http://dev.artfernandez.com/ Thoughts and commentary on User Experience, the Web, Music, and Photography en-us 2004-10-18T14:05:25-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000557.html conference and my blogs I am not sure if I will ever really post it all. Why? The funny thing is I really don't know where to start. To paraphrase an email I sent to one of my co-workers, the UI 9 Conference had a major impact on me personally, professionally, and from a company organizational perspective. (Boy, having re-read that statement, it almost sounds like a born-again kind of statement, but it almost is true). On a personal level, I got a clear sense of what I want to do with myself...a motivational cumbuya having been in a high energy conference. With that I have a plan of action, which is more than I can say for myself before I went to Boston. Professionally, I learned a few techniques, such as the "5 Second Usability Test" and also got a sense that most of the usability, political, and design problems I am facing are not unique. That latter piece was very comforting considering some of the insane situations I am finding myself in the middle of these days. Also, I came away with a reminder that the true value of Usability and User experience is not really appreciated by Senior Management. In the end usability needs to be portrayed in concepts they understand...meaning, increase revenue, shareholder value, market share, etc. So, the term "Usability Testing" is something that needs to be banned in conversations at that level because the folks don't care about it. And then Organizationally...well, let's just say that it became clear to me that there is a need for a usability soul searching process. That's all I can say because I really don't know where it will go or where I can take it. I will try to finish posting some of the session highlights (like I started to do while in Boston), but I am not making any promises.]]> user experience ajf 2004-10-18T14:05:25-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000537.html Conferences are what you make of them. If you’re not sure why you’re going, or what you want to get out of the experience, you’re unlikely to get it. This essay gives one perspective on conferences, and how to make them more valuable and engaging experiences. I think in general professional conferences take a very conservative approach to training and education, and it demands that attendees take more responsibility for getting value from the experience than should be necessary. The surprising thing in my experience about most conferences is that the most interesting, informative and educational moments are not spent in the sessions themselves: it’s in all of the other interactions with peers from other companies and organizations. The lectures, talks and panels might provide some useful approaches or ideas, but for the most part, the slides and papers from those sessions can be obtained later. This is not true for all of the unique, personal, and insightful conversations you might have with other people. A special thing about a conference is the opportunity for those interactions. Unless you work at a firm that specializes in the kind of job you have, much of your time back at work is spent with people who do not have the same background and kinds of interests that you do. Quite a bit of this advice is just common sense, but I have friends that have lamented that they just don't get much out of going to conferences. I never really have delved into the why's of these statements with them, but I would venture to guess that they were more of the passive than active participant. Read Scott's full article on UIWEB.]]> user experience ajf 2004-09-29T10:43:10-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000536.html Discoverability is often defined as the ability for a user of a design to locate something that they need, in order to complete a certain task. It is common to hear programmers and designers utter the phrase *that wont be discoverable*, while pointing to a specific command or link they believe users will fail to find. The trap, and the myth, of discoverability is that in any design, not everything can be discoverable. Read the full post.]]> user experience ajf 2004-09-29T10:29:13-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000526.html The 3-Column Model on Protiviti suggests related information to the user at the point of the User life-cycle when they have found what it is they were looking for on the website. By breaking up the page into these information zones, there is a greater opportunity leveraging this strategy to subtly suggest to users content and promotions that (in)directly relates to the content they are focused on (Column B). So, in a situation where a user was looking for an article about Sarbanes-Oxley compliance (for example) the best time to cross-sell a related article to them is on the page with the Sarbanes-Oxley material they set out to find when they came to the web site. user experience ajf 2004-09-21T15:16:51-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000516.html Three Column Layouts and Seducible Moments Several people over the last few years have been promoting the concept of Seducible Moments within User Tasks. Among them, Andrew Chak has been at the forefront of this movement by putting forth the idea that sites not only need to be usable, by using elements in the design that will motivate users to make the right decision or perform a preferred task. Those elements are in many cases are strategically placed on a place to take advantage of a seducible moment within a User’s decision process Simply put, a seducible moment is a moment in time when a person is the most susceptible to a cross-sell. In the real world we have all experienced this type of situation on an almost daily basis:

• When ordering a meal at a fast-food restaurant – “Would you like to Super Size that?”
• Buying a car – “Do you want to get the upgraded suspension or the service contract as well?”
• Buying a movie – “Oh, I see that you like action adventure. You might this movie as well”

Each of these examples are instances where we as consumers right after we have gotten what we wanted—food, a consumer product, etc. at the check out counter are at our most vulnerable and influential state. In the retail world this phenomenon is referred to as suggested selling and we see it everyday. In any of the examples mentioned above an attempt to cross-sell something before or well after a person made a decision to buy a specific product would be futile. The reason this is true is because we as consumers have not gotten what we set out to get yet. We need to be satisfied we got what we wanted in the first place before being open to suggestion. Now take this concept to the Web and one can see similar applications when it comes to related content, job applications or promotions. Every marketer or content author would love to promote a new feature or content item that might be of interest to his or her User. In some cases it may be a similar job opportunity to one that a Candidate just applied to or a piece of content that is related to Sarbanes-Oxley compliance issues. The fundamental difference in meeting these desires is in the approach of seducing users with the cross-sell. It is this aspect of the user experience of a site that needs to be well thought-out and carried out in a very subtle manner. It is the difference between a hard sell and a soft sell at a car dealership. We all know what the result of a hard sell is, so the secret with Seducible Moments on the Web is the art of the soft sell and timing in the User decision cycle. The full version of this Case Study will be available on Monday 9/20]]> user experience ajf 2004-09-16T15:37:34-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000507.html I have been looking very closely at MIT's Semantic Web browser lately. The concept of managing multiple information types and... user experience ajf 2004-09-15T10:09:48-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000504.html

The channel metaphor and color by numbers approach to UXP

The Evolution of Country Selection Interfaces

One to Many Content Publishing (Theory)

Developing User Experiences that Span Cultures

Three Column Layouts and Seducible Moments

]]> user experience ajf 2004-09-14T15:46:24-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000478.html While not directly related to User Experience, this is a really nice article on selling ideas to your customers. That... user experience ajf 2004-09-01T09:27:29-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000466.html A large part of what I do is sell ideas. Sure, I develop IA stuff, do usability, and design navigation systems, but it all comes down to my ability to sell an idea. I have sat through thousands of design review session with Senior Stakeholders where everything was going well until I got the dreaded "Color Blue Question" Now, for the uninitiated there are questions that always come up in meetings such as "How does that work?," I don't agree with you, " or "I am confused by this therefore it must be difficult to use" All of these types of questions can be addressed with either further explanation, agreement to disagree but finding a path to move forward, or more importantly rebutted with actual usability data or research. Those types of questions are even under the most trying circumstances manageable--even at worst case as the facilitator of the review you can reach a compromise and maintain the heart of your design. However, there are times (and they happen more often than you think) where people object and have a preference because they just do. Those types of instances are what I like to call a "Color Blue Question." These types of questions tend to come up most after we have already agreed to the overall user experience and design, but have not yet shown a creative design skin on top of the skeleton. Sooner or later when we show visual comps, someone will say "I don't like the fact that a country selector is grey, I think it should be blue" or "I believe we need to have a additional graphic here..." usually these items are small, but they can at times compromise the overall user experience of the product. Unfortunately, in most of these cases "Color Blue Questions" are ones that you could probably argue against, but in the end you will never win. They are in fact stakeholder preferences that are very hard if not impossible to overcome. So, when faced with a "Color Blue Question," I constantly am asking myself as to how much of an impact is it on the overall user experience and if it is worth the political capital to fight it. In those situations I only choose to fight if it truly compromises the heart of the design and will adversely impact the User. After all, that is who I am representing in the sessions in addition to my clients. Even if I know that I may loose the argument, if it is serious enough a single raising of the hand on a very critical item being challenged by the dreaded "Color Blue" may be necessary. In the end this type of objection (as I said earlier), is a preference. After all it is very hard to refute a statement that falls into the genre of "I like the color blue because I like the color blue" So say it once and say it with pride, "I like the color blue, because I like the color blue." Now, go think of a way to challenge that kind of statement while still gaining agreement on the larger issue and you will know what I am talking about first hand. user experience ajf 2004-08-20T06:00:42-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000392.html A Pictorial History of the "Apple Desktop Interface" 1979 - 2000]]> user experience ajf 2004-07-09T15:37:35-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000239.html "Personalization hasn't worked because most people don't have a compelling reason to personalize. It hasn't worked because the cost of... user experience ajf 2003-12-04T17:13:01-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000249.html Thanks to a post by Alex Wright's blog, I ran across a copy of Apple's legendary Knowledge Navigator presentation (QuickTime),... user experience ajf 2003-11-20T10:24:03-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000248.html "Information Architecture can be applied to resolve breakdowns in site design and navigation structure. The role of good Information Architecture... user experience ajf 2003-11-20T09:30:08-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000237.html "Personas are power tools that give a much-needed focus to interface design projects. " From Information Today... user experience ajf 2003-11-18T17:11:25-08:00 http://dev.artfernandez.com/articles/archives/000236.html Boxes and Arrows recently featured an article illustrating the connective tissue between Information architecture and tradional building architecture disciplines. They did a really interesting approach in showing how the process that tradiional architects approach visual design is similar to that of IA. user experience ajf 2003-11-14T16:50:22-08:00