User Interface Engineering

Every year, I ask each of my graduate students to interview four of their friends, finding what brands they love and what brands they really despise and the reasons for their feelings. These students, being engineers, all go into the experiment thinking that people will either love or hate the products made by the brands. However, coming out of the study, they reveal, without fail, that it’s the overall experience with the brand that makes a difference.

Many of the interviewees have strong opinions about car brands. And it’s rarely the craftsmanship or engineering of the car that gave them the strong opinion. Instead, it’s something the dealer did or didn’t do. In fact, in many cases, the car could have a problem and, if handled well by the dealer, the customer would come away with a positive opinion of the overall brand.

Many of our clients are working on improving their brand, yet they often overlook what can happen when a problem arises. If the experience in handling the problem is positive, that could strengthen that customer’s engagement with the brand. However, if they somehow make the customer feel worse, then the brand suffers.

In this week’s article for our email newsletter, UIEtips, I talk about how teams from FindTape.com, Netflix, and BestBuy.com designed for problems that arise. In each case, their design helped customers end up with an improved experience and a stronger brand.

You can read my article here.

Have you tried to anticipate your user’s problems in your design? What experiences have you had with your designs? Leave your thoughts and comments below.

[On the subject of how designers can strengthen their brands, this is the subject of our next UIE Virtual Seminar. On May 14, I'll be presenting "Strike Up the Brand: How Smart Design Can Strengthen Your Brand."]

SpoolCast: Design Patterns and Anti-Patterns with Bill Scott
Recorded: November 30th, 2007 from the studios at UIE.
Brian Christiansen, UIE Podcast Producer
Duration: 39m | File size: 20 MB
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 SpoolCast: An Interview with Bill Scott [38:48m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In this week’s SpoolCast, I had a chance to speak with Bill Scott. Bill has been one of my heroes for years, having really pushed the envelope as an evangelist for the public Yahoo! Design Pattern Library. He then went on to work on the Yahoo! Teachers project, where he took his knowledge of Ajax and Web 2.0 techniques and applied it to a creative solution for educators. Most recently, Bill has become the Director of UI Engineering at Netflix, where he now is driving how technology can enhance the user experience at one of the companies that understands what it takes.

During our conversation, we talked about some of the innovative techniques he’s using at Netflix, what he learned from the Yahoo! Teachers project, and his most recent work on Anti-patterns — learning from what we shouldn’t be doing.

I think you’ll enjoy this podcast. We look forward to your questions and thoughts. Let us know in the comments!

[Note: We had prepared this podcast to be released earlier this year, but due to schedule conflicts, its release was delayed. As a result, the intro mentions the very successful 2008 Web App Summit as if it's still to come. But don't worry: we'll have another one next year, so stay tuned!]

My late spring / early summer isn’t as busy as the first 4 months of this year, but I’m still getting out and about. Here’s where we can meet up:

May 2008

May 5-6, Chicago

Web Design World/Chicago
Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype - 5/5 10:15-11:15am
Enhancing Experiences with AJAX, RIAs, and Browser-Side Intelligence - 5/6 2:00-4:15pm
Deconstructing… You! (with Jim Heid and Lance Loveday) - 5/6 - 4:30-5:30pm

I don’t get to Chicago too often, so this is going to be fun. Let me know if you’d like connect up while I’m there.

May 28, Boston

UPA-Boston’s Seventh Annual Mini UPA Conference
Web Apps: The Collision of Design and Business - 5/28 9:15-10:00am

The Boston UPA Chapter does an amazing job putting together a nice program for a great price: $135 ($75 if you’re a student) I’ve found the presentations here to be as good as those I see at conferences that cost four times or more.

June 2008

June 4, Philadephia

STC’s 2008 Technical Communication Summit
What Makes A Design Seem Intuitive? - 6/4 10:30-11:30am

Keynotes at this conference by Howard Rheingold and Richard Saul Wurman make it very attractive.

June 16-20, Baltimore

UPA 2008

I haven’t spoken at this conference since 2001 for reasons that nobody seems to know. However, I’ve been known to show up on occasion. Could happen this year. Stranger things have happened.

June 23-24, Boston

An Event Apart - Boston
Scent of a Web Page - 6/23 5:00-6:00pm

My second time speaking at An Event Apart, the conference put on my Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer. This is a great gathering of the some of the brightest minds in the design world. (And me.)

July 2008

July 15-16, Philadelphia

Higher Education Web Symposium - University of Pennsylvania
Cooking Up Gourmet User Experiences on a Fast-Food Budget - 7/16 9:00-10:15a

I’ll be presenting the keynote after full day workshops from Steve Mulder and Ricardo LaRosa (AJAX & Web 2.0), Eric Meyer & Stephanie Sullivan (CSS Tips & Techniques), Luke Wroblewski (Web Form Design Best Practices), and Usability Testing (Dana Chisnell). $299 gets you a full day workshop and the second day of great sessions. (As of last week, they were almost sold out.)

July 19-20, Boston

Podcamp Boston

I’ve gone to the last two podcamps and had a blast. I expect I’ll do something here again, at least on the 19th. (I have to fly to Seattle on the 20th.)

July 21-23, Seattle

Web Design World/Seattle
Web 2.0: The Power Behind the Hype - 5/5 10:15-11:15am
Enhancing Experiences with AJAX, RIAs, and Browser-Side Intelligence - 5/6 2:00-4:15pm

They are still nailing down the program, but this is what it looks like now. I expect I’ll be doing an evening presentation or get together while I’m here.

On April 12, I gave the keynote at the IA Summit. It was my second time keynoting this event and a real honor for me. The audience was great and it lead to some very interesting discussion, both at the conference and on blogs and discussion lists everywhere.

I’ve posted the slides above and have synched it up with audio from the conference. (Unfortunately, there was a mic-input problem during the recording and they ended up using the built-in mics instead of the sounds system. So, the recording is noisy and unintelligible in places. Sorry about that.)

Here’s the description of the talk:

Journey to the Center of Design

User-centered design was born in the 1980s, amidst a world filled with frustration with blinking VCR clocks and computer command lines. Up until this time, developers focused on making the devices work, giving little heed to how they’d be used. Terms like “user friendly” and “easy to use,” buzzwords for the UCD movement, soon became as common as “new and improved” on laundry soap.

We guarantee a journey that shouldn’t be missed.

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You can download the slides (without audio). On the Slideshare site, you can view this presentation full screen to see the details.

What do you think of this presentation?

We’re looking for someone special and I’m hoping you know this person. We’re growing our very successful Virtual Seminar program which currently delivers an information packed online webinar to 1,000-2,500 designers and user experience professionals every month.

We need someone who has the insight and right touch to take this program and make it sing. This person is going to know the design community, what they need, and how to craft a great online educational product for them.

If you know such a person, forward them this ad and have them contact us right away. We’d really appreciate it.

SpoolCast: Mental Models with Indi Young
Recorded: February 29th, 2008 from the studios at UIE.
Brian Christiansen, UIE Podcast Producer
Duration: 43m | File size: 22 MB
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[ Text transcript coming soon ]
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 SpoolCast: Reviewing Mental Models with Indi Young [42:49m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In February we held one of our most popular Virtual Seminars ever, Mental Models: Getting Into Your Customer’s Head, presented by Indi Young. Indi explained her mental model method of organizing the beliefs and philosophies of users, then comparing them to the current and planned functionality, to see if the users’ needs align with the design.

When we were done with the seminar, we had a number of compelling questions left over from the seminar. In this Podcast, we got back in touch with Indi and discussed some of the more interesting ones.

Indi had some interesting opinions on:

• whether you use surveys for data collection,
• how long it will take to do a mental model assessment,
• how you ensure the accuracy of the interpretation of the data you collect,
• and much more…

[Note: Unfortunately, while we were recording, there was a motor running in the background and the mic was picking it up. Brian worked extremely hard to scrub this noise out as much as possible, but there are places where doing so would've made it hard to understand what Indi was saying. We apologize in advance if the recording is a little difficult to listen to in places.]

Later this month, Indi will be presenting her full-day workshop on this subject, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior at our Web App Summit in Coronado, California. We’ve almost sold out, sign up now for one of the few remaining seats! You won’t want to miss it.

In the podcast and seminar, Indi expounded upon the information in her new book, Mental Models, Aligning Design Strategy with Human Behavior. If you’re interested in purchasing the book, enjoy a 10% discount with our compliments. Use the code FOUIE010 at checkout. (The code stands for “Friends of UIE.”)

This spring, our good friends, Steve Krug and Lou Rosenfeld, will offer a two-day workshop series on the topics of discount usability testing and site search analytics. If you haven’t had a chance to hear these two experts share their knowledge, I highly suggest you attend.

Cities, Dates, and Program Details

April 3 in Boston, May 16 in Chicago: Steve Krug’s workshop, Don’t Make Me Think: Discount Usability Testing

April 4 in Boston, May 15 in Chicago: Lou Rosenfeld’s workshop, Site Search Analytics for a Better User Experience

Special Discount for Our Readers

If you enter discount code UIEPAL, you will receive $100 off each workshop. If you sign up before the early bird deadline using promotion code UIEPAL, you will pay a discounted rate of $695 for one workshop and $1195 for both workshops — a savings of $100 off each day.

Sign up today for these fantastic workshops.

In last week’s UIEtips email newsletter, I shared three challenges we’ve seen users encounter in our usability tests. These are challenges to look out for when users interact with your applications. In this week’s newsletter, I continue my commentary by discussing two more important challenges.

You can read my article here.

At UIE, a big part of our research agenda focuses on how to create web applications that delight users. In the upcoming months, we’ll share our tips and techniques in our weekly Usability Tools podcast.

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to address when building web-based applications?

Want to know what relationship behind magical illusions, practiced by professional magicians, and experience design, practiced by UX designers, really is?

That’s the subject of a presentation I’m giving twice over the next week. The first time is tonight, at Yahoo!’s Sunnyvale offices, and open the public. The second time is at South by Southwest Interactive on Sunday.

I get really nervous when presenting this talk, since the magical illusions I’ve embedded into it take more concentration and focus than a normal presentation, where all I need to do is focus on the lecture portion. So, if you come, please be gentle.

Here’s the official talk description:

Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs

As children, we’re told the world is a magical place. Babies are delivered by storks. The tooth fairy harvests retired teeth in exchange for currency. Bunnies deliver candies in brightly covered baskets on a spring holiday. The world’s adults use magic to explain away the complexity of life.

In our work, confusing complexity is the natural result of an unchecked design and development process. Teams work hard, responding to customer requests through incremental improvement and feature enhancements, yet they often end up with a dismaying array of features that make users unhappy.

In this entertaining presentation, Jared will share some of his recent research into the craft of professional magic. He’ll demonstrate the parallels between the world of magical illusions and the world of digital design, comparing the similarities between professional illusions and some of today’s top design techniques.

In this presentation, you’ll learn how:

• Illusions performed by professional magicians follow the same design principles as your computer’s file system
• Designers can create specific mental models to eliminate perceived complexity
• Simple design tricks can make designs seem to be faster than they really are
• Whimsicality, attention, and functionality are essential elements to creating delightful experiences

You’ll see examples of illusions built into a variety of designs, including those from Microsoft, Flickr, Netflix, iTunes, and Facebook. Jared will also, possibly at his own peril, reveal the secrets from several magical illusions to show you just how the tricks were created and the effects are realized, giving you the ammunition necessary to build illusions into your own designs.

Web-based applications are different from content-based web sites because the users are involved in a transaction. In our work researching the usability of a content-based site, we focus on how users will find and react to the information. However, with web-based applications, there are many other considerations we account for.

In this week’s article for our email newsletter, UIEtips, I share some of the challenges we’ve seen users encounter in our usability tests of web applications. These are challenges you’ll want to look out for when users interact with your applications. I hope you enjoy it.

You can read my article here.

At UIE, a big part of our research agenda focuses on how to create web applications that delight users. In the upcoming months, we’ll share our tips and techniques in our weekly Usability Tools podcast.

What are some of the challenges you’ve had to address when building web-based applications?