KVVLU - Kengwei Lu

Show the whole picture It is the same idea when you go to a new place or play a new game. The directory map in a mall. Emergency exits in hotel. Create a one picture that explain how the system work at high level. 

Keep it short The longer the tutorial is, the harder you are going to have your user understand your UX patterns. A long tutorial lead the user think there are lots of information to capture.

No one is going to get all of it at first time People has short spam memory. Patterns are learned through practicing or repetitive usage. Create UX that get people inspired and delighted. So they remember easier.

Some fancy crazy ideas we explored during my time at DMC 11 years ago. I was a member of crazy idea design group in Taipei. We used cheap webcam to detect sound and motion from human body then response with simple geo shapes and colors projected on wall or windows/glass.

It is a good challenge for product design team within product company.

Recently talking to couple of design friends in the field of UX and one issue comes up: how to get your design trusted?

There are couple of ways that I have been trying to do to influence the decision making for the sake of great UX designed product. In most cases they should work except when the truth voices of user can’t be heard:

1. Prototype. The best way to get you idea across if you could create the experience that match as close to the final product as possible without tapping into the engineering effort.

It’s important to know when to do hi-fi prototypes V.S low-fi prototypes. Pick your battles and don’t waste time on producing prototypes that are just for the sake of prototyping. I found it is much more efficient to do prototypes for small key design patterns, a micro-interaction prototype for example. It is easier because you can have people’s focus on short/small piece of idea rather than a big long journey that is trying explain every related design points you wanted to make. Secondly, small prototype is much easier to be managed and can be easily altered/updated without trying to make the whole thing working perfectly.

2. Ask around in the office. Internal interviews and internal user testing are your closest friends.

Especially for product that has specific interaction design that can only be validated through interactive prototype.

2. Validate the ideas. This point along can be a big long post. There are things to do in order to validate a design. It also depends on what you want to test so you know how to approach with your limited resource at hand. 

Knowing what to test and how to test are also important part of the testing. Are we testing some specific micro-interactions or a big overall design system? How could we conduct the test without injecting our own bias? Always try to stand on the fair ground and to be open minded because you could received many good recommendations from the testing as well. Use it for the benefit of the user.

3. A/B Testing. There are true moments when two ideas could work and the team just can’t make the best call without some concrete support. This is When we use A/B testing. Unfortunately, A/B testing is not as easy as it would be if you are designing the UX for lower level application design (C++, Java, and even Objective C). Saying so, it still a valid task to do if the result can generate some good support data.

4. System first approach. When design something new, I have found that designing the system on overall how the product work can help to reduce tons of confusions and bring people together much quickly. Often there are times some key stake holders are so tied with their own experiences or belief. They could take a wrong analogy for inappropriate references. They could still in a deep relationship with an older version of the software. Keep reminding the team how things have changed and why we need to have a different approach. Make the team forget about what they have get used to is tough battle. So give them a refresh high level design solution on the system level and tell them why the change is needed.

5. Design like playing chess. There were moments when people asked me solutions on the spot and I could not have answers right away. It is ok. I rather give an answer that will solve the problem than trying to prove I am smart(er). What most people don’t understand is that it take some deeper thinkings to step through use cases and flows for a good answers. It’s like playing chess. You need to think 10 steps ahead with couple of possible scenarios in consideration. An inexperience chess player see 3 steps ahead while an experienced chess player could see more than 10 steps ahead and you don’t see then rush into actions.

6. Cut short the command lines. Have direct engagement with CEO if possible or at least have a regular touch point with the key decision makers. Great designers want to hear the first hand business and user challenges. They are great listener. They take in and digest then pull out. Have a direct communication channel will greatly reduce layers of interpretations. Let’s not play the telephone game. We know how different the message become when it gets to the other end.

7. Have a good product management partnership. I can be very honest. There are times when I disagree with product manage and it make me feel helpless when a PM takes his/her own opinions and proposes that to the CEO without a consent from the team. It misses the approvals from the designer and hurting the relationship to form a healthily collaborative team. When it comes to design decision making. Often it can be the issue of trust or miscommunication on how PM interpret business needs from CEO or key stack holders. Especially when the CEO is pushing for GREAT DESIGN, it often is not clear on what that means since everyone can have different standards.

Image: courtesy of Ukenaut 

Working on this new innovative media product for live tv. I started to see the light coming out from the other end of the tunnel for the future of TV. Sooner than latter, unavoidably, IP is becoming the new spectrum, which has opened the door for new innovations as we all see how those OTT (Over the top) services are taking a big part of consumer's media life every day. I have also love youtube. The relevancy of time have been greatly reduced. People find content and spend more time on this media because they have control. For example there are big ratio (little over 30%) of content consumers like to wait till all episodes become available then they binge watch the whole season. 

It seems to me the only control that exists in the Live TV space is in the hand of service providers and content providers. We are seeing lot of viewership is now migrating to the streaming services such as Netflix and Hulu. Cable TV subscription is down recently. I see the control need some sort of disruption. Big or small. Maybe new business model or with a new type of player to help them leverage the control and make it less controlled.

Surprisingly, the amount of time people spend on watching big screen media/TV content has not reduced. In fact, it keeps being very high. 1.8 hours/day in average excluding time spend on small screen such as mobile and tablets. (Will try to find the research doc). Many players in the market are seeing the trend and for the big player, it is almost moving too slowly with all the regulations and contracts in place. 

Look at the TV industry, business that based on the radio frequency spectrum is going to lost over the IP network based content delivering system. Simply the sky is the limit. Look at Youtube. It is the most widely available "spectrum" that allows every person to broadcast content, share content.

Now all the IP based service's challenge is to create content that grab lot of eyeballs. Netflix is doing that. Yahoo is doing it. I think there will be more on the way. The next question will be how to help to make content provider to realize this IP based "spectrum" is not their enemy but a new way to engage with their audience and a great way to generate profit.