Alex Jones » User Experience

Game-Related Ends

Alex — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 14:00:09 +0000

“moral choices” in video games are, to me, more about cost vs. benefit than right vs. wrong. Because my real-world morality may not map to the world depicted in the game, and because “being evil” is a legitimate and common play strategy, I need to know how the decisions I make serve game-related ends.

Andrew Dupont – Alpha Protocol

Well said. In any story-based game, my first character typically follows a pragmatic course, though I tend to lean towards “light” or “good” decisions. Once I complete an especially good game, with a well-developed story, I will start anew to experience the game with an “evil” or “bad” character. This allows me to experience the story from a different angle, see how intertwined decisions and branch and appreciate a beautifully crafted world.

Games are a separate universe, with different consequences, which ~~occassionaly~~ often require that we make decisions and follow paths that we might not in our physical world. We as humans map our morality onto that universe, following our own codes and at times breaking them in ways both subtle and profound. It is both freeing and thought-provoking.

Well for me at least.

Thanks to Andrew for including that aside in his review of Alpha Protocol – it got my mind moving this morning, which likely wasn’t his intent when he wrote it. On a side note, I don’t think I’ll both with the game now that I’ve read his breakdown.

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Do You Know Your Users?

Alex — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 15:00:53 +0000

Stop. Don’t answer immediately, take a couple of seconds to think about what that question entails and the smaller questions that come with it:

Who are your users?
How would they describe themselves?
Why do they visit your site?
What are the different types of users that you are building your site for?
Which are more important to you?
Which are more or less likely to visit, stay and use the tools you build?
Which don’t stay as long as you would like?

So, do you know your users? If not, here are a few methods to learn more. Some are fast, cheap and easy, others require a bit more work, but provide far more information.

Short Polls

You’d be amazed at what you could learn by a single poll question, especially over time.

Implementation Strategy

Create a series of questions to gain information you don’t already have about your users. This may vary widely, but here are some ideas:

Are you male or female?
How old are you?
What is your favorite part of the site?
What part of the site is your least favorite?
Is this your first time to the site?
How often do you visit the site?

The key is to only show one question at a time. Ideally the poll is placed prominently and consistently on the site. Placing the poll in the same spot in the sidebar and rotating the question every couple of weeks will pay rich rewards over time. Most users are much more likely to answer one short question every so often than they are to answer a full survey, which takes a larger investment of time up front.

Feedback Surveys

This longer form is useful for getting information quickly, but you may not reach everyone you’d like to. It does have the very real benefit of branching questions. If the user says they are a regular visitor, you can dig in a little deeper to determine why they come back.

Analytics

Standard analytics that report on your site’s traffic is important when you need to find the popular areas of the site. We’re going to skip that for now as I expect you already have most of that defined or can get your hands on it easily enough.

The more interesting data comes from user-specific analytics that will help you answer questions such as the average age of your visitors, whether they are male or female and how interested they are in participating in the community. Working with this data will allow you to decide which groups of users visit one area of the site more often or take part in you discussions more regularly.

User Interviews

If you’re able to talk to your users directly, you can gain a wealth of information. This can be a complex undertaking requiring a lot of effort, so I recommend working with your passive data before you decide to invest the time and money interviewing your customers and prospects. Additionally, you won’t capture data from those casual visitors who stumble upon your site through a search result, so the data is incomplete when thinking about the largest area for growth.

Tie it Together

The best of all possible worlds would be to tie your direct questions (polls and surveys) with the information gathered from your analytics. If you can determine which questions to show a user based on how often they visit, you’ll have better data. If you can present questions based on how many friends the user has connected with on your site, you have a whole new axis of data to learn from.

Now That You Have Data

With the information you gathered you can prioritize where you spend your time and effort. Revisit the questions at the beginning of this piece to see how your answers differ and think about how you can use this knowledge to craft your site so it delights your users and achieves your business goals.

What Have I Missed?

This is by no means a comprehensive list of methods and ideas, and I bet that some of you have other (better?) ideas and experience to share. I’d love to hear what you think in the comments!

Image courtesy of Life Photo Archive

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Privacy, Facebook and 170 Options

Alex — Thu, 13 May 2010 16:00:35 +0000

Facebook’s Privacy Policy is 5,830 words long; the United States Constitution, without any of its amendments, is a concise 4,543 words.

Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking

Navigating Facebook's Privacy (Links to NY Times)

Given Facebook’s release of a slew of developer tools and APIs, providing Web sites the world over with the ability to access the user data of Facebook users and the ever (d)evolving changes to Facebook’s privacy settings, it’s no surprise that there’s an outcry from individuals and privacy groups. The New York Times has published a great set of infographics laying out the “50 settings with more than 170 options” that a user has to work with to control how their information is used.

The accompanying article, Price of Facebook Privacy? Start Clicking is well worth a read for anyone unfamiliar with the issues at stake.

The Length of Facebook's Privacy Policy (Links to NY Times)

The second infographic illustrates Facebook’s ever-lengthening privacy policy. It’s interesting to note that the policy has grown longer at the same rate that previously private user information has become public.

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Sketchy Wireframes, the Comic Sans of UX

Alex — Thu, 06 May 2010 15:10:50 +0000

Sketchy-style wireframes, have wiggled their way into user experience documents the world over. With awesome tools like Balsamiq Mockups and a range of stencil sets to choose from, like as not, when an artifact describing the layout, features and workflows of a site is sent around the office or to a client, it’ll have squiggly lines.

Caveat: This post is about the sketchy style used in wireframes, not sketching in general. Sketching is an important part of the wireframing, workflow and design processes. Many a brilliant idea started life on the back of a napkin.

The reason most so often cited for the use of a sketchy style is that the squiggles convey that the document is still a work in progress. A secondary reason often follows with a claim that the sketch look obviously isn’t the site’s final design.

But sketchy style wireframes inevitably convey the opposite of what is intended, and worse, they come with additional negative implications overlooked by the proponents of the squiggle. In truth, sketchy wireframes imply that you don’t think your client is smart enough to separate crisp lines from a final design.

Simply put, the sketchy style is unprofessional. Yeah, I said it.

Would You Accept a Contract in Comic Sans?

I wouldn’t and I’m willing to bet that you would question any professional who provided you a legal document reminiscent of Garfield and Family Circle.

Wireframes aren’t supposed to be zany – they are supposed to be informative.

While our industry is young, and the tool set, younger still, we have many examples from which to learn. Architects and engineers are expected to deliver crisp lines and readable notes when they produce plans for a new home or skyscraper. The same holds true for engineers of all stripes.

Documents of any importance need to reinforce your experience, your expertise and the decisions you made as you produced them. The sketchy style does quite the opposite.

Sketchy Wireframes Imply a Lack of Importance and Conviction

Just as the final design for the site will convey a certain mood, the visual presentation of the wireframes should reinforce their importance to the success of the project. When you use a sketchy style your documents encourage the client to “fix” them.

Sketchy Wireframes Imply that Your Client Can’t Mentally Separate the Structure of a Site from its Design

While you may think this the case, you are either underestimating your clients, which is condescending or you should search for new ones, as clients who can’t understand the concept of a blueprint will likely struggle in their own endeavors. People are smart, and while you may have to explain the concept of a wireframe to a new client, the concept is easily understood.

Sketchy Wireframes Impede Comprehension

The goal of the document is to demonstrate the hierarchy of information and features and the relationships between those pieces. Wireframes are the blueprints for key business and design decisions. Adding visual clutter in the form of wavy lines, odd angles and handwriting fonts distracts from this singular purpose.

So, for the love of UX, save the sketchy look for the design phase where it belongs. Give your clients what they deserve – professional documents that aid their decisions and reinforce their selection of you for their important projects.

What Do You Think?

Am I wrong? Am I missing a key point? Do you agree with all your heart?

Replacing the Save Icon

Alex — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 15:00:18 +0000

The Save icon – that little ol’ floppy disk that exists in nearly every application sitting on your computer and on the Web. A representation of a piece of technology so utterly out of date that it’s meaning has shifted away from its physical existence into a concept of safety and permanence.

As a means of storage it was convenient by the standards of the day, but not necessarily that reliable and yet we’ve held onto it as a symbol, in large part because everyone who uses a computer recognizes it. So I recognize the fact that we’re unlikely to actually change it any time soon, I thought it would be fun to explore alternatives, so I asked the members of Refresh Austin, those who follow me on Twitter and my friends on Facebook for their ideas on a replacement. Those conversations generated some great ideas, which I present to you.

The Question

I asked “If it were up to you to change the old floppy disk as the “save” icon across all Web and desktop apps, what would you choose?”

The Answers

Physical Representations

Several responses recommended a hard drive, replacing one form of physical media with another, more accurate version. Though as William Yarbrough noted, it may not work as well for apps in the cloud.

Keith Aric Hall was the first of many to recommend a vaults or safe. I like this idea as it reinforces the concept of “save”. As Frank Robinson noted, those also imply encryption or file-locking, so he suggested a two-drawer filing cabinet.

Terry Brown brought up the idea that since the Open icon is often an arrow pointing out of a folder, then having an arrow point into the folder would make sense for Save.

Michelle McGonagle recommended a document with a checkmark and then took a larger step outside of the normal bounds by suggesting a treasure chest or empty jar, both of which are technology-agnostic. Keith noted that many CMSes use the document with a check icon to denote “Approve for Publishing”, which could be problematic.

Mental Concepts

Clouds and Boxes proved popular, often accompanied by an arrow.

Diana Dupuis suggested a red “S” in a thin black circle.

The response from Steven Harms is too good to not quote outright:

The notion that is important is the locking of bits into a static form: stored in a cloud, stored on a disk, stored on a CD. The trouble is that those icons would be “lock” or “frosty-ness.” The former is visually synonymous with “security” and the latter with Wendy’s, so neither has quite the right visual glyph-set.

Other Notes

Annette Priest brought up some great points, including the fact that we’re on the verge of needing to replace phone icons as well. She also noted that perhaps we should look at a shift towards gestures for the action instead of an icon. Follow a certain pattern with your mouse or device and your work is saved.

Ryan Joy brought up the point that sometimes “save means ’save draft’ or state and other times it’s intended as ‘publish’”. So, a bigger question may arise as to how and if we differentiate those concepts via icons.

What Do You Think?

A definitive answer was never the point, rather the conversation is the key, and it has been great so far. I’d love for you to jump in with your ideas to keep this going!.

Credits

All icons except for the safe, which is from VisualPharm are available as a part of the Flavour Extended Icon set by Oliver Twardowski.

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Define then Solve

Alex — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:06:22 +0000

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The Business Model and User Experience

Alex — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 15:10:42 +0000

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Thoughts on A Complete Experience

Alex — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:35:11 +0000

I recently posted a quote from Steve Ballmer discussing a key difference between Apple and Microsoft, which I titled A Complete Experience. Having spent a bit more time thinking about it, I thought I would capture some of those thoughts here. This is basically a brain-dump, so it is by no means comprehensive, or for that matter a fluid discussion.

For Ballmer to claim that Microsoft is committed to choice doesn’t match their past business practices. I’d love to see them truly commit to changes that support real user choice and a better end-to-end experience. The subtle knock of Apple (a “narrow” experience) is to be expected, though again it stretches the truth.

OS X, Apple’s computer operating system is not as broad as Windows in terms of configurations and options (six versions of Vista to choose from – two for OS X, one of which is targeted for servers – no confusion there), but that’s a very good thing for the people who buy and use computers. Windows provides every possible configuration option just in case one person out of 10,000 may want it. That’s pretty cool, except for the fact that it often clutters the experience for the other 9,999 folks.

Apple has gone the other route, making a vast majority of decisions for the users – focusing on normal people instead of edge cases. Power users can dive into the command line and utilize the full power of the BSD subsystem. They both have to strike a balance, but have chosen vastly different ways to do it. I’ve come to love Apple’s way of doing it.

If the experience were truly “narrow”, you wouldn’t have the wide swath of user types – students, lawyers, parents, kids, entrepreneurs and hard core developers. That last one is important – many dedicated techies who write programs and Web applications that millions of people use day in and day out switched to the Mac. These are the people most likely to tweak their system, to be that one out of 10,000. They chose the focused end-to-end experience over the bucket of options.

The experience is so much smoother on the Mac and my levels of frustration are amazingly low when I work on my computer. Hell, frustration doesn’t tend to crop up very often. I should say that my level of contentment and the occurrences of elation are rather high compared to any other product or service that I use on a regular basis.

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A Complete Experience

Alex — Tue, 16 Sep 2008 16:35:10 +0000

In the competition between PCs and Macs, we outsell Apple 30-to-1. But there is no doubt that Apple is thriving. Why? Because they are good at providing an experience that is narrow but complete, while our commitment to choice often comes with some compromises to the end-to-end experience.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer

The quote is from a memo that Mr. Ballmer sent to Microsoft employees this past July outlining the company’s strategy for 2009. Aside from the not-so-subtle “narrow” swipe, it’s a concise summation of why so many of us have switched to Apple products (not just the computer) after years, if not decades using PCs running Windows.

The experience matters.

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In Search of Useful Prototypes

Alex — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:00:37 +0000

Dangerbird Prototype Screenshot

Normally a post describing a site launch doesn’t grab my attention, as they cover the same ground (base level descriptions of the design process, technologies used, how great the client is etc.). But the write-up the launch of Dangerbird Records by Athletics, a design firm out of Brooklyn includes a discussion of their home-grown prototyping methods, which is not something you see every day.

I’m constantly refining the process I follow to create wire frames and prototypes. I’m close to a good solution, but it is continually out of reach. Much like the team at Athletics, I’ve investigated Axure RP and similar products, finding them to be much too large for my needs. They’re great for complex, enterprise apps, but they aren’t built for Web apps and sites (they are trying to shift, but I think that will merely lead to larger, more complex apps). I have tinkered with straight up comps and even light weight Web sites, but neither quite meets the need. For the moment I have settled on building wire frames in Visio, followed up by conversations that arise to discuss small details and interactions. No matter how many notes and call outs I add to a wire frame, questions arise.

Wireframes are not ideal for describing the richness and possibilities that are inherent in a Web application.

Prototypes on the other hand are great for conveying placement and interactions without implying design, but they can be time consuming initially as components need to be built and actions and results must be wired together. The Athletics team appear to have found a good method – using Flash plus a little bit of ActionScript to produce fully interactive and informative prototypes. It still requires some of that up-front work, but it is balanced by the ability to quickly revise the prototypes, and more importantly reduces misunderstandings and questions.

If I can carve out some time I will explore this method to see if it’s feasible for my work, but at a minimum it has placed Flash into the toolbox as a possibility for future prototyping projects.

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