{"rowid": 290, "title": "Creating a Weekly Research Cadence", "contents": "Working on a product team, it\u2019s easy to get hyper-focused on building features and lose sight of your users and their daily challenges. User research can be time-consuming to set up, so it often becomes ad-hoc and irregular, only performed in response to a particular question or concern. But without frequent touch points and opportunities for discovery, your product will stagnate and become less and less relevant. Setting up an efficient cadence of weekly research conversations will re-focus your team on user problems and provide a steady stream of insights for product development.\nAs my team transitioned into a Lean process earlier this year, we needed a way to get more feedback from users in a short amount of time. Our users are internet marketers\u2014always busy and often difficult to reach. Scheduling research took days of emailing back and forth to find mutually agreeable times, and juggling one-off conversations made it difficult to connect with more than one or two people per week. The slow pace of research was allowing additional risk to creep into our product development.\nI wanted to find a way for our team to test ideas and validate assumptions sooner and more often\u2014but without increasing the administrative burden of scheduling. The solution: creating a regular cadence of research and testing that required a minimum of effort to coordinate. \nSetting up a weekly user research cadence accelerated our learning and built momentum behind strategic experiments. By dedicating time every week to talk to a few users, we made ongoing research a painless part of every weekly sprint. But increasing the frequency of our research had other benefits as well. With only five working days between sessions, a weekly cadence forced us to keep our work small and iterative. Committing to testing something every week meant showing work earlier and more often than we might have preferred\u2014pushing us out of your comfort zone into a process of more rapid experimentation.\nBest of all, frequent conversations with users helped us become more customer-focused. After just a few weeks in a consistent research cadence, I noticed user feedback weaving itself through our planning and strategy sessions. Comments like \u201cRemember what Jenna said last week, about not being able to customize her lists?\u201d would pop up as frequent reference points to guide our decisions. As discussions become less about subjective opinions and more about responding to user needs, we saw immediate improvement in the quality of our solutions.\nEstablishing an efficient recruitment process\nThe key to creating a regular cadence of ongoing user research is an efficient recruitment and scheduling process\u2014along with a commitment to prioritize the time needed for research conversations. This is an invaluable tool for product teams (whether or not they follow a Lean process), but could easily be adapted for content strategy teams, agency teams, a UX team of one, or any other project that would benefit from short, frequent conversations with users. \nThe process I use requires a few hours of setup time at the beginning, but pays off in better learning and better releases over the long run. Almost any team could use this as a starting point and adapt it to their own needs.\nPick a dedicated time each week for research\nIn order to make research a priority, we started by choosing a time each week when everyone on the product team was available. Between stand-ups, grooming sessions, and roadmap reviews, it wasn\u2019t easy to do! Nevertheless, it\u2019s important to include as many people as possible in conversations with your users. Getting a second-hand summary of research results doesn\u2019t have the same impact as hearing someone describe their frustrations and concerns first-hand. The more people in the room to hear those concerns, the more likely they are to become priorities for your team.\nI blocked off 2 hours for research conversations every Thursday afternoon. We make this time sacred, and never schedule other meetings or work across those hours. \nDivide your time into several research slots\nAfter my weekly cadence was set, I divided the time into four 20-minute time slots. Twenty minutes is long enough for us to ask several open-ended questions or get feedback on a prototype, without being a burden on our users\u2019 busy schedules. Depending on your work, you may need schedule longer sessions\u2014but beware the urge to create blocks that last an hour or more. A weekly research cadence is designed to facilitate rapid, ongoing feedback and testing; it should force you to talk to users often and to keep your work small and iterative. Projects that require longer, more in-depth testing will probably need a dedicated research project of their own.\nI used the scheduling software Calendly to create interview appointments on a calendar that I can share with users, and customized the confirmation and reminder emails with information about how to access our video conferencing software. (Most of our research is done remotely, but this could be set up with details for in-person meetings as well.) Automating these emails and reminders took a little bit of time to set up, but was worth it for how much faster it made the process overall.\n\n\nInvite users to sign up for a time that\u2019s convenient for them\nWith a calendar set up and follow-up emails automated, it becomes incredibly easy to schedule research conversations. Each week, I send a short email out to a small group of users inviting them to participate, explaining that this is a chance to provide feedback that will improve our product or occasionally promoting the opportunity to get a sneak peek at new features we\u2019re working on. The email includes a link to the Calendly appointments, allowing users who are interested to opt in to a time that fits their schedule.\nSetting up appointments the first go around involved a bit of educated guessing. How many invitations would it take to fill all four of my weekly slots? How far in advance did I need to recruit users? But after a few weeks of trial and error, I found that sending 12-16 invitations usually allows me to fill all four interview slots. Our users often have meetings pop up at short notice, so we get the best results when I send the recruiting email on Tuesday, two days before my research block.\nIt may take a bit of experimentation to fine tune your process, but it\u2019s worth the effort to get it right. (The worst thing that\u2019s happened since I began recruiting this way was receiving emails from users complaining that there were no open slots available!) I can now fill most of an afternoon with back-to-back user research sessions just by sending just one or two emails each week, increasing our research pace while leaving plenty time to focus on discovery and design.\nGetting the most out of your research sessions\nAs you get comfortable with the rhythm of talking to users each week, you\u2019ll find more and more ways to get value out of your conversations. At first, you may prefer to just show work in progress\u2014such as mockups or a simple prototype\u2014and ask open-ended questions to measure user reaction. When you begin new projects, you may want to use this time to research behavior on existing features\u2014either watching participants as they use part of your product or asking them to give an account of a recent experience in your app. You may even want to run more abstracted Lean experiments, if that\u2019s the best way to validate the assumptions your team is working from.\nWhatever you do, plan some time a day or two later to come back together and review what you\u2019ve learned each week. Synthesizing research outcomes as a group will help keep your team in alignment and allow each person to highlight what they took away from each conversation. \nOver time, you may find that the pace of weekly user research becomes more exhausting than energizing, especially if the responsibility for scheduling and planning falls on just one person. Don\u2019t allow yourself to get burned out; a healthy research cadence should also include time to rest and reflect if the pace becomes too rapid to sustain. Take breaks as needed, then pick up the pace again as soon as you\u2019re ready.", "year": "2016", "author": "Wren Lanier", "author_slug": "wrenlanier", "published": "2016-12-02T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2016/creating-a-weekly-research-cadence/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 203, "title": "Jobs-to-Be-Done in Your UX Toolbox", "contents": "Part 1: What is JTBD?\nThe concept of a \u201cjob\u201d in \u201cJobs-To-Be-Done\u201d is neatly encapsulated by a oft-quoted line from Theodore Levitt:\n\n\u201cPeople want a quarter-inch hole, not a quarter inch drill\u201d.\n\nEven so, Don Norman pointed out that perhaps Levitt \u201cstopped too soon\u201d at what the real customer goal might be. In the \u201cThe Design of Everyday Things\u201d, he wrote:\n\n\u201cLevitt\u2019s example of the drill implying that the goal is really a hole is only partially correct, however. When people go to a store to buy a drill, that is not their real goal. But why would anyone want a quarter-inch hole? Clearly that is an intermediate goal. Perhaps they wanted to hang shelves on the wall. Levitt stopped too soon. Once you realize that they don\u2019t really want the drill, you realize that perhaps they don\u2019t really want the hole, either: they want to install their bookshelves. Why not develop methods that don\u2019t require holes? Or perhaps books that don\u2019t require bookshelves.\u201d\n\nIn other words, a \u201cjob\u201d in JTBD lingo is a way to express a user need or provide a customer-centric problem frame that\u2019s independent of a solution. As Tony Ulwick says:\n\n\u201cA job is stable, it doesn\u2019t change over time.\u201d\n\nAn example of a job is \u201ctiding you over from breakfast to lunch.\u201d You could hire a donut, a flapjack or a banana for that mid-morning snack\u2014whatever does the job. If you can arrive at a clearly identified primary job (and likely some secondary ones too), you can be more creative in how you come up with an effective solution while keeping the customer problem in focus.\nThe team at Intercom wrote a book on their application of JTBD. In it, Des Traynor cleverly characterised how JTBD provides a different way to think about solutions that compete for the same job: \n\n\u201cEconomy travel and business travel are both capable candidates applying for [the job: Get me face-to-face with my colleague in San Francisco], though they\u2019re looking for significantly different salaries. Video conferencing isn\u2019t as capable, but is willing to work for a far smaller salary. I\u2019ve a hiring choice to make.\u201d\n\nSo far so good: it\u2019s relatively simple to understand what a job is, once you understand how it\u2019s different from a \u201ctask\u201d. Business consultant and Harvard professor Clay Christensen talks about the concept of \u201chiring\u201d a product to do a \u201cjob\u201d, and firing it when something better comes along. If you\u2019re a company that focuses solutions on the customer job, you\u2019re more likely to succeed. You\u2019ll find these concepts often referred to as \u201cJobs-to-be-Done theory\u201d. But the application of Jobs-to-Be-Done theory is a little more complicated; it comprises several related approaches.\nI particularly like Jim Kalbach\u2019s description of how JTBD is a \u201clens through which to understand value creation\u201d. But it is also more. In my view, it\u2019s a family of frameworks and methods\u2014and perhaps even a philosophy.\nDifferent facets in a family of frameworks\nJTBD has its roots in market research and business strategy, and so it comes to the research table from a slightly different place compared to traditional UX or design research\u2014we have our roots in human-computer interaction and ergonomics. I\u2019ve found it helpful to keep in mind is that the application of JTBD theory is an evolving beast, so it\u2019s common to find contradictions across different resources. My own use of it has varied from project to project. In speaking to others who have adopted it in different measures, it seems that we have all applied it in somewhat multifarious ways. As we like to often say in interviews: there are no wrong answers.\nOutcome Driven Innovation\nTony Ulwick\u2019s version of the JTBD history began with Outcome Driven Innovation (ODI), and this approach is best outlined in his seminal article published in the Harvard Business Review in 2002. To understand his more current JTBD approach in his new book \u201cJobs to Be Done: Theory to Practice\u201d, I actually found it beneficial to read his approach in the original 2002 article for a clearer reference point.\nIn the earlier article, Ulwick presented a rigorous approach that combines interviews, surveys and an \u201copportunity\u201d algorithm\u2014a sequence of steps to determine the business opportunity. ODI centres around working with \u201cdesired outcome statements\u201d that you unearth through interviews, followed by a means to quantify the gap between importance and satisfaction in a survey to different types of customers. \nSince 2008, Ulwick has written about using job maps to make sense of what the customer may be trying to achieve. In a recent article, he describes the aim of the activity is \u201cto discover what the customer is trying to get done at different points in executing a job and what must happen at each juncture in order for the job to be carried out successfully.\u201d\nA job map is not strictly a journey map, however tempting it is to see it that way. From a UX perspective, is one of many models we can use\u2014and as our research team at Clearleft have found, how we use model can depend on the nature of the jobs we\u2019ve uncovered in interviews and the characteristics of the problem we\u2019re attempting to solve.\nFigure 1. Universal job map\nUlwick\u2019s current methodology is outlined in his new book, where he describes a complete end-to-end process: from customer and competitor research to framing market and product strategy.\nThe Jobs-To-Be-Done Interview\nBack in 2013, I attended a workshop by Chris Spiek and Bob Moesta from the ReWired Group on JTBD at the behest of a then-MailChimp colleague, and I came away excited about their approach to product research. It felt different from anything I\u2019d done before and for the first time in years, I felt that I was genuinely adding something new to my research toolbox.\nA key idea is that if you focus on the stories of those who switched to you, and those who switch away from you, you can uncover the core jobs through looking at these opposite ends of engagement.\nThis framework centres around the JTBD interview method, which harnesses the power of a narrative framework to elicit the real reasons why someone \u201chired\u201d something to do a job\u2014be it something physical like a new coffee maker, or a digital service, such as a to-do list app. As you interview, you are trying to unearth the context around the key moments on the JTBD timeline (Figure 2). A common approach is to begin from the point the customer might have purchased something, back to the point where the thought of buying this thing first occurred to them.\nFigure 2. JTBD Timeline\nFigure 3. The Four Forces\nThe Forces Diagram (Figure 3) is a post-interview analysis tool where you can map out what causes customers to switch to something new and what holds them back.\nThe JTBD interview is effective at identifying core and secondary jobs, as well as some context around the user need. Because this method is designed to extract the story from the interviewee, it\u2019s a powerful way to facilitate recall. Having done many such interviews, I\u2019ve noticed one interesting side effect: participants often remember more details later on after the conversation has formally ended. It is worth scheduling a follow-up phone call or keep the channels open.\nStrengths aside, it\u2019s good to keep in mind that the JTBD interview is still primarily an interview technique, so you are relying on the context from the interviewee\u2019s self-reported perspective. For example, a stronger research methodology combines JTBD interviews with contextual research and quantitative methods. \nJob Stories\nAlan Klement is credited for coming up with the term \u201cjob story\u201d to describe the framing of jobs for product design by the team at Intercom:\n\n\u201cWhen \u2026 I want to \u2026 so I can \u2026.\u201d\n\nFigure 4. Anatomy of a Job Story\nUnlike a user story that traditionally frames a requirement around personas, job stories frame the user need based on the situation and context. Paul Adams, the VP of Product at Intercom, wrote:\n\n\u201cWe frame every design problem in a Job, focusing on the triggering event or situation, the motivation and goal, and the intended outcome. [\u2026] We can map this Job to the mission and prioritise it appropriately. It ensures that we are constantly thinking about all four layers of design. We can see what components in our system are part of this Job and the necessary relationships and interactions required to facilitate it. We can design from the top down, moving through outcome, system, interactions, before getting to visual design.\u201d\n\nSystems of Progress\nApart from advocating using job stories, Klement believes that a core tenet of applying JTBD revolves around our desire for \u201cself-betterment\u201d\u2014and that focusing on everyone\u2019s desire for self-betterment is core to a successful strategy.\nIn his book, Klement takes JTBD further to being a tool for change through applying systems thinking. There, he introduces the systems of progress and how it can help focus product strategy approach to be more innovative.\nCoincidentally, I applied similar thinking on mapping systemic change when we were looking to improve users\u2019 trust with a local government forum earlier this year. It\u2019s not just about capturing and satisfying the immediate job-to-be-done, it\u2019s about framing the job so that you can a clear vision forward on how you can help your users improve their lives in the ways they want to.\nThis is really the point where JTBD becomes a philosophy of practice.\nPart 2: Mixing It Up\nThere has been some misunderstanding about how adopting JTBD means ditching personas or some of our existing design tools or research techniques. This couldn\u2019t have been more wrong.\nFigure 5: Jim Kalbach\u2019s JTBD model\nJim Kalbach has used Outcome-Driven Innovation for around 10 years. In a 2016 article, he presents a synthesised model of how to think about that has key elements from ODI, Christensen\u2019s theories and the structure of the job story.\nMore interestingly, Kalbach has also combined the use of mental models with JTBD.\nClaire Menke of UDemy has written a comprehensive article about using personas, JTBD and customer journey maps together in order to communicate more complete story from the users\u2019 perspective. Claire highlights an especially interesting point in her article as she described her challenges:\n\u201cAfter much trial and error, I arrived at a foundational research framework to suit every team\u2019s needs \u2014 allowing everyone to share the same holistic understanding, but extract the type of information most applicable to their work.\u201d\nIn other words, the organisational context you are in likely can dictate what works best\u2014after all the goal is to arrive at the best user experience for your audiences. Intercom can afford to go full-on on applying JTBD theory as a dominant approach because they are a start-up, but a large company or organisation with multiple business units may require a mix of tools, outputs and outcomes.\nJTBD is an immensely powerful approach on many fronts\u2014you\u2019ll find many different references that lists the ways you can apply JTBD. However, in the context of this discussion, it might also be useful to we examine where it lies in our models of how we think about our UX and product processes.\nJTBD in the UX ecosystem\nFigure 6. The Elements of User Experience (source)\nThere are many ways we have tried to explain the UX discipline but I think Jesse James Garrett\u2019s Elements of User Experience is a good place to begin.\nI sometimes also use little diagram to help me describe the different levels you might work at when you work through the complexity of designing and developing a product. A holistic UX strategy needs to address all the different levels for a comprehensive experience: your individual product UI, product features, product propositions and brand need to have a cohesive definition.\nFigure 7. Which level of product focus?\nWe could, of course, also think about where it fits best within the double diamond.\nAgain, bearing in mind that JTBD has its roots in business strategy and market research, it is excellent at clarifying user needs, defining high-level specifications and content requirements. It is excellent for validating brand perception and value proposition \u2014all the way down to your feature set. In other words, it can be extremely powerful all the way through to halfway of the second diamond. You could quite readily combine the different JTBD approaches because they have differences as much as overlaps. However, JTBD generally starts getting a little difficult to apply once we get to the details of UI design.\nThe clue lies in JTBD\u2019s raison d\u2019\u00eatre: a job statement is solution independent. Hence, once we get to designing solutions, we potentially fall into a existential black hole.\nThat said, Jim Kalbach has a quick case study on applying JTBD to content design tucked inside the main article on a synthesised JTBD model. Alan Klement has a great example of how you could use UI to resolve job stories. You\u2019ll notice that the available language of \u201cjobs\u201d drops off at around that point.\nJob statements and outcome statements provide excellent \u201cmini north-stars\u201d as customer-oriented focal points, but purely satisfying these statements would not necessarily guarantee that you have created a seamless and painless user experience.\nPlaying well with others\nYou will find that JTBD plays well with Lean, and other strategy tools like the Value Proposition Canvas. With every new project, there is potential to harness the power of JTBD alongside our established toolbox.\nWhen we need to understand complex contexts where cultural or socioeconomic considerations have to be taken into account, we are better placed with combining JTBD with more anthropological approaches. And while we might be able to evaluate if our product, website or app satisfies the customer jobs through interviews or surveys, without good old-fashioned usability testing we are unlikely to be able to truly validate why the job isn\u2019t being represented as it should. In this case, individual jobs solved on the UI can be set up as hypotheses to be proven right or wrong. \nThe application of Jobs-to-be-Done is still evolving. I\u2019ve found it to be very powerful and I struggle to remember what my UX professional life was like before I encountered it\u2014it has completely changed my approach to research and design.\nThe fact JTBD is still evolving as a practice means we need to be watchful of dogma\u2014there\u2019s no right way to get a UX job done after all, it nearly always depends. At the end of the day, isn\u2019t it about having the right tool for the right job?", "year": "2017", "author": "Steph Troeth", "author_slug": "stephtroeth", "published": "2017-12-04T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2017/jobs-to-be-done-in-your-ux-toolbox/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 267, "title": "Taming Complexity", "contents": "I\u2019m going to step into my UX trousers for this one. I wouldn\u2019t usually wear them in public, but it\u2019s Christmas, so there\u2019s nothing wrong with looking silly.\n\nAnyway, to business. Wherever I roam, I hear the familiar call for simplicity and the denouncement of complexity. I read often that the simpler something is, the more usable it will be. We understand that simple is hard to achieve, but we push for it nonetheless, convinced it will make what we build easier to use. Simple is better, right?\n\nWell, I\u2019ll try to explore that. Much of what follows will not be revelatory to some but, like all good lessons, I think this serves as a welcome reminder that as we live in a complex world it\u2019s OK to sometimes reflect that complexity in the products we build.\n\nMyths and legends\n\nLess is more, we\u2019ve been told, ever since master of poetic verse Robert Browning used the phrase in 1855. Well, I\u2019ve conducted some research, and it appears he knew nothing of web design. Neither did modernist architect Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, a later pedlar of this worthy yet contradictory notion. Broad is narrow. Tall is short. Eggs are chips. See: anyone can come up with this stuff.\n\nTo paraphrase Einstein, simple doesn\u2019t have to be simpler. In other words, simple doesn\u2019t dictate that we remove the complexity. Complex doesn\u2019t have to be confusing; it can be beautiful and elegant. On the web, complex can be necessary and powerful. A website that simplifies the lives of its users by offering them everything they need in one site or screen is powerful. For some, the greater the density of information, the more useful the site.\n\nIn our decision-making process, principles such as Occam\u2019s razor\u2019s_razor (in a nutshell: simple is better than complex) are useful, but simple is for the user to determine through their initial impression and subsequent engagement. What appears simple to me or you might appear very complex to someone else, based on their own mental model or needs. We can aim to deliver simple, but they\u2019ll be the judge.\n\nAs a designer, developer, content alchemist, user experience discombobulator, or whatever you call yourself, you\u2019re often wrestling with a wealth of material, a huge number of features, and numerous objectives. In many cases, much of that stuff is extraneous, and goes in the dustbin. However, it can be just as likely that there\u2019s a truckload of suggested features and content because it all needs to be there. Don\u2019t be afraid of that weight.\n\nIn the right hands, less can indeed mean more, but it\u2019s just as likely that less can very often lead to, well\u2026 less.\n\nComplexity is powerful\n\nSimple is the ability to offer a powerful experience without overwhelming the audience or inducing information anxiety. Giving them everything they need, without having them ferret off all over a site to get things done, is important.\n\nIt\u2019s useful to ask throughout a site\u2019s lifespan, \u201cdoes the user have everything they need?\u201d It\u2019s so easy to let our designer egos get in the way and chop stuff out, reduce down to only the things we want to see. That benefits us in the short term, but compromises the audience long-term.\n\nThe trick is not to be afraid of complexity in itself, but to avoid creating the perception of complexity. Give a user a flight simulator and they\u2019ll crash the plane or jump out. Give them everything they need and more, but make it feel simple, and you\u2019re building a relationship, empowering people.\n\nThis can be achieved carefully with what some call gradual engagement, and often the sensible thing might be to unleash complexity in carefully orchestrated phases, initially setting manageable levels of engagement and interaction, gradually increasing the inherent power of the product and fostering an empowered community.\n\nThe design aesthetic\n\nHere\u2019s a familiar scenario: the client or project lead gets overexcited and skips most of the important decision-making, instead barrelling straight into a bout of creative direction Tourette\u2019s. Visually, the design needs to be minimal, white, crisp, full of white space, have big buttons, and quite likely be \u201cclean\u201d. Of course, we all like our websites to be clean as that\u2019s more hygienic.\n\nBut what do these words even mean, really? Early in a project they\u2019re abstract distractions, unnecessary constraints. This premature narrowing forces us to think much more about throwing stuff out rather than acknowledging that what we\u2019re building is complex, and many of the components perhaps necessary.\n\nSimple is not a formula. It cannot be achieved just by using a white background, by throwing things away, or by breathing a bellowsful of air in between every element and having it all float around in space. Simple is not a design treatment. Simple is hard. Simple requires deep investigation, a thorough understanding of every aspect of a project, in line with the needs and expectations of the audience.\n\nRecognizing this helps us empathize a little more with those most vocal of UX practitioners. They usually appreciate that our successes depend on a thorough understanding of the user\u2019s mental models and expected outcomes. I personally still consider UX people to be web designers like the rest of us (mainly to wind them up), but they\u2019re web designers that design every decision, and by putting the user experience at the heart of their process, they have a greater chance of finding simplicity in complexity. The visual design aesthetic \u2014 the fa\u00e7ade \u2014 is only a part of that.\n\nDivide and conquer\n\nI\u2019m currently working on an app that\u2019s complex in architecture, and complex in ambition. We\u2019ll be releasing in carefully orchestrated private phases, gradually introducing more complexity in line with the unavoidably complex nature of the objective, but my job is to design the whole, the complete system as it will be when it\u2019s out of beta and beyond.\n\nI\u2019ve noticed that I\u2019m not throwing much out; most of it needs to be there. Therefore, my responsibility is to consider interesting and appropriate methods of navigation and bring everything together logically.\n\nI\u2019m using things like smart defaults, graphical timelines and colour keys to make sense of the complexity, techniques that are sympathetic to the content. They act as familiar points of navigation and reference, yet are malleable enough to change subtly to remain relevant to the information they connect. It\u2019s really OK to have a lot of stuff, so long as we make each component work smartly.\n\nIt\u2019s a divide and conquer approach. By finding simplicity and logic in each content bucket, I\u2019ve made more sense of the whole, allowing me to create key layouts where most of the simplified buckets are collated and sometimes combined, providing everything the user needs and expects in the appropriate places.\n\nI\u2019m also making sure I don\u2019t reduce the app\u2019s power. I need to reflect the scale of opportunity, and provide access to or knowledge of the more advanced tools and features for everyone: a window into what they can do and how they can help. I know it\u2019s the minority who will be actively building the content, but the power is in providing those opportunities for all.\n\nMuch of this will be familiar to the responsible practitioners who build websites for government, local authorities, utility companies, newspapers, magazines, banking, and we-sell-everything-ever-made online shops. Across the web, there are sites and tools that thrive on complexity.\n\nAlas, the majority of such sites have done little to make navigation intuitive, or empower audiences. Where we can make a difference is by striving to make our UIs feel simple, look wonderful, not intimidating \u2014 even if they\u2019re mind-meltingly complex behind that fa\u00e7ade.\n\nEmbrace, empathize and tame\n\nSo, there are loads of ways to exploit complexity, and make it seem simple. I\u2019ve hinted at some methods above, and we\u2019ve already looked at gradual engagement as a way to make sense of complexity, so that\u2019s a big thumbs-up for a release cycle that increases audience power.\n\nPrior to each and every release, it\u2019s also useful to rest on the finished thing for a while and use it yourself, even if you\u2019re itching to release. \u2018Ready\u2019 often isn\u2019t, and \u2018finished\u2019 never is, and the more time you spend browsing around the sites you build, the more you learn what to question, where to add, or subtract. It\u2019s definitely worth building in some contingency time for sitting on your work, so to speak.\n\nOne thing I always do is squint at my layouts. By squinting, I get a sort of abstract idea of the overall composition, and general feel for the thing. It makes my face look stupid, but helps me see how various buckets fit together, and how simple or complex the site feels overall.\n\nI mentioned the need to put our design egos to one side and not throw out anything useful, and I think that\u2019s vital. I\u2019m a big believer in economy, reduction, and removing the extraneous, but I\u2019m usually referring to decoration, bells and whistles, and fluff. I wouldn\u2019t ever advocate the complete removal of powerful content from a project roadmap.\n\nAbove all, don\u2019t fear complexity. Embrace and tame it. Work hard to empathize with audience needs, and you can create elegant, playful, risky, surprising, emotive, delightful, and ultimately simple things.", "year": "2011", "author": "Simon Collison", "author_slug": "simoncollison", "published": "2011-12-21T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2011/taming-complexity/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 78, "title": "Fluent Design through Early Prototyping", "contents": "There\u2019s a small problem with wireframes. They\u2019re not good for showing the kind of interactions we now take for granted \u2013 transitions and animations on the web, in Android, iOS, and other platforms. There\u2019s a belief that early prototyping requires a large amount of time and effort, and isn\u2019t worth an early investment. But it\u2019s not true!\n\nIt\u2019s still normal to spend a significant proportion of time working in wireframes. Given that wireframes are high-level and don\u2019t show much detail, it\u2019s tempting to give up control and responsibility for things like transitions and other things sidelined as visual considerations. These things aren\u2019t expressed well, and perhaps not expressed at all, in wireframes, yet they critically influence the quality of a product. Rapid prototyping early helps to bring sidelined but significant design considerations into focus.\n\nSpeaking fluent design\n\nFluency in a language means being able to speak it confidently and accurately. The Latin root means flow.\n\nBy design fluency, I mean using a set of skills in order to express or communicate an idea. Prototyping is a kind of fluency. It takes designers beyond the domain of grey and white boxes to consider all the elements that make up really good product design.\n\nDesigners shouldn\u2019t be afraid of speaking fluent design. They should think thoroughly about product decisions beyond their immediate role \u2014 not for the sake of becoming some kind of power-hungry design demigod, but because it will lead to better, more carefully considered product design.\n\nWireframes are incomplete sentences\n\nWireframes, once they\u2019ve served their purpose, are a kind of self-imposed restriction.\n\nMostly made out of grey and white boxes, they deliberately express the minimum. Important details \u2014 visuals, nuanced transitions, sounds \u2014 are missing. Their appearance bears little resemblance to the final thing. Responsibility for things that traditionally didn\u2019t matter (or exist) is relinquished. Animations and transitions in particular are increasingly relevant to the mobile designer\u2019s methods. And rather than being fanciful and superfluous visual additions to a product, they help to clarify designs and provide information about context.\n\nWireframes are useful in the early stages. As a designer trying to persuade stakeholders, clients, or peers, sometimes it will be in your interests to only tell half the story. They\u2019re ideal for gauging whether a design is taking the right direction, and they\u2019re the right medium for deciding core things, such as the overall structure and information architecture.\n\nBut spending a long time in wireframes means delaying details to a later stage in the project, or to the end, when the priority is shifted to getting designs out of the door. This leaves little time to test, finesse and perfect things which initially seemed to be less important. I think designers should move away from using wireframes as primary documentation once the design has reached a certain level of maturity.\n\nA prototype is multiple complete sentences\n\nParagraphs, even.\n\nUnlike a wireframe, a prototype is a persuasive storyteller. It can reveal the depth and range of design decisions, not just the layout, but also motion: animations and transitions. If it\u2019s a super-high-fidelity prototype, it\u2019s a perfect vessel for showing the visual design as well. It\u2019s all of these things that contribute to the impression that a product is good\u2026 and useful, and engaging, and something you\u2019d like to use.\n\nA prototype is impressive. A good prototype can help to convince stakeholders and persuade clients. With a compelling demo, people can more easily imagine that this thing could actually exist. \u201cHey\u201d, they\u2019re thinking. \u201cThis might actually be pretty good!\u201d\n\nHow to make a prototype in no time and with no effort\n\nNow, it does take time and effort to make a prototype. However, good news! It used to require a lot more effort. There are tools that make prototyping much quicker and easier.\n\nIf you\u2019re making a mobile prototype (this seems quite likely), you will want to test and show this on the actual device. This sounds like it could be a pain, but there are a few ways to do this that are quite easy.\n\nKeynote, Apple\u2019s presentation software, is an unlikely candidate for a prototyping tool, but surprisingly great and easy for creating prototypes with transitions that can be shown on different devices.\n\nKeynote enables you to do a few useful, excellent things. You can make each screen in your design a slide, which can be linked together to allow you to click through the prototype. You can add customisable transitions between screens. If you want to show a panel that can slide open or closed on your iPad mockup, for example, transitions can also be added to individual elements on the screen. The design can be shown on tablet and mobile devices, and interacted with like it\u2019s a real app. Another cool feature is that you can export the prototype as a video, which works as another effective format for demoing a design.\n\nOverall, Keynote offers a very quick, lightweight way to prototype a design. Once you\u2019ve learned the basics, it shouldn\u2019t take longer than a few hours \u2013 at most \u2013 to put together a respectable clickable prototype with transitions.\n\nDownload the interactive MOV example\n\nHolly icon by Megan Sheehan from The Noun Project\n\nThis is a Quicktime movie exported from Keynote. This version is animated for demonstration purposes, but download the interactive original and you can click the screen to move through the prototype. It demonstrates the basic interactivity of an iPhone app. This anonymised example was used on a project at Fjord to create a master example of an app\u2019s transitions.\n\nPrototyping drawbacks, and perceived drawbacks\n\nIf prototyping is so great, then why do we leave it to the end, or not bother with it at all? There are multiple misconceptions about prototyping: they\u2019re too difficult to make; they take too much time; or they\u2019re inaccurate (and dangerous) documentation.\n\nA prototype is a preliminary model. There should always be a disclaimer that it\u2019s not the real thing to avoid setting up false expectations.\n\nA prototype doesn\u2019t have to be the main deliverable. It can be a key one that\u2019s supported by visual and interaction specifications. And a prototype is a lightweight means of managing and reflecting changes and requirements in a project.\n\nAn actual drawback of prototyping is that to make one too early could mean being gung-ho with what you thought a client or stakeholder wanted, and delivering something inappropriate. To avoid this, communicate, iterate, and keep things simple until you\u2019re confident that the client or other stakeholders are happy with your chosen direction.\n\nThe key throughout any design project is iteration. Designers build iterative models, starting simple and becoming increasingly sophisticated. It\u2019s a process of iterative craft and evolution. There\u2019s no perfect methodology, no magic recipe to follow.\n\nWhat to do next\n\nMake a prototype! It\u2019s the perfect way to impress your friends.\n\nIt can help to advance a brilliant idea with a fraction of the effort of complete development. Sketches and wireframes are perfect early on in a project, but once they\u2019ve served their purpose, prototypes enable the design to advance, and push thinking towards clarifying other important details including transitions.\n\nFor Keynote tutorials, Keynotopia is a great resource. Axure is standard and popular prototyping software many UX designers will already be familiar with; it\u2019s possible to create transitions in Axure. POP is an iPhone app that allows you to design apps on paper, take photos with your phone, and turn them into interactive prototypes. Ratchet is an elegant iPhone prototyping tool aimed at web developers.\n\nThere are perhaps hundreds of different prototyping tools and methods. My final advice is not to get bogged down in (or limited by) any particular tool, but to remember you\u2019re making quick and iterative models. Experiment and play!\n\nPrototyping will push you and your designs to a scary place without limitations. No more grey and white boxes, just possibilities!", "year": "2012", "author": "Rebecca Cottrell", "author_slug": "rebeccacottrell", "published": "2012-12-10T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2012/fluent-design-through-early-prototyping/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 33, "title": "Five Ways to Animate Responsibly", "contents": "It\u2019s been two years since I wrote about \u201cFlashless Animation\u201d on this very site. Since then, animation has steadily begun popping up on websites, from sleek app-like user interfaces to interactive magazine-like spreads. It\u2019s an exciting time for web animation wonks, interaction developers, UXers, UI designers and a host of other acronyms! \n\nBut in our rush to experiment with animation it seems that we\u2019re having fewer conversations about whether or not we should use it, and more discussions about what we can do with it. We spend more time fretting over how to animate all the things at 60fps than we do devising ways to avoid incapacitating users with vestibular disorders.\n\nI love web animation. I live it. And I make adorably silly things with it that have no place on a self-respecting production website. I know it can be abused. We\u2019ve all made fun of Flash-turbation. But how quickly we forget the lessons we learned from that period of web design. Parallax scrolling effects may be the skip intro of this generation. Surely we have learned better in the sobering up period between Flash and the web animation API.\n\nSo here are five bits of advice we can use to pull back from the edge of animation abuse. With these thoughts in mind, we can make 2015 the year web animation came into its own. \n\nAnimate deliberately\n\nSadly, animation is considered decorative by the bulk of the web development community. UI designers and interaction developers know better, of course. But when I\u2019m teaching a workshop on animation for interaction, I know that my students face an uphill battle against decision makers who consider it nice to have, and tack it on at the end of a project, if at all. \n\nThis stigma is hard to shake. But it starts with us using animation deliberately or not at all. Poorly considered, tacked-on animation will often cause more harm than good. Users may complain that it\u2019s too slow or too fast, or that they have no idea what just happened.\n\nWhen I was at Chrome Dev Summit this year, I had the privilege to speak with Roma Sha, the UX lead behind Polymer\u2019s material design (with the wonderful animation documentation). I asked her what advice she\u2019d give to people using animation and transitions in their own designs. She responded simply: animate deliberately. If you cannot afford to slow down to think about animation and make well-informed and well-articulated decisions on behalf of the user, it is better that you not attempt it at all. Animation takes energy to perform, and a bad animation is worse than none at all. \n\nIt takes more than twelve principles\n\nWe always try to draw correlations between disparate things that spark our interest. Recently it feels like more and more people are putting the The Illusion of Life on their reading shelf next to Understanding Comics. These books give us so many useful insights from other industries. However, we should never mistake a website for a comic book or an animated feature film. Some of these concepts, while they help us see our work in a new light, can be more or less relevant to producing said work. \n\n\nThe illusion of life from cento lodigiani on Vimeo.\n\nI am specifically thinking of the twelve principles of animation put forth by Disney studio veterans in that great tome The Illusion of Life. These principles are very useful for making engaging, lifelike animation, like a ball bouncing or a squirrel scampering, or the physics behind how a lightbox should feel transitioning off a page. But they provide no direction at all for when or how something should be animated as part of a greater interactive experience, like how long a drop-down should take to fully extend or if a group of manipulable objects should be animated sequentially or as a whole.\n\nThe twelve principles are a great place to start, but we have so much more to learn. I\u2019ve documented at least six more functions of interactive animation that apply to web and app design. When thinking about animation, we should consider why and how, not just what, the physics. Beautiful physics mean nothing if the animation is superfluous or confusing.\n\nUseful and necessary, then beautiful\n\nThere is a Shaker saying: \u201cDon\u2019t make something unless it is both necessary and useful; but if it is both necessary and useful, don\u2019t hesitate to make it beautiful.\u201d When it comes to animation and the web, currently there is very little documentation about what makes it useful or necessary. We tend to focus more on the beautiful, the delightful, the aesthetic. And while aesthetics are important, they take a back seat to the user\u2019s overall experience. \n\n\n\nThe first time I saw the load screen for Pokemon Yellow on my Game Boy, I was enthralled. By the sixth time, I was mashing the start button as soon as Game Freak\u2019s logo hit the screen. What\u2019s delightful and meaningful to us while working on a project is not always so for our users. And even when a purely delightful animation is favorably received, as with Pokemon Yellow\u2019s adorable opening screen, too many repetitions of the cutest but ultimately useless animation, and users start to resent it as a hindrance.\n\n \n\nIf an animation doesn\u2019t help the user in some way, by showing them where they are or how two elements on a page relate to each other, then it\u2019s using up battery juice and processing cycles solely for the purpose of delight. Hardly the best use of resources.\n\nRather than animating solely for the sake of delight, we should first be able to articulate two things the animation does for the user. As an example, take this menu icon from Finethought.com (found via Use Your Interface). The menu icon does two things when clicked: \n\n\n\tIt gives the user feedback by animating, letting the user know its been clicked.\n\tIt demonstrates its changed relationship to the page\u2019s content by morphing into a close button.\n\n\n\n\nAssuming we have two good reasons to animate something, there is no reason our third cannot be to delight the user. \n\nGo four times faster\n\nThere is a rule of thumb in the world of traditional animation which is applicable to web animation: however long you think your animation should last, take that time and halve it. Then halve it again! When we work on an animation for hours, our sense of time dilates. What seems fast to us is actually unbearably slow for most users. In fact, the most recent criticism from users of animated interfaces on websites seems to be, \u201cIt\u2019s so slow!\u201d A good animation is unobtrusive, and that often means running fast.\n\nWhen getting your animations ready for prime time, reduce those durations to 25% of their original speed: a four-second fade out should be over in one. \n\nInstall a kill switch\n\nNo matter how thoughtful and necessary an animation, there will be people who become physically sick from seeing it. For these people, we must add a way to turn off animations on the website. \n\nFortunately, web designers are already thinking of ways to empower users to make their own decisions about how they experience the web. As an example, this site for the animated film Little from the Fish Shop allows users to turn off most of the parallax effects. While it doesn\u2019t remove the animation entirely, this website does reduce the most nauseating of the animations. \t\n\n\n\n\n\nAnimation is a powerful tool in our web design arsenal. But we must take care: if we abuse animation it might get a bad reputation; if we underestimate it, it won\u2019t be prioritized. But if we wield it thoughtfully, use it where it is both necessary and useful, and empower users to turn it off, animation is a tool that will help us build things that are easier to use and more delightful for years to come.\n\nLet\u2019s make 2015 the year web animation went to work for users.", "year": "2014", "author": "Rachel Nabors", "author_slug": "rachelnabors", "published": "2014-12-14T00:00:00+00:00", "url": "https://24ways.org/2014/five-ways-to-animate-responsibly/", "topic": "ux"} {"rowid": 219, "title": "Speed Up Your Site with Delayed Content", "contents": "Speed remains one of the most important factors influencing the success of any website, and the first rule of performance (according to Yahoo!) is reducing the number of HTTP requests. Over the last few years we\u2019ve seen techniques like sprites and combo CSS/JavaScript files used to reduce the number of HTTP requests. But there\u2019s one area where large numbers of HTTP requests are still a fact of life: the small avatars attached to the comments on articles like this one.\n\nAvatars\n\nMany sites like 24 ways use a fantastic service called Gravatar to provide user images. As a user, you can sign up to Gravatar, give them your e-mail address, and upload an image to represent you. Sites can then include your image by generating a one way hash of your e-mail address and using that to build an image URL. For example, the markup for the comments on this page looks something like this:\n\n
This is a great article!
\nThis is a great article!
\nThis is a great article!
\nThere are three steps in this checkout process.
\n\tThere are three steps in this checkout process.
\n\t';\n\t\t\thtml+= item.content;\n\t\t\thtml+= '
';\n\t\t\thtml+= '';\n\t\t}\n\t\tdocument.getElementById('newsresults').innerHTML = html;\n\t}\n};\n\nNow, I can call that function at the bottom of my document:\n\n\n\nIf I only want to run that search when there\u2019s room for a sidebar, I can wrap it in an if statement:\n\n\n\nIf the browser is wider than 640 pixels, that will fire off a search for news stories about cats and put the results into the newsresults element in my markup:\n\n