User Design

* Motivations, behaviors * Environment of use Artifacts * personsas * sketch * clickable prototype Successful products * Viability - what's the there a problem * Capability - can we build the solution * Desirablity - is our solution desirable A list of features doesn't communicate a product In scarcity, people will choose expedience over aesthetics In abundance, people will choose ease over power The most important part of software doesn't exist.  It's between the ears of the customer. How will you understand who your users are and what they value? How will you ensure the entire team understands and can collaborate on the desired user experience for your product? How will you appropriately balance "big picture" thinking with "just in time" thinking? Raise the general understanding about user experience.  "Follow me home" at Intuit, was done by everybody in the company. IMPORTANT: "If you had feature x, what would that allow you to do?" Closed-ended question: quantitative Open-ended: qualitative Affinity diagrams are helpful for group synthesis: useful for when you have lots of people who have done different research, or who talk over one-another IMPORTANT: You are not the user! David Hussman: Check out his book Simple diagrams enable developers "Yes, and" instead of "No, but" - lateral thinking technique Scenario - tells the story of the persona using the product to accomplish their goals, scenario defines the features.. describes how the user achieves happiness, the idealized version Scenario - defines, what, then how Design studio - charett - collaborative design, iteratively, create a shared consensus of the design, whiteboard sketch the scenario Persona based audit

PM & UX

What does UI  mean to you * UI / interaction designer - "feel" flows, interaction, screen designs * Visual designer - "look", graphics, icons, fonts, layout, color scheme * IA - overall structure, web sites, * Usability / user research - how people use the product, not: market research - who's going to use the product

Metrics Driven PM

* attach rate * support request * revenue * customer satisifaction: detailed survey; net recommender score * market sensing * speed to market * product adoption * product launch * customer satisfaction * build to users, market to buyers * project based reporting * focus on revenue, but can only control cost

Fell off my bicycle

I had a little accident on my way to a triathlon training ride yesterday morning. I lost traction while trying to slow down going down a steep, wet hill.  I hit the guardrail next to the road, was thrown off my bike, and over the rail. A number of nice nearby onlookers saw the spectacle, rushed over, and called the paramedics.  The fall obviously looked more impressive than it ended up being: after the paramedics arrived I was able to get up and walk around.  The paramedics were impressed how much worse it could have been. I was lucky that my helmet and backpack (with running shoes in it) provided padding for much of my body.  Also, I credit years of wakeboarding and snowboarding for teaching me how to fall.  Tuck and roll, don't stick out arms or catch wrists. While I wasn't in extraordinary pain after the fall, I thought a trip to the ER was probably a good idea. At the ER, I got my wounds cleaned and a tetanus shot.  The doctor x-rayed my hand and found I had fractured my finger.  So my finger was splinted and I now need to see a specialist to rehabilitate it properly. I got to keep a digital copy of the x-rays, so I thought I'd share them here.
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Hand X-Ray 1
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Hand X-Ray 2
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Hand X-Ray 3

Back of the Napkin

This week, I was able to see Dan Roam speak at Adaptive Path about some of the ideas behind his book The Back of the Napkin
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. Here are my notes from the event. Executive Summary: Our brains think visually, but abstractly.  Quirky hand-drawn sketches can communicate and solve problems better than other methods. Details:
  1. We can solve problems with picures.
  2. Our mind works from an image perspective.  75% of our neurons process vision.
  3. There are three unwritten rules of visual problem solving:
    1. Whoever best describes the problem is the one most likely to solve it.  (Corollary: whoever draws the best picture gets the funding).
    2. The more human the picture, the more human the response.  (Corollary: when we look at a hand-drawn picture, we’re seeing things the way we think them).
    3. Everything is a layer cake.  Different people enjoy different layers of the cake.  They focus on their part of the task.  Hand-drawn sketches can communicate the idea of the full cake to each audience focused on a different layer.
  4. Our brains process things in 6 ways.  Every problem can be communicated by breaking it down into these 6 components.
    1. Who / what - who or what are we looking at? (drawn as a smiley face or box)
    2. Where - where is that object? (drawn as a map)
    3. How much - how many of the object are there? (drawn as graph)
    4. When - what is changing over time, in what way? (drawn as a series of arrows)
    5. How - what is the cause of something? (drawn as a flowchart)
    6. Why - what is the effect of something? (drawn as a multi-variable chart)
  5. “The barrier to change is not too little caring, it’s too much complexity.  To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all three steps.” - Bill Gates
  6. Dan Roam (who gave the talk) was invited by the Microsoft CFO to prototype the next generation of financial analytics software.
    1. Microsoft wants to end the analysis-paralysis cycle.
      1. They do a quarterly business review where the CFO sits with each of the division presidents (who report to the CFO).
      2. Each division president presents a different set of numbers, and comes to a different conclusion.
      3. The CFO goes back to the division presidents and says, “Why are you looking at different things and coming to different conclusions?  Give me a report is consistent and coherent.”
      4. The presidents sit down together and think: “What does the CFO want to see?  Let’s show him everything.”
      5. There is too much data to show the CFO everything.
    2. The conclusion they came to (but they didn’t have much time to think about).
      1. Let’s get the data and people in one place.
      2. And create a customizable portal.
      3. Where people can choose what they want to see.
      4. The hand-drawn prototype that they built looked exactly like Swivel.
        1. A report/dashboard in the primary part of the screen.
        2. Links between data in the top of the side column.
        3. Links between people in the bottom of the side column.
    3. They presented the first sketch after three days as a hand-drawn picture and it elicited tremendous response (much better feedback than the illustrator prototypes I had done in the past).
  7. He recommended the book Authenticity
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    to explain why the hand-drawn sketches worked so well.