MMM & UXD

Coming from a non-creative background, the practice of maintaining a portfolio is something completely new to me. I’m glad the Kent UXD program is beginning to include an assignment to create a portfolio piece out of the projects from each class, however, without a clear vision of what I want my portfolio to look like, I felt like I was flying blind a little bit. All of the portfolios held up as exemplars were online, and while I am try to learn some web development skills on the side, it seemed most appropriate to try my hand at my portfolio piece in Keynote. 

This week I learned that iterating on a design is a slippery slope. Every time I made an edit or revised a thought it seemed like there were three or four other changes that were now necessary. I can imagine that if this were my full time job it would be pretty fun to chase down a bunch of different thoughts and ideas about how to best accomplish different processes for this app, but with less than 40 hours a week to work on this I felt like I had to make decision fairly quickly and then move on to the next thing. 

Good feedback can make all the difference. I’m writing this check-in a little late but, on the plus side, I’ve already had a chance to review the feedback I received based off of the interactive wireframes I submitted on Thursday. The feedback that I received that was clear and thoughtful and constructive was super helpful in illuminating the areas of my prototype that I haven’t thought through as clearly or which I genuinely thought made sense, but on closer inspection realize don’t. There are plenty of good improvements I can make based solely on the feedback I received. And a handful of other edits I can make now that I’m starting to think about the work I’ve done to date in a different work.

I thought it would be fairly simple to translate my lo-fi pencil wireframes into a higher quality digital set, but it was not a simple one-to-one translation. Aside from incorporating feedback from my group mates, there was quite a bit of redesign work to do as well. Quick boxing off of spaces on index cards with a pencil works as a first draft but on the computer it took more time and reasoning to find a better allocation of space. 

I enjoyed this part of the project though. I spent a bit time looking up iOS UI specs and feel like I learned quite a lot. And then I realized that Proto.io includes lots of preset iOS headers/labels/nav bars/etc. So saved saved a bit of time in the end. 

This week I struggled to differentiate between workflows and sitemaps. Even as I was trying to do a sitemap I felt like I kept slipping into workflows. In a conventional classroom I’d probably raise my hand and ask this question in a class: “what is the functional difference between the two and what’s a good strategy for keeping them distinct?” I know I could probably ask the same thing in Slack and I’m try to speak up on that platform more during this course, but it’s definitely a barrier to jump. Both are deliverables we worked on in my Information Architecture course, so my other question I would have liked to ask in class would have been something along the lines of “can you help me understand how this fits into an interaction designer’s workflow?”

I’m excited about this course because I am looking forward to learning a specific role within a larger UX team. As I mentioned in my introduction post to the class, I think that while we are learning about specific practice areas in the User Experience Design field, many course require us to work as generalists. I think the interesting part of this course will be getting the chance to focus in 100% on interaction design know that another member of our imaginary team would take care of the user testing, or the general experience, or the branding or design, or actually building the product. 

After more time with eyetracking data I don’t know if I’m as sold on it as before. As the Nielson Norman Group report repeatedly mentions, unless you’re at a very large company with a solid, experienced UX team and hundreds, if not thousands, of usability studies under your belt, there is little an eyetracking study can reveal that a traditional usability study could not. I think the power in the eyetracking data is in the numbers - as in, lots and lots of participants doing the study. Otherwise, it could be very risky to make changes to a site based on the gaze plots and heat maps of a select few. 

Perhaps I’m projecting, but people are easily distractible, and our texts over the last two weeks have reiterated that just because a persons gaze falls on one part of the screen, it doesn’t mean she saw that part of the screen. However, if lots and lots and lots of gaze plots and heat maps tell the same story, it would probably be safer to make adjustments in those circumstances. 

I think one of the most interesting parts from the readings and videos this week was the ketchup bottle problem. This idea that when we are looking for something specific, like a ketchup bottle, even if we “see” the ketchup bottle, we might not actually see it. I had been wondering why eye tracking studies were a worthwhile or efficient use of time and money (particularly for a smaller scale or more modest projects or organizations), but if they can help answer the question or explain why we don’t actually notice the ketchup bottle even when we see it, I think that’s quite interesting. 

I count myself in the group that automatically tunes out banner ads, but if it were my business to sell those ads or I was in the market for a banner ad, I think I would absolutely find it an efficient use of time and money to understand why people (or simply, that people) tune out the shape and placement of banner ads and what could be done differently to make them more noticeable. Perhaps the data could give insight (har! har!) into why a user finally (or actually) does click on an ad. I’m know this has already been done, but as the technology improves a more user-friendly use of eyetracking data could help designers to better organize content on a website. Or how to best grab attention to spur action. 

Staying on top of work in class this semester had been tough. Balancing the workload here with existing personal and professional obligations (and joys) is stressful, to be honest. I began this program almost a year ago, when I was 5 months pregnant. I thought that additional education in a field I feel an affinity for was a smart decision and one that would lead to greater opportunities for myself professionally, and by extension, my family. It seemed like the best, most responsible move given my new reality as a soon-to-be mother. 

I still believe all those things, but you know what they say about the best laid plans... it turns out completing school work and caring for an infant (on top of a full-time job and trying to maintain some quantity of good sleep) is not the easiest. Not that I thought it would be, but I had no idea what I was getting myself into last November when I decided to apply for this program. 

I try hard not to make excuses for myself and try harder not to express them externally even if they do pop into my head, but I also think it’s valid to access this situation for what it is - challenging. It’s also important for me to recognize that my situation is not unique - online masters programs must be filled with parents like myself who take the risk to spend hard earned money in an effort to put themselves in a better position professionally. 

One of the real downsides is that weeks like this have assignments that really are beneficial. Creating a mobile usability testing plan required reading and exploring and thought and in the process I learned a lot about the topic. Similarly, I got to think critically about whether gesture-based testing is a useful and efficient endeavor for a usability team. I wish I had more time (made more time) to work on these assignments, engage more with my classmates. I know I’m missing out on valuable discussion there. 

As 2016 quickly rolls to a close I’m both impressed at how far technology has come in terms of providing for usability testing on mobile devices and surprised that there aren’t as many turn key solutions readily available as one might expect given the fact that smart phones have been around for more than 9 years. Mobile devices are ubiquitous and are increasingly marketed as replacements to traditional laptops and desktops. Non-mobile industry has caught up with the trend and nearly every company/organization/school/agency/etc worth their salt has an optimized, responsive website. And purchasing goods and services on your phone is easier than ever. If we think that user testing leads to better user experience it’s actually quite remarkable how intuitive and efficient some of these user flows are given the homegrown nature of the mobile user testing setups we read about and watched this week. 

I started this UXD program back in January of this year, and ever since then I’ve been more mindful of user experiences triumphs and failures that I see in my every day life. I’m sure plenty of my classmates feel the same way. Once you know what you’re looking at and looking for, you can’t help but to know the good, the bad and the ugly of UX all around. 

More recently I’ve wondered how I would transition my work in this program and work in my professional life into a new career path once this program is complete. Many of the UX professionals I know also have a very strong programming background, which is something I don’t, and the thought of adding on another course of study on top of an already busy life is not something I’m eager to take on. 

As I wrap up my first year in the UXD program, I’m to see that we’re getting into the meat of what I means to conduct usability testing. I’ve participated in both face-to-face and remote usability research at work and I know getting more hands on experience in this course will be beneficial. I am currently working in, what I call, a UX-adjacent position - I manage a pilot of new software and I report user feedback out to the various interested parties, including our UX team. From time to time, I sit in on testing, and I hope that gaining more experience through this class will improve my contributions.

While I think it would be a tough sell in my office, and perhaps our software isn’t ready for this yet, I think remote, unmoderated testing is an exciting prospect for us. I like the fly-on-the-wall nature of it, and I think for those times when quantitative feedback is what we’re looking for, it could be super useful.

This was my first experience writing a report based on a usability study. I recently gave a presentation at work that was the result of several weeks worth of research into a usability issue and while there were some similarities, there were a few key differences. 

One, it was easier to pull together a complete report presentation at work because I had conducted all of the interviews and corresponded with all the users whose comments were analyzed and contributed to our findings. Analyzing the interviews conducted by other people, even though we all worked off the same script was a little challenging. We reacted to user comments in different ways and asked different follow up questions. I can see the pros and cons of both approaches. On the one hand, conducting all interviews and writing the resulting report means that I had deeper background and could easily access comments, but it’s certainly a more labor intensive process. Analyzing existing recordings (or sharing the interview load with team members) saves time, and perhaps is more realistic in a professional setting, but it takes a little more thought and planning to accurately process all of the video and notes. 

I know we have very limited time in these courses, but it think it would have been nice to receive a little more instruction this week on the common quantitative and qualitative data points collected in usability testing. Practical advice on what data points to consider collecting in various situations and best practices on representing quantitative and qualitative data in reports.  

The hands on nature of this weeks assignment was helpful in really processing the value and importance of a good screener. I was able to put myself in the shoes of a usability professional trying to recruit the right kind of participant for usability test of a pizza ordering website. This week we learned that usability testing can be costly, both financially and in terms of time and resources, so it’s important to not waste either on participants who won’t give you constructive feedback. 

Last week I talked about the account sign up workflow that I am working on evaluating along with another teammate. If we had the time, it would be interesting for us to do a summative assessment of our current site. Creating a benchmark for judging (what I hope prove to be) our improvements to the site would good. Summative testing also allows for users to expose major usability issues, especially if you conduct a debrief - another reason this type of test would be nice.

However, we don’t have the luxury of time on this project so, as with the fictional pizza company in this week’s assignment - formative testing will be the way to go. Informally, we’ve walked through the workflow with a couple of the different user groups we see on our site, but developing a real test plan will be important after we make our first round of suggestions for how to improve the workflow.