interested in and put them in your list so that you can compare them later.
You have saved two cars, and now you want to compare the cars. Choose one you like the most. and plan your visit to the dealer(s) on this weekend that sells the car. In addition, find out what other cars are also available at the dealers.
That was great. Thank you for the feedback, We have learned so much from you. Now I’m going to wrap up with a couple of questions”
-
Which part of the site did you find difficult or easy to use for the tasks?
-
Is there anything on the interface that didn't make sense to you, or is confusing to you?
-
I noticed that you… (fill in with questions around what you noticed about their actions)
-
What were you thinking when you… (fill in with questions around what)
Do you have any final comments or questions?
..
OK Thank you so much again for your time and participation. If you have any other thoughts or ideas coming up, please let me know.
- watched
- What is Design?
- it's not just what it looks like; design is how it works
- Design is a plan for arranging elements in such a way to best accomplish a particular purpose
- What is design?
- a plan
- arranging elements
- a purpose
- what it looks like / feels like
- What is design?
- Design is solving problems
- Design is as much a matter of finding problems as solving them
- The Design Process
- Understand the problem
- Generate Possible Solutions
- Analyze and Select
- Embody the solutions (i.e. build a prototype)
- Assess (find new problems)
- 50 Problems in 50 Days
- What is special about UX Design?
- Experiences are interactive
- time-based
- action-response rules
- Action: command options (things that users can do)
- Response: information presentation
- Complex system behavior (focus on usability)
- Context is Critical
- other interactions
- Experiences are interactive
- The UX Design Process
| Step | Actions |
|---|---|
| Understand the problem | Study users: tasks and context |
| Generate Possible Solutions | Sketch, storyboard, wireframe |
| Analyze and Select | Apply UX criteria |
| Embody the solutions | build prototype |
| Assess (find new problems) | Apply UX research methods |
- ...and Repeat!
- A prototype is...
- a representation of a design made before the final solution exists
- Why prototype?
- Reification => make our ideas concrete
- Reflection
- Communication
- Assessment
- Prototypes have many forms
- a "representation of a design" can mean many things
- lower-fidelity prototypes are obviously cheaper; start lo-fi and work up
- Lo-fi Prototypes
- Address
- functionality
- basic organization
- task flow and converage
- Ignore
- graphics
- programming
- real data
- Address
- Mid-fi Prototypes
- Address
- all the same as Lo-fi plus...
- layout
- interactivity
- navigation
- Ignore
- graphics
- programming
- real data
- Address
- Hi-fi Prototypes
- Address
- Mid and Lo-fiedlity plus...
- graphic design
- interaction details
- realistic data
- Ignore
- backend programming
- complete functional coverage
- Address
- Economic principle of prototyping
- the best prototype is th eone that, in the simplest and most efficient way, makes the possiblities of a design idea visible and measureable
- Premature Commitment
- Looking to avoid investing resources (time, money) in a dead end
- Problems
- waste money and effort
- exhause project resources/timeline, stuck with a bad design
- cognitive and emotional commitments hard to undo
- Lo-fi prototyping maximizes the number of times you get to refine your design before going to production
- Lo-fi prototypes are not precious so people are more likely to give honest feedback
- Qualities of a sketch
- quick
- timely
- inexpensive
- disposable
- plentiful
- minimal detail
- allow ambiguity
- Sketching is not just making sketches; it's about discussing the sketches as well
- Why sketch?
- Reflect on those sketches
- Explore
- Communicate quickly
- How to sketch
- Use pencil and paper (whiteboard OK)
- Go fast
- Don't perfect
- Make lots of them
- You do NOT have to be "good at drawing"
- What to sketch
- The problem
- How would someone experience this problem?
- The solution
- What would it look like for the problem to be solved?
- How would a system help solve the problem?
- The problem
- Read about Bill Buxton on sketching
- Opposing Processes in Design
- Phases of Generation and Convergence
- Generation: Create a LOT of sketches
- Quantity over quality
- Build, don't critique
- Apply "lateral thinking"
- the solving of problems by an indirect and creative approach, typically through viewing the problem in a new and unusual light.
- Is a technique of problem solving by approaching problems indirectly at diverse angles instead of concentrating on one approach at length.
- Idea generation and problem solving technique in which new concepts are created by looking at things in novel ways
- Edward de Bono - lateral thinking
- Convergence
- Synthesize
- bring those ideas together; distill
- Apply criteria
- Critique
- Eliminate some ideas, promote others
- Synthesize
- Sketchers' Block: Ideation
- Don't stop
- Brainstorm to get ideas
- Matrix techniques => Morphological Analysis
- Ideation Technique: the Worst Idea
- use when stuck
- think of the worst ideas you can for solving the problem
- use these for inspiration
- Go sketch
- quick
- imperfect
- Quanity > Quality
- Generate rathern than convergence
- Lateral thinking
- Human Computer Interaction,
- The Birth of HCI (Human Computer Interaction): Early 80's
- computer use by non-programmers
- graphical user interface (GUI)
- 1982 - First CHI Conference in Gaithersburg, MD (907 attendees)
- CHI = pronounced "kai"
- 1980's Practice: Usability and UI Design
- to learn the practice:
- attend CHI
- do one of a few random classes around the country (CS and psych)
- Books:
- User Centered System
- Psychology of Everyday Things
- the Design of Everyday Things
- to learn the practice:
- Usability as a Software Engineering Issue
- Usability Testing
- often performed at the end of development to validate the product
- UI Design
- putting a "pretty face" on software whose functionality was pretty much already setup
- Usability Testing
- The Internet Changes Everything
- 1988 - WWW "invented" by Tim Berners-Lee
- specification to allow pages to be linked together
- 1991 - The first web page
- 1993 - Mosaic web browser released
- 1995 - Internet commerce allowed
- Amazon.com was released
- 1997 - 2000 - the dot com bubble
- Suddenly a LOT more people were dealing with this stuff
- more companies
- more end users
- ALL doing more stuff
- 1988 - WWW "invented" by Tim Berners-Lee
- Mow everyone is paying attention
- 10's of thousands of jobs
- 1000's of new "web designers"
- UI Design and Usability engineering not enough
- Hello, Interaction Design
- Bill Verplank
- Bill Moggridge
- both were industrial designers by trade
- Captured the shift
- beyond user interface design
- beyond usability engineering
- beyond human-computer interaction
- beyond graphical/industrial design
- beyond software engineering
- 2000's: From Sites to Apps to Services
- Computing as a way of life, not a special activity
- Computing as part of an ongoing relationship with customers
- Merging of usability and interaction design with:
- marketing and branding
- market research
- product strategy
- physical design
- Recognition of User Experience as a central concern for products, brands and enterprises
- User Experience Today
- Now seen as strategically important
- common set of concerns and basic approaches
- Increasing Specialization
| UX Research | UX Design |
|---|---|
| Qualitative UX Research | Visual Design |
| Quantitative UX Research | Interaction Design |
| Information Architecture | |
| Project Management | |
| UX Strategy | |
- In a nutshell
- the history of UX is the history of user-centered design
- terminology changes but the focus remains and evolves
- specialization is common but the big picture is essential
- UX is increasingly important to business and everything we do
- Course Summary
- UX is important
- UX doesn't come easu
- How to make UX easy
- follow an iterative prototyping process
- apply user-centered research and design methods
- understand ab it about human behavior
- apply common sense
- What Next?
- Deeper into UX Research
- undestanding user needs
- formal user testing
- inspection methods
- large-scale methods
- web analytics, A/B testing
- Deeper into UX Design
- building prototypes
- representing users and tasks
- specifying system behavior
- Putting it all together
- Combining UX Research and UX Design in a single project
- Deeper into UX Research
- The MicroMasters
- 1 - Introduction to User Experience (this course)
- 2 - Understanding User Needs
- 3 - Principles of Designing for Humans
- 4 - Evaluating Designs with Users
- 5 - UX Design: From Concept to Wireframe
- 6 - UX Design: From Wireframe to Prototype
- 7 - UX Research Surveys
- 8 - UX Research at Scale: Analytics and Online Experiments
- 9 - UX Capstone