John McRee – UXD

It’s prettier than I thought it would be. Holding the book in my hands is a little surreal. It’s not totally unlike seeing some software product you have worried and slaved over finally shipped in shrink wrap and sitting on a shelf. The more I think about it, the more excited I am.

I talked with Armando Roggio at Practical Ecommerce today about the purpose of the book and some of the ideas that are in it. He’ll be posting an article and even some audio about that discussion. E-commerce and online travel is where I cut my teeth as a designer. I think that there are a lot of parallels between application design and what needs to happen on an e-commerce site in order to achieve better user experience.

Check out the article, complete with an audio interview.

The book I co-authored EffectiveUI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software is going to ship on February 8th according to Amazon. As a person who is deeply prone to self-criticism and abasement, it’s always very difficult for me to decide wether or not my ideas matter to other people. Putting ideas down in a book that other people will pay for is totally contrary to my personality. But I kept thinking to myself throughout the process that, as long as I would want a client of mine to read the book before an engagement began, everything would be okay.

I would love for my clients to read this book. I believe in what’s in it, and I know first hand that the most successful projects I’ve been involved with have closely followed the patterns and strategies outlined in this book. Here’s the official blurb:

EffectiveUI today announced the release of “Effective UI: The Art of Building Great User Experience in Software,” a comprehensive and valuable resource for business and product managers trying to get innovative products funded and successfully built, software professionals struggling to advance the cause of better UX and anyone else who needs to effectively advocate for and deliver on the promise of higher-quality software.

O’Reilly Media, the technology industry’s leading provider of knowledge resources, published “Effective UI” as the latest in its series of educational books, services, magazines, research and conferences. The book is an informative guide to getting management support, employing successful product management strategies and and ensuring a management style that fosters a user-centered focus and collaborative environment, from working with the design and development teams to handling business and staffing needs.

Key Facts:

• “Effective UI” provides an overview of what UX is, what a good UX accomplishes and why engagement and a good UX matter.
• The book details how to win support for a better UX, educate key stakeholders and quantify the business value of a good UX.
• “Effective UI” addresses the problems inherent to traditional planning and project requirements and suggests alternative approaches to help elminate uncertainty and the unknown when developing software.
• This informative guide explores the importance of building and maintaining stakeholder buy-in throughout a software development project and offers tips for educating and communicating with stakeholders to solidify their support.
• The book recommends the ideal characteristics and composition of a successful project team, with special emphasis on the critical roles of stakeholders and the project leader.
• “Effective UI” suggests new approaches to how projects should be planned, designed and built and underscores the importance of restraint and user-centered design to reduce project risk and ensure high-quality results.
• The publication explains the importance and value of user research, key concepts underlying it, its goals and methodologies and how to combat pressures to skip this important step.
• “Effective UI” examines the initial product architecture stage of a software project — which includes UX and technical architecture — during which key foundational decisions are made.
• “Effective UI” explains how Agile methodology and iterative development concepts can be applied to the unified design and development of a product and highlights the importance of designers, developers, stakeholders and users actively collaborating during a product’s development.
• “The authors of “EffectiveUI” recommend a software-building approach that increases the final product’s usability and overall success while reducing pain, uncertainty and risk.
• “Effective UI” has the honor of being part of O’Reilly’s venerable animal series, which is well-known and respected in the software community. The animal on the cover is a Rainbow Lorikeet.

“Effective UI” was authored by Jonathan Anderson, John McRee and Robb Wilson.  The book retails for $44.99 and will be available for purchase at major retailers including Amazon.com and through O’Reilly Media at www.oreilly.com.

We just got the new cover design from OReilly for our upcoming book called Effective UI. Check it out!

Rainbow Lorakeet

What do you feel about skipping ui specs and spending time/money on prototypes instead? Doing VERY low-fi wireframes to get to the prototype perhaps. If a picture is worth a thousand words, an interactive picture with state changes, etc, would be worth how much then?

The down-side to prototypes is that they become self-guided. The viewer has to discover the interaction themselves. It’s necessary to “can” them somewhat in order to make them feasible, so the viewer expectation is rarely met. Expecting a prototype to always have a presenter in place is unrealistic. So create a movie that walks the viewer through the prototype.

Check this out:

http://wireframes.linowski.ca/2009/12/protocasting/

You can spend months designing a very pretty phone book. Something with plenty of “thud” factor. I’ve created enough of these that my portfolio weighs more than me. Or, you can create something that looks and feels like it is “alive.” Something that stakeholders, executives, and board members can watch in a few minutes and “get” right away. Something that developers can look at and understand your intent more clearly. You may even be able to recruit some to help you develop the prototype, turning them into advocates of your design.

We were number 55 of the top 500 growing companies in the past 4 years.  Here’s the URL: Inc 500

To see even more significance in that award I’ll put it in perspective:

• EUI is about six years old.
• We have grown 2,333.9% since then.
• Only 38% of new businesses survive past the first 4 years.
• We are in the top 1% of businesses in terms of revenue.
• And all of this during a recession.

Pretty awesome. I hope we can all keep it going. I have total confidence that we can.

The Barnes & Noble eReader app that EffectiveUI created beat out Amazon’s Kindle and moved to the number one spot for free book apps. The good news just keeps coming. Is it Friday already?

A Herff Jones sales rep forwarded this note from an eDesign user:

“Megan, I started going through the tutorials on eDesign and after about 10 minutes the feeling I had could be compared to when I fell in love with my husband. I liked what I had heard about him; I liked what I had observed from afar; but when we actually got to spend time together, I KNEW very soon that he was “the one.” And after 20 years, he is still the love of my life AND my best friend. I must confess that I am in love again!! eDesign is definitely “the one” for this new Yearbook Advisor. I will be so happy when we have the paperwork taken care of and my students see eDesign. They are going to be great with this program. And I am truly anticipating when returning students start working with eDesign and begin experiencing the “real Yearbook experience.”

Thank you both for your help. It is great to work with someone with enthusiasm. Our school hasn’t experienced a lot of that in the recent past but thankfully a new day has dawned – for our school, our students and their Yearbook!”

This totally made my day. Getting feedback like this about a product I helped design refuels and refreshes completely.

I think we (as an industry) create personas that are stuck in time.  We don’t know who they were or who they will become. I’m not much like who I was five years ago, most people change quite a lot with time.  That kind of information HAS to be important – especially for building brand loyalty. My background effects what I do, what I buy.  Who I am.  I am more than who am am right now.  Everyone is.  Maybe personas need to be too, or else they become caricatures.

During some user research we’re doing for a client related to the department of defense, we discovered a group that is totally irresponsible, porn-surfing, binge-drinking, low-tech and yet massive and very homogeneous group of late teens or early 20s men (boys still) in the military.  The persona we would create based on the prevailing trend for the demographic wouldn’t have been pretty, and we were afraid the client might find our assessment to be disparaging at best.  Their goals don’t go very far, and they certainly aren’t the type of customer the client has in mind… yet.

We already had another persona, a 24 year old male who is just starting to get his act together.  So we gave him a back story.  He may have been reckless a couple of years back and not very interested in the products our client hocks, but he’s getting there.

By understanding where he comes from, and maybe even where he’s going, we can design a product that fits around the stages of his life and is something that goes beyond filling a very limited and timstamped need.  Maybe this will be a new trend in personas.  Maybe not.  But I think it’s pretty interesting.

Anthony Franco has posted a video of the session on his blog.  It’s an iPhone video, which I think is pretty great even though a bit shaky.  Thanks for posting this Anthony.

Check it out: Anthony’s Blog

… And finally I get to write about it!  This was a really big effort (the third largest telecom) that took about a year to design and build.  It forced me to stretch outside of my comfort zone from a project leadership perspective.  At one point there were eight designers on the projects, and client management was challenging.  The pace of a large company can be maddening sometimes, but somehow we all made it happen.

We took a very holistic approach to the redesign.  We started with user research, stakeholder interviews, and a meaty literature review to get us into the telecom head space.  After developing personas, we used scenario-based designs to tell the story of how users will interact with the site.  We developed a vision for the site that would stretch out for the next five years.  After the application of much will and determination we were able to get a vision pushed through the beurocratic lines and into implementation.  Roles overlapped and were at times ambiguous.  Dupplication in effort created uncertainty, and an organizational overhaul mid stream worked against us in delivering final designs.  But we prevailed.

The success of this project is evident.  The website is a mssive lead generation vehicle for Qwest, and even before they began to market the redesign, lead generation from the site increased 50% right after the launch.  EffectiveUI and Qwest recently partnered at a Forrester conference in New York to talk about the experience of this effort and the considerable ROI.  We made a video to showcase the work.

Check it out: Qwest Large Business