bjornvolkers2123

[bjornvolkers2123]

[bjornvolkers2123]

Summary 100 things every designer should know about people

How people see

Your brain creates shortcuts to quickly make sense of the world around you. Grouping by shapes and colors can draw attention differently. We see in 2D due to the mechanics of the eye; the visual cortex turns the 2D images into a 3D representation.

Peripheral vision is used more than central vision to get the gist of what you see. Blinking/moving elements in our peripheral vision draw our attention.

Central vision: look at things directly to see details; object recognition

Peripheral vision: remainder of the visual field; getting the gist of a scene

People identify objects by recognizing patterns

Your eyes and brain want to create patterns, for example, four sets of two circles, not eight circles. 

Geon (geometric icon) theory of object recognition: you recognize basic shapes in what you're viewing, and use these shapes to identify objects.

People imagine objects tilted and at a slight angle above. If you ask people to draw a picture of an object, they tend to draw it from the canonical perspective: slightly above the object looking down, and offset a little to the right or left.

People scan screens based on past experience and expectations Most people scan in the way they read. Large images can pull us out of that tendency though. We usually skip edges. People have a mental model of where things tend to be on screens and they see cues that tell them what to do with an object. These cues are called Affordances: action possibilities for an object so that you know what to do with it.

How people read

It's a myth that capital letters are inherently hard to read. There was a theory that capital letters are harder to distinguish. However recent research says that when we read, we recognize and anticipate letters, then based on the letters we recognize the word.

Reading isn't fluid. Our eyes are still as we focus, then move in sharp jumps. This is called saccades. During the saccades, which takes 250 ms, we're blind. Our eyes look forward most of the time during the saccades, but look backward about 10-15% to read again. Most of what we read is mixed case, so we're used to that. We could teach ourselves to read capitals just as well.

Capitals should be used for calling attention but it's considered shouting by most people. 

Reading and comprehending are two different things. For example, you could read a scientific article's abstract and recognize the individual words, but not know enough about the subject matter to understand the content. Good measure of readability is the Flesch-Kincaid formula, which takes into account the number of words, sentences, and syllables for the words. A higher score means easier to read.

Use headlines to provide context for your reader. We use different parts of our brains for passively viewing words, listening to words, speaking words, and generating verbs. What you read depends on your point of view. For example, a study by Anderson and Pichert had people read a story about a house and its contents. One group read the story from the perspective of a home buyer, another group read it from the perspective of a burglar.

How people remember

Short-term memory is limited

To maintain content in working memory requires focused attention. Stress reduces the effectiveness of working memory.

People with high-functioning working memory are able to screen out sensory input so they can focus.

People remember only four items at once

George Miller's "seven, plus or minus two" rule of thumb wasn't in a paper backed by research. Alan Baddely applied scientific rigor and discovered the magic number is 4.

If you have more than four items, use chunking to break it into groups. For example, 7125694532 vs 712-569-4532.

The four-item rule applies to long-term memory as well. For example, people can usually remember four of the Seven Dwarves or countries in Europe. Remembering more is difficult.

People have to use information to make it stick

To get from working memory to long-term memory:

Repeat it a lot

Connect it to something they already know

Repetition reinforces neural pathways.

Schemas help people reason about groups of things. For example, describing a head, you would talk about eyes, nose, hair, mouth. Schemas help us build associations between things.

It's easier to recognize information rather than recall it

For example, if given a list of objects, recall is about stating what was on the list. Recognition is being given an object name and asked whether or not it was on the list.

Recognition can lead to inclusion errors. For instance if the list of objects was chair, desk, pencil, lamp, (office items) and you were asked whether phone was on the list, you might say it was because a phone is typically found in an office.

Memory takes a lot of mental resources

The latest research says we receive 40 billion sensory inputs every second, and are only conscious of about 40. It takes a lot of mental resources to think about, remember, process, represent, and encode information.

Recency effect: you remember the end of something because it was the most recent thing you observed

Primacy effect: you remember the beginning because it was the first thing you observedPeople reconstruct memories each time they remember them

Memories are not movie clips that are replayed. You also fill in memory gaps with made-up sequences that seem just as real as the original event.

How People Think

People process information better in bite-sized chunks

Don't give people too much info at once. Progressive disclosure means providing only the information people need at the moment.

Counting clicks is no longer a relevant measure of ease-of-use. People won't notice they're clicking if they're getting the right amount of information at each click to keep them going down a path.Progressive disclosure works if you know what most people will be looking for at each part of the path.

Some types of mental processing are more challenging than others

There are 3 types of demands (loads) you can make on a person

Cognitive: think, remember, calculate; most expensive

Visual look at something

Motor: press a button, move the mouse; least expensive

Fitt's Law: mathematical equation that helps you determine target, like a button, sizes so that they're not too small or too far away

Minimize motor switching for example, back and forth between keyboard and mouse. Increasing load works for video games, because you want to induce a challenge.

Minds wander 30% of the time

Mind wandering: doing one task and then fading into thinking about something unrelated. This is the closest thing we have to multitasking.

The more uncertain people are, the more they defend their ideas

Cognitive dissonance: uncomfortable feeling of having two ideas in conflict with one another. 

Cognitive dissonance denial: not allowing any new information that would conflict with your opinion 

Two ways to reduce the dissonance: change your belief, deny one of the ideas

If people are forced to defend an idea they disagree with, they tend to change their belief to fit the new idea. Otherwise, people will continue to deny any new information. People who were less certain will argue even harder.

People create mental models

Mental model: representation of something (e.g., real world, device, software) that someone has in mind. Example: You know how to read books, you know what an iPad is, so what would be your mental model for reading books on an iPad?

People interact with conceptual models

People use models to predict what the system will do or what they should do with it.

Conceptual model: actual model given to the person through the design and interface of the real product

If the mental model and conceptual model don't align, the product will be hard to learn, hard to use, and probably won't be accepted.

If your product is something brand new, there will likely be a mismatch. This is where you gradually change people's mental models to match the conceptual one.

People process information best in story form

Stories are powerful; they grab and hold people's attentions.

The most common format is three acts:

Beginning: setting, characters, situation/conflict

Middle: obstacles and conflicts for characters to overcome

Ending: conflict comes to a climax and is resolved

People are driven to create categories

People love to categorize. The whole field of information architecture is about how to organize information into categories. If presented with large amounts of information, people will impose their own categories.It doesn't matter who (designer, user) makes the categories as long as the items are well organized.

Time is relative

The more mental processing you have to do, the more time you think has elapsed.If people are pressed for time, they're less likely to help someone. 

Expectations of time change. For example, 20 seconds for a website to load in 1998 is very different than what we expect now.

There are four ways to be creative

Arne Dietrich created a creativity matrix:

Deliberate and Cognitive: Thomas Edison; putting together existing information in new and novel ways; uses the prefrontal cortex for focus and connection

Deliberate and Emotional: therapeutic a-ha moment; prefrontal cortex helps for focus, but cingulate cortex ties in emotions/feelings

Spontaneous and Cognitive: the idea comes from breaking from thought. Unconscious mind is at work.

Spontaneous and Emotional: musicians and artists; amygdala. This is the basic emotional processing.

How People Focus Their Attention

Selective attention: people can pay attention to one thing and filter out all other stimuliPeople filter information. People seek out and pay attention to information and cues that confirm their beliefs.

Well-practiced skills don't require conscious attention

For learning music, the Suzuki method stresses constant repetition so that when you perform a piece of music, you're just observing your body execute the movements. Too many automatic steps can lead to errors because you assume something will work, so you don't pay attention.

Expectations of frequency affect attention

If people expect to see something happen with a particular frequency, they often miss it if it happens more or less than their expectations. Example: TSA missed a loaded handgun getting through security -- they don't often encounter guns, so they don't expect to see them.

Sustained attention lasts about 10 minutes People pay attention only to salient clues

People filter out unimportant or common elements.Example: picking the correct penny out of a lineup of examples that have the profile facing different ways, what side the year is on, what text is on the top.

People can't actually multitask

We're just good at switching between tasks quickly. If you're doing a physical task that you are proficient in, like walking and talking.

Phone examples:

Hands-free is still distracted driving because your attention is on the conversation.

Hearing half of a conversation is mentally taxing because you have to fill in the half you can't hear.

You have three brains:

New: conscious, logical, reasoning

Mid: emotions

Old:  survival

Loud noises startle and get attention

Also, people start to tune out sounds they become familiar with, like clock chiming every hour. For people to pay attention to something, they must first perceive it. 

Stimulus present, detected:  able to start treatment

Stimulus present, undetected: patient may die of cancer

Stimulus absent, detected: give unnecessary treatment

Stimulus absent, undetected:  correct diagnosis of no cancer

What Motivates People

People are more motivated as they get closer to a goal.

Goal-gradient effect: you accelerate your behavior as you progress closer to your goal. 

Websites can do this too, for example letting you know you've completed 75% of the steps to creating your profile.

Variable rewards are powerful

In B.F. Skinner's work on operant conditioning, you can have interval schedules (reward after some time has elapsed) or ratio schedules (reward after doing some activity X times). You can vary the interval length and number of times as well. To engage people the most, use variable ratio schedules. For example, slot machines -- they pay out based on the number of times you play, but you can't predict when.

As a design example, instead of Dropbox giving you more storage for each individual user you recruit, make the reward larger for every 3-5 users you recruit.

Dopamine makes people addicted to seeking information

Dopamine causes you to want, desire, seek out, and search. The opioid system is involved with feelings of pleasure. These two systems work together, but dopamine is stronger, so you seek more than you are satisfied.

Unpredictability keeps people searching

Dopamine is also stimulated by unpredictability For example, e-mails show up, but you don't know when or from whom.

Pavlovian reflex: associate a stimulus with a reward. This happens with the sound you hear when you get an e-mail.

If you keep the amount of information small, the dopamine system is even more stimulated.

To break out of the loop, get away from the information-seeking environment (e.g., put your phone away or out of reach).

People are more motivated by intrinsic rewards than extrinsic rewards

Contingent rewards: rewards given based on specific behavior that is spelled out ahead of time; these lead to less of the desired behavior once the reward is taken away

From Dan Pink's book Drive, there are two types of work:

Algorithmic (follow procedures)

Heuristic (knowledge work)

Extrinsic punishments and rewards work best for algorithmic work; not so for heuristic work.

People are motivated by progress, mastery, and control

People like to feel they're making progress, that they're learning and mastering new skills. Mastery is asymptotic, you never really get there.

People's ability to delay gratification (or not) starts young

Delayed gratification: resisting the impulse to act. This can be observed in children, and it continues on to adulthood. Those who can't resist tend to have problems as adults.

People are inherently lazy

Humans have evolved to conserve their energy.To handle the myriad of choices and weighing costs/benefits, we satisfice, pick an option that's adequate, even if suboptimal. Design websites for scanning, not reading.

People will look for shortcuts only if the shortcuts are easy

If it seems like too much work to change your behavior (use a shortcut), people stay with their old habits. Having default values/behaviors helps reduce the amount of work needed to complete a task.

People assume it's you, not the situation

Fundamental attribution error: people have a tendency to give personality-based explanations for other people's behavior more weight than situational factors. For example, that person cut me off in traffic because he's rude, rather than he's late for an important meeting. We as individuals assume our motivation is based on our reaction to the situation instead of personality. In other words, we judge others by their behavior; we judge ourselves by our intention.

Forming a habit takes a long time and requires small steps

There's no rule of thumb about how long it takes a habit to form. For some it could be a few weeks, for others it could be several months. If you miss more than a few days in a row for building your habit, you will see a decline in progress.

People are more motivated to compete when there are fewer competitors

When there are more people, it's harder to assess where you stand and therefore you're less motivated to try to come out on top.

People are motivated by autonomy

People like to do things the way they want to do them, and when they want to do them.

People Are Social Animals

The strong tie group size limit is 150 people

Dunbar's number: limit on how many individual species have in their social group. For humans, this is about 150. This applies to maintaining stable social relationships, not just people you know or are aware of. 150 is the group size for communities with a high incentive to stay together (survival pressure, close proximity).

Weak ties: relationships that don't require everyone to know everyone else in the groupPeople are hard-wired for imitation and empathy. Our premotor cortex makes plans to move, then coordinates with the primary motor cortex to actually move.

Mirror neurons: neurons that fire when watching other people, even though we're not taking the action ourselves; these are the starting point of empathy (mirroring how another feels)

Doing things together bonds people together

Wiltermuth and Heath found that people who engaged in synchronous activities (doing things together in the same space) were more cooperative in completing subsequent tasks, and more willing to make personal sacrifices to benefit the group. You don’t even have to feel good about the group/activity

People expect online interactions to follow social rules

Even though they occur online, those interactions are still social, they follow rules and guidelines. Both parties have expectations of protocol. We have assumptions of how a product will respond and what the interaction will be like. One simple one is responsiveness like expect it to load quickly but doesn't. 

People lie to differing degrees depending on the media

Depending on written, auditory, or electronic media, people are more or less likely to be dishonest.

Moral disengagement theory: people become more unethical as they distance themselves from bad consequences of their actions

Speakers' brains and listeners' brains sync up during communication

Stephens found that as people listen to someone else talk, the brain patterns of both speaker and listener start to couple/mirror.

The brain responds uniquely to people you know personally

Krienen found that when people answered questions about their friends, even if they weren't of similar interests, the medial prefrontal cortex was active. This was not the case when discussing strangers (with similar interests).

Laughter bonds people together People can tell when a smile is real or fake more accurately with video

Duchenne smile: mouth turned upward, but fewer wrinkles around the eyes People are quicker to trust and like other people who are showing what are believed to be genuine emotions.

The theory was that it was difficult to fake a smile, but that's been disproven. It's harder to do on video because it's dynamic and not just a snapshot.

How People Feel

Seven basic emotions are universal

Emotions: have physiological correlates and are expressed physically, gestures, facial expressions; usually arise because of an event and lead to actions

Moods: longer than emotions; may not be expressed physically or come from an event

Attitudes: more cognitive; conscious brain

Paul Ekman studied emotions:

Joy

Sadness

Contempt

Fear

Disgust

Surprise

Anger

Emotions are tied to muscle movement and vice versa

There have been studies that show if Botox is used to paralyze the muscles used in showing facial expressions for certain moods, those emotions are dampened as well.

Anecdotes persuade more than data

There's so much information for us to process, so we think that more data is good for others like presenting a survey of customers and start to write a summary about X% said this and Y% said that. Although true, it's not compelling. Anecdotes are stories; they trigger emotions. Better yet, use videos.

Smells evoke emotions and memories

When you smell something, that sensory data goes right to the amygdala (emotional processing).

People are programmed to enjoy surprises

The human brain not only looks for the unexpected; it craves the unexpected.

People are happier when they're busy

Example: 12 minutes to walk from airport terminal to baggage claim, immediately find your bag or 2 minutes to walk to baggage claim, then wait for 10 minutes. Hsee researched this and found that although we prefer to be lazy, doing nothing makes people impatient and unhappy.

People use look-and-feel as their first indicator of trust

Sillence researched trust and web design. Sites that were rejected had issues with look and feel, first impression, poor navigation, etc. Trusted sites were from respected organizations, advice from experts, information they felt relevant to them.

Listening to music releases dopamine in the brain

Not only listening to music, but anticipating music and lead to a release of dopamine. The more difficult something is to achieve, the more people like it

Cognitive dissonance theory: would people go through a painful experience to be part of a group they ultimately didn't like? You tell yourself the group must important because you went through discomfort.

Scarcity and exclusivity: if it's difficult to join then not many can do so; if I don't make it in, I'll lose out. Something painful must be worth it.

People overestimate reactions to future events

Dan Gilbert's book showed that people greatly overestimate their own reactions to both pleasant and unpleasant events in their lives. We have a built-in regulator to keep us at about the same level of happiness most of the time.

People feel more positive before and after an event than during it

Mitchell studied people about to take a trip. Before the event everyone was looking forward to it, during they were not that positive, and afterward the events were thought of positively.

People Make Mistakes

People will always make mistakes; there is no fail-safe product

To write an error message:

Tell the user what he/she did

Explain the problem

Instruct how to correct it

Write in plain English (active voice)

Show an example

People make errors when they are under stress

Yerkes-Dodson law: a little stress can help you perform a task, because it heightens awareness; too much stress degrades performance. When there's stress, attention gets focused and you get tunnel action (keep doing the same task even though it it's not working). Don't assume that people will use your product in a stress-free environment.

Not all mistakes are bad

Errors with positive consequence: don't get the desired result but you learn something else (looking for volume control but found brightness control instead)

Errors with negative consequence: don’t get the desired results, undo a positive or get into acondition that cannot be reversed (drag to move file but end up deleting it)

Errors with neutral consequence: no effect on task completion (try to select menu item, but it's unavailable)

People make predictable types of errors

Performance errors

Commission: took more steps than necessary

Omission: left out steps

Wrong-action: appropriate for procedure, but wrong action

Motor-control errors: clicked the wrong thing, made the wrong gesture

People use different error strategies

Systematic exploration: users plan out what procedures they'll use to correct the error.

Trial and error exploration: randomly try things and see what happens.

Rigid exploration: do the same thing repeatedly

How People Decide

People make most decisions unconsciously

Example factors when buying things:

What other people are buying

What's consistent with your persona

What you stand to gain from this purchase

Fear of loss (e.g., sale only lasts 2 days)

Your particular motivations

The unconscious has evolved to process most of the data and to make decisions for us according to guidelines and rules of thumb that are in our best interest most of the time. This is the meaning behind "trusting your gut," and most of the time it works.

The unconscious knows first

Bechara studied the skin conductance response of people gambling with certain decks of cards where people could get big wins (or big losses) or more conservative wins/losses. The skin readings were elevated long before people consciously changed their strategies.

People want more choices and information than they can process

Iyengar and Lepper studied how people choose flavors of jam in the grocery store. When there were 24 options, more people stopped by to sample than when given 6 options. Regardless of the number of options, people only sampled 3-4 jams. More people actually purchased jam when there were 6 options.

People think choice equals control

Inyegar studied several types of animals choosing between (1) press one button to get food, or (2) press a series of buttons to get food. The animals preferred the more complex path.

Sometimes having many choices makes it harder to get what they want, but people still want the choices so that they feel in control of the decision.

People may care about time more than they care about money

Mogilner and Aaker studied the phrasing of ads for a lemonade stand (e.g., "Spend a little time" vs. "Spend a little money" vs. "Enjoy"). More people stopped at the stand that mentioned time.

When you invoke time in a message, you make more of a personal connection than when you invoke money.

Group decision-making can be faulty

Mojzisch and Schulz-Hard studied job candidate interviewers. One group was given information from the others, another was given no prior information. The researchers found that when a group of people starts a discussion by sharing initial preferences, they spend less time and less attention on the information available outside the group's preferences.

People are swayed by a dominant personality

Anderson and Kilduff's research showed that it's not sufficient to have a dominating personality, you need to speak first in the group.

When people are uncertain, they let others decide what to do

Latane and Darley studied what would happen when participants (sitting in a group of researchers) would do when a room started to fill up with smoke. The more people, and the more the non- participants ignored the smoke, the more likely it was for the participant to also ignore it. Testimonials and ratings are powerful.

People think others are more easily influenced than they are themselves

Third-person effect: most people think others are influenced by persuasive messages, but that they themselves are not.

People are literally unware (i.e., unconscious) that they are being influenced. It's also partly because people don't like to think of themselves as easily swayed/gullible, because then they wouldn't be in control.

People value a product more highly when it's physically in front of them

Bushong researched what people did when given (1) item description, (2) item image, (3) the actual item. The valued the item more highly when it was actually in front of them.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Summary Design of Everyday Things - Donald A. Norman

A lot of people have a tendency to blame themselves when they can’t figure out a new gadget, like a new TV’s remote control. But this is more the fault of a bad design than the fault of the user.

One of the main contributing factors to bad design is the incremental addition of complexity of devices, due to continuously added features. For example, a TV remote became a part of the entertainment system, used to control a TV, a DVD player,  a game console, etc. All those systems have many features, so the remote controls get increasingly complex, resulting in confusion for the user.

An example of the cell phone evolution is that at first, cell phones used touch pads for just making phone calls, then they started texting, taking pictures, making e-mails, search the internet, etc. So as the features got added, the devices got complicated as well.

Well designed products teach the user how to use them. They do not ask the user to read a complicated manual. The user learns it by doing it. The way to do this is to give the user clues or clear signs.A door has a sign to push or pull and a door handle, indicating which side to do this on. If you had just a glass door, without indication which side to push or pull, a handle, and a push or pull label, then a person could waste many attempts having to experiment with getting a door to open. Even a simple object like a door could cause many failed attempts and frustration, and even potentially a person to get stuck.

There are 3 levels of psychology: 

Visceral (unconscious behavior the user does without thinking, such as breathing or digesting). 

Behavioural (quick reflexes such as catching a ball, or pulling our hand away from fire. These are conscious responses, but not involving a lot of time to think).

Reflective level (higher cognitive functions having to do with complex planning and problem solving).

Any well designed product should use all 3 of these levels of psychology. If you are designing a washing machine, for instance, you will on a reflective level, have a problem (dirty clothes), which you need to wash, and set a plan for which wash cycle you're going to use. So the machine should display all the options to fit all the types of reflective problems.

At the behavioural level, the was cycles should be simple and clear to select, and there should be a clear indication when the wash cycle is complete.

At the visceral level, each button should have feedback as they get pressed, and be easy to find. There should be other audio and visual indicators to indicate that the wash actually has started, and completed.

In order to really fix the real problem with a poorly designed product, the root cause needs to be found. The way to do this is to find out why the user has made the mistake. An example of root cause analysis in airplane controls is a button to increase or decrease velocity looking exactly the same as a button to increase or decrease the angle of descent or ascent. Many pilots confused the buttons because they look the same. In this example human error was reduced by making the buttons look different between velocity and angle of descent.

Design Thinking is an open inquiry method used for diagnosing problems by going beyond the surface, and getting to the root cause. 

[bjornvolkers2123]

[bjornvolkers2123]

Unique Selling Points

My Unique Selling point are:

Detailled

Communication

Hard work

User Experience

Interaction

Animation

Leader

Always on time

[bjornvolkers2123]

Designer Overview

Hoe do I see myself as a designer?

Values:

- I value interfaces with a good flow and that provide a good UX

- I value a minimalistic design

- I value transaction and animations which make the interface great to use

- I value a nice and comforting workspace

Strengths

- I got an eye for detail

- I am never too later for a deadline

- I like to communicate a lot with a customer or partner to keep things clear

- I can take the lead

- I focus on the total experience of a product, so I keep the whole system in mind with my design (not only how the interface looks)

- Besides a UX designer, I am also a frontend developer

Weaknessess

- I am often in my comfort zone

- The quality of my sketches aren’t really high

- My animations and transitions can be better

- I am not really good at concept thinking

- Research isn’t really my thing and therefore I often dive into the designing stage way too early

Interesting companies

In this year, with an internship in mind, I did research about some companies of my interest and looked what they're doing and what they’re standing for. Personally, I like a smaller company in which I can learn a lot and be a serious member of the group. At the other hand, I also like a big company, in which I can learn a lot from more and different people and cases. 

Accenture Liquid studio

Originally, Accenture is a consultancy company that offers advice and consultancy to other companies. Accenture has a lot of branches in which it provides this consultancy. The digital/design branch is one of them. Therefore, Accenture has it’s own department for this branch, Accenture Liquid studio. This is a company that answers real business challenges for their client through innovation and deep industry knowledge. They put together design, innovation, commerce, content and marketing all together to create a top notch product for their clients. 

Defigners

UX & Design agency based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The company is specialized in UX Design so they can meet the needs of its customers and design a great experience. It is a small company consisting of 5 men with  various specialties. Together they focus on co-developing start-up / scale-up concepts in the digital world. In this way they are the right partner for the development of everything that comes with launching a successful product.

The main ingredient is a  a startup studio based in Amsterdam. They help you build your idea into a successful business in 12 weeks. They offer development, design, strategy, marketing, business and agility to their clients. It’s a company consisting of a young team with various specialties. 

Inspiring products

As a designer, i personally, get most of my inspiration from dribble and the concept that designers present there. Besides that, I also get most of my inspiration of the GUI kits from Apple because I design mostly for iPhone. But when it comes to designing for other operating systems, i fall back on Dribble and I get my inspiration from Behance.net. Ofter, I also check Medium for the latest news article from the design world and I check Producthunt to see what products are upcoming. 

One of my interface and interaction inspirations on dribbble

Ux Collective

https://uxdesign.cc

This is a link to a platform of Medium, called Ux collective. I often read article about the latest “fashion” in UX design and that inspires me a lot. 

[bjornvolkers2123]

Dislike

Hall of Shame

Flashscore

The first UX example that I dislike, is Flashscore. This is a sport application where you can live stream sports, like soccer, baseball, volleyball, hockey etc. The main reason I dislike this app is because it doesn’t work fast and fluently. With every action the interface shows a loading state which sometimes takes longer than 5 seconds. 

Snapchat

The reason I dislike Snapchat is because of their new update. your normal timeline is now combined with the stories of your contacts. Besides that, on the right side of the application you have a “explore” function with snapchats of unknown people. 

Outlook

The new interface of Outlook has in my opening a bad UX because it now has 3 columns with content and therefore the content is presented very small. The message you select is very small and difficult to fully read. 

Tumblr

Tumblr has also a bad UX because when writing a blog, you can not drag and drop the blogs and have to rewrite them if you want a different sequence.

Nu.nl

Nu.nl has a very bad UX because the page is full with links and description.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Like

For the third sub-assignment I have to collect 5 examples of UX design that I like and 5 examples of UX design that I dislike.

Hall of Fame

These UX examples are the designs that I like because of their usability and the overall experience I get when using them. 

Netflix

The reason I like netflix is because they are very personal when it comes to offering new movies or series. Also, the interface works great and is very clear to use.

Vodafone app

The Vodafone application for my iPhone is a very clear and easy to use app. It has a homescreen which functions as a menu and every option is visually clear. The buttons animate in the following screen which causes a nice effect.

Spotify

Spotify is in my opinion an app which has a great UX because it provides a very clear interface in which you can choose songs that are easy to ad to a playlist.

Ziggo

The ZiggoGo app is an app with which you can watch television on your phone. The interface is, just like Netflix and Spotify, very clear and therefore has a nice user experience. 

Tikkie

Tikkie is an app for paying debts. Tikkie has a great UX because it works fluently with your bankaccount and WhatsApp. With 1 click you can transfer money to other people. Besides that the function for adding a new “tikkie” is very clear and works great

[bjornvolkers2123]

Learning goal 3

100 things every designer needs to know about people

My third learning goal is to read another book. This book is called “100 things every designer needs to know about people” and it is about the psychology of design. I want to read this book because i want to address these subjects in the book a little bit more than i did at Cognitive Psychology.

The contents of the book:

- How people see

- How people read

- How people remember

- How people think

- How people focus their attention

- Wat motivates people

- People are social animals

- How people feel

- People make mistakes

- How people decide

As it is a bit late in the course i am going to read the book and see how far i will come within the 28 hours. I wil write a summary as wel.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Update learning goal 2

My second learning goal is to learn more about User Experience in general. I mean by this the theoretical part of the UX. I found a nice book about the user experience design: The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman

This is a very nice book which i’m very interesting in. This learning goals has to be specific and measurable as well so therefore i made some tasks that i will do in order to realize my goal. 

Tasks

- Read and summarize chapter 1 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 2 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 3 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 4 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 5 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 6 (4 hours)

- Read and summarize chapter 7 (4 hours)

- Make a relevant summary of this and offer it on Stuvia.nl (5 hours)

Total Time: 33 hours

[bjornvolkers2123]

Update learning goal 1

It’s been a while that I worked on my learning goals for the X2 program because of the schedule and assignments of Cognitive Psychology and Big IA. 

Recap learning goals

My first learning goal is to become better at designing interactions with prototype tools. I realized this by making the Multi Device Design assignment where I made a nice mobile prototype including nice interactions. 

But I noticed that this isn’t enough. Therefore, I am following these courses on Lynda:

https://www.lynda.com/Prototyping-tutorials/Creating-Card-animation/475945/497358-4.html?autoplay=true

https://www.lynda.com/FramerJS-tutorials/Adding-items-cart/614321/674321-4.html?autoplay=true

Specify this learning goal

As I said above, my learning goal is to become better at designing interactions in prototyping. Firstly, i want to specify this learning goal by saying that the prototype tool that i want to make the interactions in is Principle. 

Besides that this goal has te be specific, it also has to be measurable. To realize this i have made a list with the task i want to do to realize this goal at the end of the minor.

Tasks

- Make a on boarding transition prototype (3 hours) Done

- Watch Lynda tutorial about Principle (2 hours) Done

- Make a card animation prototype (5 hours) Done

- Make a button transition prototype (3 hours) Done

- Make a bottom up slide in prototype (3 hours) Done

- Make a hamburger button animation (4 hours) Done

- Make a horizontal and vertical scrolling prototype (5 hours) Done

- Make a screen transition prototype (4 hours) Done

Total Time: 29 hours 

[bjornvolkers2123]

Recap first period

In the first period of the Minor User Experience Design I followed two courses, Multi Device Design and User Experience Design. 

Multi Device Design

Multi Device Design is course about designing and creating an app for more than just one device. And this goes even beyond a responsive site. The most important part of Multi Device Design is that you design for more devices that work together according to the 3C framework. How can one device complement the other for instance? 

With this course I was able to work on one of my learning goals. I designed some nice interactions in my prototype during this course. Besides that I found the lesson about the voice user interface very interesting and therefore I have chosen for a VUI as a device for my documentation.

I experienced the course as a fun course but it wasn’t very informative because I already had experience with making multiple prototypes. I would have liked to learn a bit more. But in general it was a fun course.

User Experience Design

The second course that I followed during this period is User Experience Design. For this course I made an Cultural Probe kit about a sustainable delivery based on certain research methods. And besides the probe kit I had to present the most important insights. 

There was also a theoretical part of this course, 6 readings I had to study. I found this very interesting because I’m personally often interested in theories about certain design or methods for instance. 

I think UXD is the course in this period I learned the most from because of the readings we had to study and the methods we learned about in the courses. 

All in all, the first period was very informative and interesting to follow. 

[bjornvolkers2123]

Interactions in Mobile Apps

The first learning goal for me was to become better at designing interaction in mobile app prototypes. The subject Multi Device Design really helped me with learning these interactions. I made an application using Principle including some nice interactions like loading icon and animations due to gestures. 

Besides everything i learned in Multi Device Design i also watched tutorials on Youtube of a vlogger named Maex which is very good in explain interactions with Principle. 

Profile of vlogger Maex:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSdp5logiFTM3SyLJrHabOQ

The next goal for this specific learning goals is to watch more tutorials on Lynda.com and apply this in Principle.

Unfortunately I am not able to show the prototype because Principle works with a Mirror application on the mobile.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Preparations Companies

What do I want to know about the company?

1.  What kind of company is it?

2.  What kind of cases have they worked on?

3.  What do they mean by UX?

4.  What are their benefits relative to other companies?

Company 1: Defigners

1. UX & Design agency based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The company is specialized in UX Design so they can meet the needs of its customers and design a great experience.

2. Fastportal: Fastportal is a company for manage big projects with a “to-dolist” layout. Defigners were asked to streamline the user flow so that onboarding customers could find their way better in the complex web from sign-up to daily use.

Hypotheekrente.nl: By reducing forms and translating difficult concepts, Defigners have created an accessible home base to orientate you in the housing market.

Zoover.nl: Defigners accepted the challenge to develop a travel blog in which user-created content plays a major role. By prototyping in between, they tested every small interaction on the website.

3. Defigners are specialized in UX design, allowing them to test both existing and new products and tailor them to your target group. This not only increases the chances of success of a good idea, but also ensures a smooth user experience in general.

4. Not just a funny brand, but a vision. They define important design questions and work together with the customer to find a solution. This means that they are critical. Very critical. They first take a step back to take a step forward. So that they are convinced of the solution.

Company 2: Grrr

1. In 2003 Grrr was one of the first Dutch agencies to unite design and technology into one suave team. They distinguish theirselves through innovation and originality.

2. diktoon.nl: They created a website that stands out in simplicity. The site serves as the central point from which the campaign is conducted. On the website the customer will find everything necessary to contribute to the Amateur Arts events.

Mysteryland: Grrr created a website and an app for this festival. Because Mysteryland is one of the top festivals, Grrr saw two important reasons: constant innovation that focuses on users and being more than just a festival. They take both these factors into account for the website and the app.

Fastned: Grrr designed the website for this international network of charging stations for electric cars. They also succeeded in linking the website to systems that are already used by Fastned, such as MailChimp, ZenDesk, Zopim Chat and Pipedrive. Through automation of these links a lot of double work for the content managers could be avoided.The end result is a website and an app that excel in ease of use and simplicity.

3. UX in the eyes of Grrr means: “Our human-centered approach helps our customers to look through the eyes of their audience. We keep it clear and simple, so that we arrive at insightful conclusions together. We use research, our own expertise and service design techniques.”

4. Besides their own UX approach, Grrr does much more. An example of this is that they believe sharing is at the core of innovation, that’s why they organise workshops and teach classes in The Netherlands, France, the US and even Ghana.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Personal Interests

First of all I want to say that I’m not a guy who likes street art or likes to go to a museum. The things i’m interested in are mainly digital and are a part of certain devices.

App interactions

One of my personal interest is Application Interactions. Below a link to my “likes” page on dribble with a couple of gifs that show nice interactions.

https://dribbble.com/bjornvolkers2123/likes

Design setups

An other personal interest are minimal design workspaces. I like to get inspiration of how to decorate your workspace. I also pay attention to Displays, wireless keyboards and mouses, docking stations for you cellphone etc.

Here are to pictures of nice workplaces where i got my inspiration from.

These were my personal interests.

[bjornvolkers2123]

Learning Goals

Learning goal 1: My first learning goal is to become better at designing interactions with prototype tools. During some design courses in the last two years I found out that prototypes I made were only static screens and did not contain a nice flow which is in my opinion bad for the user experience. 

These links are a couple of examples of what I want to be capable of after this minor:

https://dribbble.com/shots/2121350-Delivery-Card-Folding-Cell-Github

https://dribbble.com/shots/3869376-Cinema-App-Concept

Learning goal 2: My second learning goal is to learn more about User Experience in general. I mean by this the theoretical part of the UX. My first learning goal contains the practical side and this learning goal is about the theorie. I want to learn more by reading articles and a book about UX.

Learning goal 3: My third and last learning goal is to become better at designing one responsive website for almost every device. From Apple Watch to a Wide screen device. I hope to learn this throughout the Multi Device Design Course.