This week my UXmatters column continued with process and tools. In fact, this article was briefly part of the previous article on [[http://www.uxmatters.com/mt/archives/2016/09/mobile-ux-design-approaches-workshops.php|UX Workshopping] until it started getting too long.
This time around I talk in some detail about Succeeding with Field Usability Testing and Lean Ethnography. I don't do lab research anymore, not for years. I do field methods, and for years I was jealous of people like Jan Chipchase. Then I realized I could do halfassed ethnography by just changing my mindset and setting aside a few minutes for it. To be all modern, I called it Lean Ethnography. I sorta buy it though, as it's one of those where we get 80% results for 10% effort and cost.
While I am brilliant and you should read everything I writ, there are a few other articles I think you should read this month as well:
macOS Human Interface Guidelines: Touch Bar Now, I don't entirely like these, and there are some really shocking decisions like suggesting no labels on icons
but it is still super interesting to see them. Not so much to see how the Touch Bar will work, but to read guidelines for design of a whole new system. Those who write specifications, or design for unique IoT devices and embedded controllers may enjoy looking at it from that point of view. Bulletproof Accessible Icon Fonts Pretty much exactly what it advertises. Pitfalls, fallback methods, best practices in actually using icon fonts, with decent discussion of why and why not SVG and raster methods. Bookmark this one.
- John Lasseter supposedly said "I believe in research. You cannot do enough research; believability comes out of what's real." But man, I'd like to actually see the context of this.
Speaking of quotes from John Lasseter, "My own partner at Pixar for 25 years, Steve Jobs, never liked market research. Never did market research for anything." This is one we still have to fight a whole, whole lot. UX methods are not marketing methods. I have to explain this for almost every research project. We need a movie where UX research is crucial to the plot so everyone gets it. Someone work on that. From Technology and The Evolution of Storytelling
“Design has nothing to do with art”: Design legend Milton Glaser dispels a universal misunderstanding and continuing with our misunderstanding and frustration theme, this is a nice article about how art and design are not the same thing. I went to school for aerospace engineering (airplane design), took a lot of graphic design classes, took some industrial design and furniture design classes, and got a degree in art. Skills are shared, but who cares as I use art school skills to speak in public better. The whole concept of art and design is different, and the misconception that design is internalized, and opinion based is a huge, huge impediment to us doing our jobs well.
On Average "The built world was not designed for you. It was designed for the average person. Standardized tests, building codes, insurance rates, clothing sizes, The Dow Jones – all these measurements are based around the concept of an “average.”" Good overview of all this, and a lot of it is about ergonomics. We live by that, even if you don't know it, so this is super worth understanding.
The Ultimate Guide To User-Friendly Manuals I hate FAQs, and help in general. It's a matter of principle that I don't design help systems for my tools. But manuals do exist, and need to not be terrible. I have a lot of terrible manuals, and encounter a lot of bad ones at work, but never have a way to suggest how specifically to improve them aside from just hiring good writers. Well, now there's a guide to good manuals. Worth keeping.
Why People Yell at Their Computer Monitors and Hate Microsoft's Clippy For a change, weird for me, a video, but it's very short. This is on misapplying research. People absolutely treat computers like people, but that totally doesn't mean you need to anthropomorphize them.
iOS doesn’t support Progressive Web Apps, so what? But it's totally worth using the same principles. I mean, aside from iOS only having so much usage in the real world. Me, I go further and say anything well considered, well coded, is good. Just consider mobile first, last and mostly. Then everything is more efficient, etc.
Ideation Sprints for New Products & Services So I totally hate calling them design sprints, and some features like dot votes don't work for me for specific reasons, but I do like what she calls "freelisting" and it's a great overview of it.
Interacting with the Physical Web (Polymer Summit 2016) OMG, another video! "My 20min talk-real-fast introduction to the Physical Web. I try to focus on WHAT you can build rather than the WHY." Scott is right on. Worth it if you have 20 minutes. You can just listen.
Soldiers say Army’s battlefield intelligence network is a life-threatening disaster Crappy systems kill. There are tech issues (slow) but "unfriendly and hard to figure out"? That's UX.
Railroad Accident Brief - Undesired Train Acceleration and Deceleration (PDF) Speaking of IoT and bad design, we're using web 1.0 practices and keep trying to kill people. There are routinely no checks, no guardrails, all over the world. Why not design this product to avoid accelerating so fast it hurts people? I mean ever, regardless of commands issued at the moment. You can do this. And it is totally UX, as the intersection of software and reality/people is what the issue is always, but pure s/w devs don't consider reality nearly enough. I wrote a similar gripe years ago without understanding the context about my thermostat if you want another example.
I'll be in China, touristing, doing some work, and speaking at User Friendly 2016 for the next two weeks. If anyone else will be there, or works there, or has a client or friend who should talk to me, tell me all about it.
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