interact london 2015: vanessa kirby - the fables of ux

legend or fable?Unicorns

Head of UX, Argos

• the Design Economy• who are the designers?• Unicorns – the stuff of legends or

fables?• the value of design

The Design Economy

£71.7bn to the UK economy

Adding jobs at 3 times the national average

(Courtesy of David Gray)

there are conundrums...

who are they?

designers

USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*

previously /also known as HF, UCD, CCD, HCD….

INFORMATION ARCHITECT

RESEARCH / INSIGHT

FRONTEND DEV

COPY WRITER

VISUAL DESIGNER

*completely and utterly my preference, you use whatever you like & clearly not exhaustive but purely for discussion purposes….

INFORMATION ARCHITECT

RESEARCH / INSIGHT

FRONTEND DEV

COPY WRITER

VISUAL DESIGNER

USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*

human factors engineer

usability tester

tech designer

author

graphic designer

ALSO KNOWN AS

user centred designer

interaction designer

UI dev designer

digital designer

editoruser centred researcher

interaction designer

UX designer

UX designer

frontend coder

ethnographer

librarians

content writer

interaction coder

tech dev

XD (experience designer)

XD (experience designer)

they’re just labels…

confusion reignsthe right skills

The Seller1.

Step 1: Learn Everything You Can About a New SkillStep 2: Practice, Practice PracticeStep 3: Deconstruct What Others Have DoneStep 4: Solicit Feedback (And Listen To It)Step 5: Teach the Skill To Someone Else

Becoming a UX Unicorn in 5 Easy Steps

Where do you begin to develop these skills? Well, one resource is UIE’s All You Can Learn, a library of all things UX. Just create your account, and over 160 seminars will be at your fingertips.$23 a month……….

The Evangelist2.

Fred Beecher, UX apprenticeship

Learn psychology

The Theorist3.

Soft skills….

Hunting Unicorns - What makes an effective UX Professional Patrick Neeman, usabiitycounts.com

The Automator4.

“Design isn't hard to learn. That's because most of us are already building products and are familiar with what design means. What used to be complex and confusing is now simple and effective, thanks to Sketch, an app that is entirely focused on user interface design.”

where have they come from?

evolution

1960

1970

Xerox PARCoNLine System (NLS)

Mouse driven cursorWindowsHypertext

Eye hand coordination

1973Xerox Alto then Star

First PC

WIMPWindow, Icon, Menu, Pointing device

1600’s Infographics to demonstrate the sun’s rotation patterns.

Dieter Rams: ten principles for good design

Document centric

1943Ikea founded

“Information is a source of learning. But unless it is organized, processed, and available to the right people in a format for decision making, it is a burden, not a benefit.”

– William Pollard

1800’s

1940

1980

AT&T release Unix to outside parties

1980 Software Psychology & Human Factors in Computing & IS

DOS

1983GOMS ModelVisual Display of Quant Information

1983The Lisa

1984The Macintosh

1986Designing the User Interface – Object Action Interface model

1985 Windows released

1980TBL built ENQUIRE

Mobile (portable) phones

Sony Walkman

Program centric

Shell scriptingMacro procedures

1986Challenger disasterTUFTE: Powerpoint persuades – it doesn’t inform

1984Apple ad during superbowl. Computers are personal

1980IDEO(?) work on Apple’s first mouse

“Interaction design” phrase coined by Moggridge & Verplank

1979GRiD Compass designed – first laptop

1990

1985Free Software

Foundation (FSF)

1986BBC GUI

Netscape is free

1998‘Open source’ coined

Google founded

1991‘LINUX released

1988The Way Things WorkThe Design of everyday things

ISO 9241

1994W3C Founded

1995Alertbox starts

1999Designing Web Usability

1994MS Award for inventing Visual basic

1988 Apple sues MS

1989World Wide Web proposed

1990 WWW

1993Mosaic

1995Amazon

Founded

1996Cascading style sheets

UGC begins with Amazon book reviews

User profiling = ‘personas’ 1998

The inmates are running the asylum

2000

2010

2006Tufte invents sparklines

2000Don’t make me think

ISO 9240 revised to ISO 13407, Human-centred design for interactive systems

2001Dotcom bust

Smartphones

2001iPod released

2003iTunes launched

2007iPhone

2005Youtube founded

2004Facebook founded

2008AirBNB launched

2000Ballot paper in Florida with hanging Chad alignment

2009Visual arts graduate student Deborah Adler redesigns Target’s RX Drug bottle 

2005JJG coins AJAX to help non-techs

2000Google adwords

SOFTWARE

FLOWS, TASKS& GOALS

GUI WWW1.0

WWW2.0

WIMP ADVERTISING….GLAMOUR…SMALLER PROJECTS…BANNERS….REVENUE…INTERNATIONAL

DISTRIBUTED ASSETSENVIRONMENTS…WIDGETS…CHANNELS….DEVICES…

MARKETING….DISRUPTION…ITERATIVE PRODUCTION

26

Is it any wonder

Left brain vs right brainQwerty keyboard….

27

“While we do spend literally billions of pounds on advertising our products, our best place to catch the attention of our … shopper or consumer is right at the initial stage, which is the bottle design and the label design.”

General Manager, Innovation, Diageo.

for differentiation

designing for experiences

context, mobility, social, channels…

the ‘norms’ constantly shift

influencing behaviours

digital tools are

IT, Telco, consumer electronics & entertainment

digital convergence -

distributed assets, tribes, simplicity, crowdsourcing, omni…

collaborative consumption

anything and everything is connected & saleable…

Internet of Things

design led thinking, the design economy, lean ux…

influencing traditions

Do we need unicorns?Q.

You get what you ask for…

Draw a vase….

37

“But solving problems isn’t enough. Understanding what’s possible in HTML, CSS, JS will help designers create practical web designs—products that developers can actually build, and that clients can maintain. Products that work well in the wild. Products that users use.”

– Interaction Design Best Practices: Mastering the Tangibles 

Site map [sahyt map] noun

Epic [ep-ik] adjective

User Journey [yoo-zer jur-nee] adjective

Lofi proto, Hifi proto [lo fi-del-i-tee, fahy proh-tuh-tahyp] noun

Information Architect[in-fer-mey-shuh’n ahr-ki-tek-cher ] noun

Architecture diag

ERD

Fancy flow chart

Um. Prototype.

Chap who wireframes (NOT who builds the database schema)

speak the <ahem> user’s language

unite the left and right brainers

“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York.As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures – they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

– Sam Haskins

experience is currency

the value of design

GuerrillaSilverback

Remote testing

Flight simulatorsBritish rail

Multi- touch testing

Commercial Labs - PCs

Menus & coloursTask flows/goals

MouseWindows

HTML single page loading

Sell/cross sell

Typography

Colours

BannersAdvertising

CSS

Parallax scrolling

Data visualisation

Hypertext

HTML

Accessibility

CSS

Parallax scrollingMulti interaction

page

AJAX

iOS, Android . . .

SOFT

WAR

EG

UI

WW

W1.

0W

WW

2.0

Research IA VD Code

Jedi masters; jugglers; teams

we’ve been busy

Experience(Internet of [every]thing)

Wearables, watchesDesktopMobileTabletThermostatsPOSKiosksAnd, and, and. . .

A.R.

Attention to detailEvery consequenceWall layoutExceptional blue tacking skills

Science

MemoryAttention spanInstant gratificationLogicWhy people buyWhy people click

Context

PreviousScenariosConsequencesUnhappy paths

Join the dotsInternetCMSGatewaysBatteriesCameras/trackingRFIDNFCFeedback loops

areas to grow; knowledge to inhale; dots to join

become a living legend, not a fable

new generations, new psychology

& a bit of fortune telling…

“Design is everything, because without it we have no business. … There is intense competition, and anybody can design a decent product. They can’t all design outstanding products. So, design is the differentiator.”CEO, Pentland Brands plc

Thanks for listening!

I’m sorry if I swore too much during this presentation – I try not to but then get sidetracked in the moment.

Caveat: all of this is very commercially focused - there’s a huge part of UX that goes unrecognised which is for the greater good of humankind. Audio for the blind; visuals for the deaf; tools for those with physical challenges. Secretly all UXers want to be part of that world. We want to contribute.