daljitsinghdesign-blog

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Good mobile user experience requires a different design than what's needed to satisfy desktop users. Two designs, two sites, and cross-linking to make it all work.

Jakob Nielsen

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Perhaps the key reason that I actually call them specifications is that it helps User Experience to be part of the conversation. We don’t do drawings. We specify a key part of the process.

Steven Hoober

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If I’d asked people what they wanted, they’d have said faster horses!

Henry Ford

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UXDI Week 2 Summary

TOPICS COVERED IN WEEK 2

Business Analysis

Information Architecture

Navigation & Search

Interaction Design

Modular Design

SKILLS PRACTICED IN WEEK 2

Business Research/Interviewing

Card Sorting

Bodystorming

User Flows & System Maps

Wireframing on Sketch

JOB SEARCH STRATEGY NOTES

If you don't brand yourself, someone else will.

Memorize your own unique selling proposition.  Embody it every day.

Read Medium articles.

Join LinkedIn Groups

Blog & Tweet

Read Life Launch

Find mentors

MAJOR TAKEAWAY OF WEEK 2

Embrace chaos and navigate through it.

Before this week, I was conceptually aware that there would be chaos, as expressed in this representation of the UX Design process. I'd read many articles and books all saying the same thing - expect chaos but don't lose confidence in your design process.

This week, I found myself in a whirlwind of thoughts about Project 2 (designing an e-commerce site for an outdoor clothing retailer). There were user needs to think about, product categories to think about, business goals, system maps, user flows, navigation ideas...but nothing was decided, and nothing was fitting together because nothing was determined in any of these areas. I had to take a step back and understand how to move forward.

Just as I was trying to get a grip on how to proceed with so many different elements floating around in brainstorming-land, our instructor gave us some great advice: At some point, you have to put a stake in the ground. You have to make some sort of decision, and then be open to feedback and iterations.

I was surprised at how much of a revelation this was for me. I'd read about the chaos. I was prepared for the chaos. But when I was in the middle of the chaos, I wasn't able to identify it as, "Oh, this is that chaos we're supposed to expect." It just felt like I had no idea what was going on.

I learned that not only is it important to expect chaos, it is also necessary to be able identify it. The feeling of chaos is something that is hard to conceptualize without experiencing it first-hand. This is probably why every time I ask for a book recommendation about a particular topic in UX, the response is usually, "You should really just practice doing it."

HIGHLIGHTS FROM MY NOTES

Introduction to Design & Business Analysis

"You have to know 400 notes that you can play, then pick the right four." -Miles Davis

Dieter Ram's 10 Principles of "Good Design"

Basic Process:

Designers are not the only designers (collaboration is necessary).

Simon Sinek's TED Talk - Start with Why

Keep asking "Why?" to find the real issue because clients usually have trouble distinguishing symptoms from the real problem.

There is not one blueprint for UX design.

Successful designs align business goals with user goals.

Discover

Define

Develop

Deliver

Information Architecture, Navigation, & Interaction Design

Peter Morville's explanation

Payoff of good IA:

Builds a shared vocabulary

Informs the interface design and navigation

Helps with database designHelps plan for scaleMakes site more usable

Navigation is Information Architecture made tangible.

Acid Test: Can the user glean the scope of the entire site from the primary navigation links?

Avoid Mystery Meat

Interaction Design Usability Heuristics

Wireframing & Modular Design

What Makes a Good Wireframe:

Information hierarchy

Order & Alignment

Consistent, clear classes

Reasonable scaling

Meaningful content, but not final copy

Tips:

Don't skip sketching

Keep it simple with colors

Focus on what you need to communicate

Annotate as you go along

Always be thinking about how to reuse elements. Benefits:

Readability/understandability

Balance between elements

Consistency

Easier to code

Basis of responsive design

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Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Steve Jobs

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Experience design is the design of anything, independent of medium, or across media, with human experience as an explicit outcome, and human engagement as an explicit goal.

Jesse James Garrett

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Redesigning the Grocery Store Experience

The Assignment

I was given two days to redesign three key elements of the DMV, airline ticket purchase, or grocery store experience (and present my notes in an in-person interview).

The Approach

Drawing on methods I had read about and learned about in my online UX courses, I attempted to create together a quick project incorporating user research, sketching, and usability testing (little). I picked the grocery store experience because I figured it would be the easiest thing to interview people about.

The Process

Interviews: I didn’t have a lot of time to recruit and interview people, but I knew that something was better nothing. I interviewed Kiran (my sister) and Nina (a friend to give me 3 minutes of their time. I based my interviews around these topics:

Describe when and where they went shopping (give me a play by play of a recent trip to the grocery store)

Talk about their objectives when going grocery shopping

Describe any specific pain points they had

Talk about any specific improvements they’d like to see

Analysis: To help me keep my “user” in mind, I went over the notes and wrote a one-sentence summary of each shopper (the “no hassle” and the “daily dinner”). I narrowed that down further into a persona: “The suburban shopper” - someone who wants to get in and out of the store quickly. Then, I summarized the major pain points across my two subjects.

Pain points:

Items and prices not clearly labeled

Overwhelmed by too many options

Commute time / parking

Finding out something is too expensive

Wanting smaller quantities of something

Not sure what to get / unprepared

Can’t find specific a thing

Hard to find fresh/good/cheap produce

Hard to know when things are ripe or overripe

Carrying heavy things

Sketching Solutions: I sketched out three different ideas based on the main pain points above.

#1 A simple, color-coded labeling system for produce based on cost and ripeness  

#2 A “route-planner” app that mapped your grocery store trip based on the items on your list

#3 A grocery list/recipe planner app that helps you compile your shopping list based on items that are on sale at the store (and related ingredients).

Testing: Given the time constraints, I was only able to test with one user. I showed Kiran the sketches without any annotations (in red above) and asked me to describe what she saw and what she thought she would do on each screen/ what was happening. Afterward, I asked her to describe what she liked and didn’t like about each of the concepts.

Findings summary:

Concept #1 “Useful but not game-changing”

Concept #2 “Helpful in theory but unlikely to use”

Concept #3 “Easily understandable and most likely to use”

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Weekend read. 

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The Design of Everyday Things

The first “UX” book I read was “The Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman. This book comes highly recommended from both UX reading lists and professionals I know in the design industry. The book was quite heavy with terminology and Norman can get pretty lengthy with his descriptions. Despite these small details, I recommend anyone looking to learn a little more about design, UX, and/or usability read this book. I took a few notes while reading “The Design of Everyday Things.” I’ve listed my notes by chapter:

Chapter 1 In the first chapter, Don Norman discusses how everyday tools and things are designed. He mentions visibility, constraints, conceptual model, and mappings. All of these, according to Norman are very important to the design of things used in everyday life. He explains that any person should be able to operate all machinery that will be used on a day-to-day basis. Anybody from a high school drop out to a doctorate in engineering should know how things work. The visibility aspect is saying that there should be symbols and icons that are easily distinguishable letting everybody know how these things work. The conceptual model is basically a person's mental model of how a particular device should work. Norman goes on to explain different examples of good design versus some pretty bad designs.

Chapter 2 In this chapter, the author discusses the idea of people and them trying to explain what's wrong with things. When things are poorly designed or do not fit a mental model of how a person feels something should work, then people naturally want to blame somebody. They may have no idea as to why something is incorrect or who deals with these things. The author discusses the 7 stages of "action", the stages are: Forming Goals, Forming Intention, Specifying Action, Executing Action, Perceiving State of World, Interpreting State of the world, evaluating the outcome.

Chapter 3 This chapter centers around user capabilities after a system has been developed. The difference in giving the user instructions every time or allowing the user to try and remember how to use the system. He talks about how long a user can remember instructions.

Chapter 4 In this chapter, Norman discusses the idea of users knowing what and how to do things. He mostly discusses doors and switches and their extreme complexity for simple objects. He explains that sounds should also be brought into the equation in giving users a sense of direction.

Chapter 5 The idea behind this chapter was to look at the ability of humans to overcome small errors in speech and other aspects of life. Norman goes into extreme detail of the differences between slips and mistakes. Basically, humans make slips all the time in dealing with tasks they do repeatedly. Where as with mistakes, this is common in new tasks when not really understanding what to do and somebody will go to the wrong place or not wear correct attire.

Chapter 6 This chapter was focused on the evolutionary design of products. For example, the author focuses on the typewriter's evolution for a good part of the chapter. The first keyboards had multiple layouts for upper case vs lower case. It took a few different models before this was finally reduced by adding the shift key. Norman also explains that a good balance must be found between usability, cost, and other limitations.

Chapter 7 As the title would convey, this chapter was centered around designing products around the user. The author  begins by discussing the three conceptual models: design models, user's model, and system image. One of the main ideas of this chapter is for the designers to create a product that is easy for users to understand how it works with very little help.

I also completed an online course through Udacity, Intro to the Design of Everyday Things: Principles of Design. This course explores the first two chapters of “The Design of Everyday Things” in an in-depth and enjoyable way.

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Hello

Welcome to my new, and not just new, but first design portfolio!

I hope to keep this site/blog updated with new work and current inspiration. I love blogging because it forces me to go through my photos and journal my experience, so I'm looking forward to keeping a record of my design work and creative growth here.

Thank you for stopping by!

- Daljit