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Week5 reading notes

UX Design Part 2: How To Define Your Users, Find them & Solve Their Problems

UX design is all about creating a compelling experience for your users.It’s knowing what the user wants, and giving it to them quickly and simply.

Why Does Target Audience Matter To UX Design?

Good UX design is about making the user feel like your website has been designed just for them. When you target a group of people with common characteristics, ambitions, and problems, you can create a bespoke user experience.

How Do I Define My Audience?

Nail your value proposition

What is their biggest, deepest problem?

Create a user profile of your ideal customer

List their demographics

Focus on their motivations, dreams and goals

Lean UX: Capturing User Behavioral Needs and Pain Points

Research

In terms of Lean UX, focus on the surveys, interviews.To understand end users within a short period of time, we can apply a Lean UX method. By asking key questions based on the audience segment, while constantly validating our assumptions, we are able to refine these assumptions.

Defining the User

Everything about UX research starts with defining the users. Create personas with assumptions to identify the user pain points and difficulties.

To create a user-centric experience, we need to validate our assumptions with limited resources. One rapid way is through surveys which are a quick and affordable way to capture a better understanding of the needs and goals of the user.

Interview questions can be closed-ended or open-ended.

User Validation

We can also create two types of user validation questions: screening questions and interview questions. Screening questions are to prove whether the people you are interviewing fit in the correct segment of users. Interview questions are to validate the user hypothesis.

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Week 4 reading notes

How I Plan User Research

Research Plan Template

Project Background

Prior research findings

Hypotheses

Considerations or other details

Business Goals

Understanding the larger goals helps to ensure the research is designed to help support client’s business strategy.  Provide actionable data, not merely interesting data.

Uncover barriers to conversions, leads, sign-ups, donations, etc.

Reduce cart abandons, call times, bounces, etc.

Increase customer satisfaction

Research Goals

Research goals are different from business goals.

For example, the business goal might be to improve the website conversion rate, but the research goal might be to better understand what information on the website customers need to make a purchase decision.

Research Methodology

Prior to creating the research plan, determined the research methodology (in order to estimate the project).

Participant Profile(s)

I use this information to build the screener, so I detail exactly who we want to recruit and who to screen out. Include quotas here for each customer segment — if needed.

Recruiting Methodology

Here, I explain where I will draw participants from — usually an email invitation, website intercept, or Facebook ads. Include the gratuity amount.

Timing

In a table format, Include sign-off deadlines and milestones for Research plan, Screener, Research design, Research in field, Analysis & report.

Observers

Marketing Managers, Project Managers, Developers, UX Specialists, Designers, Writers, Product Managers

User Interviews – The Beginner’s Guide

What is a user interview?

A user interview is a common user research technique used typically to get qualitative information from either existing or potential users. Cover any range of topics from:

The person’s background

Their occupation

Their use of technology

Their goals

Their motivations

Their pain points.

How do I prepare for a user interviews?

think about what types of users you want to interview and how many of each

identify some potential user groups through the analytics

write an interview script

How do you run the user interview?

Dress to the level of the interviewee

Make the interviewee feel comfortable

Keep it on track

Try not to bury your head in your notes

What is a contextual interview?

Doing the interview this way can yield greater insight into how the environment the user is in will affect how they currently use an existing system or will use what you are designing. Things to watch out for can be:

Distractions

Personality clues

Technology

Workarounds

What do I do with the findings from my user interviews?

Mindmapping is an excellent way of cutting through the detail and identifying themes and trends from your research.

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Week 2 reading notes

5 Big Benefits of Design Thinking

Why design thinking?

Design Thinking introduces a new way of thinking. It steps outside of the traditional boxes with visual thinking, creativity and innovation in order to find new solutions to the same old issues. Design Thinking questions our assumptions and what we already think we know.

Design Thinking can be used successfully within any industry—government, health care, financial services or non-profits, any field is potentially ripe for this kind of innovation.

5 Reasons why design thinking needs to guide our work

DESIGN THINKING FOCUSES ON THE END USER

Design Thinking is an approach to solving problems that puts end users at the center of the process.The process is inherently human-centered, getting close enough to the user to see where their frustrations lie and how we can make their lives and experiences better and more fulfilling.

DESIGN THINKING LEVERAGES COLLECTIVE EXPERTISE

By building multidisciplinary teams and bringing many voices to the table, we break out of our respective fields and boxes to leverage our collective wisdom, experience and expertise.

DESIGN THINKING EMPLOYS EMPATHY

The very foundation of Design Thinking is empathy, requires that we seek to understand and identify with the needs and challenges of the people (or users of a product), the experience or the system.

DESIGN THINKING TESTS AND TESTS AND TESTS

The philosophy of “design, test and iterate” is central to the process. By creating several rapid prototypes and encouraging fast feedback from actual users and customers before spending too much time, effort or money on any one idea, it yields results far more powerful.

DESIGN THINKING CREATES VALUE WHILE SOLVING REAL PROBLEMS

Design Thinking isn’t just creativity and innovation for its own sake; it’s specifically directed at creating value and solving problems.

Design Thinking Comes of Age

What Is a Design-Centric Culture?

A design-centric culture transcends design as a role, imparting a set of principles to all people who help bring ideas to life.

Focus on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones.

To build empathy with users, a design-centric organization empowers employees to observe behavior and draw conclusions about what people want and need.

Create models to examine complex problems.

Design thinking, first used to make physical objects, is increasingly being applied to complex, intangible issues, such as how a customer experiences a service.

Use prototypes to explore potential solutions.

The habit of publicly displaying rough prototypes hints at an open-minded culture, one that values exploration and experimentation over rule following.

Tolerate failure.

A design culture is nurturing. It doesn’t encourage failure, but the iterative nature of the design process recognizes that it’s rare to get things right the first time.

Exhibit thoughtful restraint.

Many products built on an emotional value proposition are simpler than competitors’ offerings. This restraint grows out of deliberate decisions about what the product should do and, just as important, what it should not do.

What Types of Companies Are Making This Change?

As industry giants such as IBM and GE realize that software is a fundamental part of their businesses, they are also recognizing the extraordinary levels of complexity they must manage. Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing. It needs to be a core competence.

What Are the Challenges?

Accepting more ambiguity.

Design, doesn’t conform easily to estimates. It’s difficult if not impossible to understand how much value will be delivered through a better experience or to calculate the return on an investment in creativity.

Embracing risk.

Transformative innovation is inherently risky. It involves inferences and leaps of faith.

Resetting expectations.

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Week 6 reading notes

UX Users

How to define audience?

1 nail value proposition

2 what is biggest problem

3 create a user profile

4 list their demographics

5 focus on their motivations, goals

Although learn UX may not be as in-depth as some of the other processes where traditional user research methods are used, it provides a maximum understanding of users, with limited time and resources.

Research Skills

open-ended                                                                     

about conducting design research                                         

exploratory studies

 Close-ended 

quantitative usability

survey expect large amount of respondents

data measured carefully over time

possible answer is strictly limited for some reason

Bottom line

it’s the best to ask open-ended questions!!

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Week 8 Reading notes

Chapter 8 analysis and models

Any models or maps you create will simply serve as documentation of what everyone already knows

create groups

identify next steps= actionable design mandate or principle

create personas

a persona is a fictional user archetype- a composite model you create from the data gathered by talking to real people-that represents a group of needs and behaviors

personas exist to represent the user in user-centered design.

A persona description should have just enough detail to capture those aspects of a target user most useful and inspiring for the designers to keep in mind

basic contents: photo, name, demographics, role, quote, goals, behaviors and habits, skills, environments, relationships etc,.

mental models can be real time-savers for deciding how to behave- to the extent they are accurate.

Documenting the users’ mental model allows you to not just get inside their head but get the inside of their head out of your head for everyone else to see. A mental model diagram can help resolve issues that arise if different user types have widely divergent mental models, or if the actual design of the system is significantly different from the one that was originally proposed.

task analysis/ workflow

contextual inquiry is the best prelude to task analysis, but you can also use data from user interviews as long as you’ve collected sufficient detailed information about how the participants work towards their goals step by step.

Chapter 3 The process

1 define the problem

2 select the approach

3 plan and prepare for the research

 identify the point person- the keeper of the checklist.

Make friends with the unexpected. And prepare to change the plan you’ve made to adapt once you have facts.

recruiting is simply locating, attracting, screening and acquiring research participants.

GOOD: share the concerns and goals of your target users

embodies key characteristics of target users

articulate their thoughts clearly

as familiar with the relevant technology as target users

4 collect the data

interviewing requires basic social skills, some practice and a modicum of self-awareness. A successful interview is a comfortable interaction for everyone involved that yields the information you were looking for.

Usability testing is simply the process of conducting a directed interview with a representative user while they use a prototype or actual product to attempt certain tasks.

Literature review

source: pre-existing research done / published by a research consultant or by a research organization

5 analyze the data

get everyone involved

goals/ priorities/ tasks/ motivators/ barriers/ habits/ relationships/ tools/ environment

6 report the results and repeat

The output of the analysis session is generally a summary report and one or more models.

The only way to design systems that succeed for imperfection is to get out and talk to people.

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Week9 Reading notes

Task Flows

Task analysis is essential to the success of a design project and once you’ve got the hang of it. Task analysis is a simple and effective process for laying out tasks from a user’s perspective. It is sometimes also referred to as “user scenarios”. One of the key challenges when conducting task analysis is to let go of what you already think you know and allow the user’s needs to guide the process instead.

Begin by Defining the Problem(s)

Then Prioritize Based on Demand (Understood Through Research)

Document the Task Flow: user groups/ system groups/ object/tool/information groups/ question groups

Optimize The Task

Once you have those solutions – incorporating them in your design should deliver better user experiences

Journey mapping

Customer journey maps are documents that visually illustrate an individual customer’s needs, the series of interactions that are necessary to fulfill those needs, and the resulting emotional states a customer experiences throughout the process.

[need] [interactions][emotions]

UX professionals can convert volumes of research findings and analysis into a concise, yet visually compelling story, which stakeholders across many levels of an organization can easily understand and interpret.

Journey maps succeed when they’re based on ethnographic research and contextual inquiry that allows researchers to experience a day in the life of a customer.

The journey maps have focused their attention on key customer behaviors and encouraged a different way of looking at application design. Core pieces of functionality can be developed, shared, and delivered to all users of the system.

Next steps tools

Wireframing

Wireframing, in the context of user experience design, is the act of creating user interface wireframes.

Wireframing as a practice has more in common with sketching than prototyping, especially in the first phase (which I’ll describe below). A prototype, on the other hand, while also not a customer-facing product, is intended to demonstrate realistic interface designs and interactions, often for usability testing and/or client presentations.

1  “what are some ways our product can help our customers accomplish their goals?”--the ideation phase

2 “how do I know this solution will work?” --the validation phase

Use wireframing as a guide to help you find the best strategy for capturing the goal(s) of a website.

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Week 11 Reading notes

IFTTT is a web service that aggregates many other web apps into one place and can then perform actions given a certain set of criteria. 

IFTTT simply asks for permission to access that specific app. The process of adding an app to IFTTT is easy

Multiple online accounts, all linked together – sounds like an awesome target to me.

IOT

Juniper research predicted that by 2020, there will be 38.5 billion connected devices. 

the Internet of Things is less about you changing the color of your lightbulb and more about companies large and small finding new ways of making their businesses, and your life, easier and more efficient. But the market for connecting the devices you use all day, every day, is about to be huge.

It’s possible some regulatory body will decide on a set of standards, or everybody will agree to support everybody else and redundancy will rule the day and redundancy will rule the day

In 2016, we’ll need to begin grappling with the security concerns these devices raise

it may be coming like a molasses tidal wave, but the Internet of Things is coming. It’s not a matter of if or whether, but when and how.

Essentially our physical wares will come with digital applications accessible via our phones. We're taking the manufacturing complexity out of the challenge list by pre-solving it for brands. 

They will also become increasingly smarter for businesses, able to use real-time data analytics to tackle problems like product authentication for better brand protection and increased efficiency in supply chains.

The announcement of 10 billion digital tags embedded in apparel and accessories over the next three years - though considered only "semi-connected" on the basis they can remain relatively dormant - are a substantial addition to this figure.

Software and sensors are controlling more of what once was done by humans, often more efficiently, conveniently, and cheaply. This practice is changing how we interact with the physical world. We talk to our televisions and they listen

WORKFLOW

Workflow lets users create a series of actions that can occur in sequence, just by pressing a play button. It not only saves steps, but it lets users avoid having to open several apps to get particular tasks done.

Workflow is similar to the IFTTT service, which lets you create "if this, then that" scenarios.

TEMBOO

temboo: a one of a kind library of programming processes that enhances and streamlines your code because we've virtualized it. 

Temboo's platform makes it incredibly easy to develop and maintain advanced software applications and is uniquely suited to programming for the Internet of Things.

In the future there will be more web-based services, more APIs, more frameworks, more languages, and more connected devices. Rather than imposing new standards, we need a solution that fits into current development practices and workflows and that can accommodate the increasing complexity of linking everything together in a consistent way that doesn't limit future technology innovations. Temboo's key innovation – virtualized code – is this solution.

Designing for Context aka adaptive design per Avi

Good user experience design has become table stakes. If you don’t do it well, you can’t even get out of the gate in this hyper-competitive digital world. 

There are three reasons why digital solutions fail to engage users long term and drive positive outcomes: segmentation, relevance and rewards.

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Week 3 Reading notes

Research is for you even if research is not a core part of your job. “Whatever your day job is, adding research skills will make you better at it,”

The first rule of user research: never ask anyone what they want. Instead, observe or ask about their behaviors. Look for insights so you can design the solution they haven’t thought to ask for.

Focus groups are the antithesis of ethnograph. If we already know not to ask one person what they want, how can we expect better results from asking a group of them together? Focus groups prevent us from learning about true individual behavior by coercing group opinions.

All it takes to turn potential hindsight into happy foresight is keeping your eyes open and asking the right questions. Failing isn’t the only way to learn. Don’t wait until your product ships to find out where to improve. Start by understanding your user’s problem better than they know it so when you fail it will be early, fast, and not catastrophic.

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Final presentation notes

-Michael 

insight

user group-clear

quote from user group - clear statement

opt out- privacy   considerate

sleeping cycle

how to record the sleeping quality besides sleeping hours?

-Matthew

the commons

persona-clear category 

useful conclusion after analysis

list existing solutions- a great point to look into the problem and find leverage point

connected with current platform-make the intervention more feasible

wireframe- great demo to illustrate ideas, interface could be more neat and simple

redundancy about pushing notification??

-Kashish

Friendship differentiate from 

Task flow-useful to outline 

national groups are good and specific user groups

but cut off from other culture groups? maybe they could provide other lens of mental issues.

geofencing sounds a little awkward to me....

Like the focus of offline activities , but how to track or monitor if it goes well or not

-Ethan

Catdating process

application diagram shows the timeline, beautiful and helpful

interview

painpoints- different platforms cannot share information

few choices for adopters

stars for adopters VS likes for cats

approval/ rejection from animal organizations  -other methods to evaluate besides the matching rates?

-Will

TinySteps

interesting concept compared with other intervention perspectives

helpful process diagram related to the timeline, clear statement

google API real time feedback

mindful movement 

encourage sharing

video -like the environment setting part, gives a sense of the psychological feeling. simple but useful

-Wenqian

Foodie

philabundence

food map helps to figure out of the spatial layout of the surplus food

transfer from one-direction to multi-direction

recipe for people is a considerate idea

clearly presentation

-Jane

-clear organization of personas

the solution could be more legible

like the idea of pinpoint in the existing system

the feasibility of the project could be improved

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Final Presentation

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journey map _current work flow and pain points

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week 10 reading notes

Reading notes

Week 10

Sketching & Prototyping

the prototyping stage is the right time to catch design flaws and change directions, and the flexibility and disposability of paper encourages experimentation and speedy iteration

Paper prototyping is a key component of the user-centered design (UCD) process and is a popular method among designers.

incorporating the physical device into the early prototyping stages is vital.

Use cases are the BEST way to get the paper prototyping process started.

The greater the complexity, the more time and money is required to implement structural changes  

We need to use different tools in suitable design stages to be efficient to open minded

There are two types of clickthrough prototypes. In the first, photographs of whiteboards or paper templates are loaded into the prototyping software and then linked together. The second reproduces the same sketches using interactive software widgets, with built-in UI interactivity (for example, swipe detection, form customization, etc.).

Sketch-based clickthrough prototype with POP is a great tool for quickly testing. The scanning and linking functions is convenient!!! Super useful tool to communicate.

The process of testing from paper prototype to POP is also an interfacing process, supporting multi-platforms.

Design Thinking reminders

Rather than just thinking at one specific problem but looking ecosystem around it is equally even much more important.

50 problems 50 days is a brilliant project by clearly visualizing the  scope of the problems closely related to the space. The diversity of the representing methods reflects the different lens brought in this trip.

IFTTT

If this then that

a service that lets you connect two different applications together based on specific parameters, which you define

IFTTT gives an excellent case for interfacing culture, by automatically connection between different platforms, which should inspire other design fields besides web design or online based platforms.

The Internet of Things (IoT)—a sophisticated network of objects embedded with electronic systems that enable them to collect and exchange data—is disrupting technology and changing the way we live.

IoT is a step further bringing online information to the physical devices, which could greatly change people’s life. To leverage the power of the IoT responsibly and profitably, you need to develop and implement your own IoT technologies, solutions, and applications.

Digital services provide designers with opportunities to quickly try out new features without the time and expense of building and selling new hardware. They can treat hybrids as R&D laboratories, capturing how buyers use services and testing features to uncover which ones customers find most valuable.

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journey map

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workshop

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Design Statement

Poor time-management students who have sleeping problems could feel hard to fall asleep and get up on time, thus causes stress and low-efficiency in study, which could be solved by a virtual demon foster process. Cute demons will beg users to sleep with them on time, bark to wake them up, and users could earn food for their demons by focusing on their study in the daytime.  We will know it works by more demon fosters online and less anxiety behaviors as well as high-quality sleep and work.

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workshop

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Workshop