On Art & Tech

Domain Agnostic Naming Convention for Axure Based UX Projects [part 1]

2010-11-04T13:50:00.001-05:00

Introduction

The following naming convention scheme is domain agnostic or in other words - appropriate for any type of software UX being modeled. Aspects of the convention are specific to Axure but I think they could be easily modified to fit other UX prototyping tools.

This convention is offered for review, discussion and adoption by others in the UX community in the belief that there is no need to reinvent the wheel for each new project and that we could all benefit from some standardization. Comments and suggestions are most welcome.

Benefits:

Identify each element of the wireframe with a unique identifier and help:

The UX team: troubleshoot interactions and quality of wireframe construction: It is inherent in the process of naming things that one needs to consider aspects of structure: hierarchy, placement and efficiencies which consequently yields well-formed wireframes.
Developers, BAs and other stakeholders who consume the Word specification document or the CSV output.

Quickly determine when reading the Word spec or CSV output if we are looking at a page, master, dynamic-panel or state - just by the ID.
Consistency, which is critical for large shared project with multiple designers working on a shared project file. Eliminating 'Tower of Babel' syndrome where each UX labels items
Avoid the "Unlabeled" plague that makes it extremely hard to create advanced interactions, or to make sense out of the specification document
Internationalize - Greatly improve the process of localization. Instead of relying on a label which may not be unique, ids makes it easy for teams across the globe to make references to any item of the UI with confidence.
Productive - When used from the project get-go, save the UX team significant amount of time in downstream consistency enforcement and tons of reworking.
Transferable - Use on any type of UX project.

Throughout this post I will use a simplified UX project example to contextualize and clarify some of the concepts. The project example: An electronic Medical records application (EMR) that is being developed by a team of UX experts and is divided into 4 workstreams:

UI Framework (all shared UX widgets, patterns etc.)
Medical Staff Portal (doctors, nurses, etc.)
Patients Portal (Charts, lab results, prescriptions, etc.)
Pharmacy Portal (Prescription Tacking, etc.)

The Namespace

1. Workstream Prefix

We'll start by assigning each workstream a 2-letter code prefix:

UI Framework = FW
Medical Staff Portal = MD
Patients Portal = PP
Pharmacy Portal = RX

The process of coming up with the 2-letter prefix should be straight forward, although it is

important to keep in mind:

Domain nomenclature (Pharmacy could be PR, but RX makes more sense)
Avoiding confusion in the future (Patient portal could be PT, for example, but may be confused with a sub section under MD for Physical Therapy (widely known as PT)
Naming conventions of other partners in the project that may have started their work before the UX team. Often, the business process team is in place early on. The goal is to gain alignment and reuse confusion.

Why 2 and not 3 letters? To make the overall id as short as possible. As you will see later, the id can become quite long.

2. Workstream Number Range

Each workstream is assigned a numerical range that will be used for issuing unique ID's for pages and masters. Just by looking at the wireframe or widget number it becomes easy to associate the object to the workstream. Note that framework wireframes are assigned the highest range of 900, mostly to strengthen the visual of framework elements - they play an important role as global elements across the whole Ui.

FW = 900 to 999
MD = 100 to 199
PP = 200 to 299
RX = 300 to 399

Once the prefix is in place, the Sitemap panel should have the following top-level pages that will help each UX workstream organize their pages under the shared sitemap. Axure's sitemap panel (Version 5.6) does not support folders as the masters panel.

Continue to create the corresponding nodes on the Maters panel - Here we can take advantage of folders to structure the wireframes without creating extraneous pages. Note that we add "M-" to all masters to help distinguish between masters and pages.

3: Pages

Pages are wireframes of entire screens and are typically constructed of widgets, masters and dynamic panels. In the context of Axure's html output, pages are the only wireframes directly accessible via the left-nav sitemap.
Names should be meaningful and self-explanatory to provide maximal clarity to all stakeholders. Keep in mind that you need to communicate with others, so avoid shortcuts, ambiguous names. From our example:
The RX team has a wireframe page with a list of drugs and a detail page of each drug, which is presented when the user clicks a row in the list.

The 2 pages should be named:

RX-301 Drug List
RX-302 Drug Detail

Regular briefing of UX team members who work with workstreams about changes to the sitemap. The clarity communicated by the name also helps members of the UX team, for example - when on-boarding new team members who must be able to digest a lot of new material quickly. Use proper capitalization and space words to maximize readability. Remember - the goal is effective communication.

4. Masters

4.1 Workstream Masters
These are masters of limited use - only on pages related to a particular workstream. For example, the MD workstream has several pages related to Board certification of doctors and nurses. These are relevant only to the MD portal, and the ID of masters used there will communicate this fact:

4.2 Framework masters

These are typically global navigation, header and footer elements - masters that are consumed by all pages in the framework template.
For example: M-FW-900.1 etc. Note that the 3-digit prefix for masters does not advance. Rather, it is an indicator of the workstream and not associated with a particular page of the workstream because masters can be used on multiple pages. M-MD-100.1, for the first master for the MD workstream, etc.

5. Dynamic Panels

Dynamic panels will inherit the prefix of the page or master they were placed on. For example: RX-232_1 DP Name, which references the first dynamic panel on page 232, which is part of the RX workstream.

6. States

States inherit the prefix of the dynamic panel they are part of: RX-232_1.1 State Name.

Note that the IDs of masters and dynamic panels are very likely to change: Masters may often start with one of the workstream, but might later be used across other parts of the UI, and become part of the UI Framework. Dynamic panels may initially e used on a single page, but then converted to a master. It is important to rename those ids ASAP to reduce confusion.
Unfortunately, Axure does not allow page notes for dynamic panels and their states. AAs a result, the ability to reference with accuracy any element of a dynamic panel is important, and can be done on the master level, which can be cumbersome, but allows documenting those elements.

7. Nesting

Nested masters and dynamic panels are unavoidable and we can easily extend the naming convention to account for nesting: RX-232_2.4_1.3 State Name - we are looking at the wireframe associated with the 3rd state of the 1st dynamic panel that 'lives' in the 4th state of the 2nd dynamic panel that 'lives' on page RX-232. The naming convention thus communicates the construction structure of the wireframe in addition to providing a unique reference and ownership association by workstream.

8. Widgets

Widgets are associated with the page, master or dynamic panel they live on.

Axure Built-In Widgets

For the built-in widget in Axure use the abbreviations listed here, or create your own.

Image= IMG

Text Panel= TPNL

Hyperlink= LNK

Button= BTN

Table*= TBL

Text Field= FLD

Text Area= TXTA

Droplist= DL

List Box= LBX

Checkbox= CBX

Radio Button*= RBTN

Horizontal Line= HR

Vertical Line= VR

Image Map= IMP

Inline Frame= IFRM

Menu Vertical= MNV

Menu Horiz= MNH

Tree= TRE

Widgets inherits their parents 's ID and look like this:
M-PT-305-BTN.1 Button Name, or more complex....
M-RX-211_1.3_1.1-DL..2 Quantity

Keep in mind that if you named widgets on a dynamic panel that later became part of a master, renaming will be required. While tedious, it will pay of f when generating a specifications document that enables clear communication between developer, UX and all other stakeholders involved in consuming the documentation.

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To be continued in part 2.

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Portions of this convention were developed in collaboration with my colleagues and friends Elizabeth Srail and Katrina Benco.

Evaluating Axure RP - Talking Points

2010-02-12T00:09:00.000-06:00

I'm often asked by colleagues and clients about my experience with rapid UX prototyping tools in general, and Axure specifically. I always preface by saying that I’ve been using Axure as a primary wireframing tool for the past 3+ years, and, although I occasionally evaluate new prototyping tools, such as ProtoShare or Sketchflow , I don’t have the hard-core experience that comes from daily work with a tool.

The landscape of rapid prototyping is changing rapidly, with frequent announcement of new players, some that look very promising. These are very exciting times for our profession because finally, user experience architects and designers can master a specialized UX tool instead of tools borrowed from desktop publishing or app developers.

So one must be open minded to change and to take advantage of whatever does the job. Yet any tool is a strategic investment - of our time, our ability to successfully execute and deliver demanding challenges. In other words - the stuff needs to really work when a large team of UX designers, spread all over the country needs to collaborate under tight schedules. Making things change colors on mouse over is not enough.

So here is a deck I created recently and used in several occasions to help guide an evaluation process. It is of course in favor of Axure, and not because the product is perfect or because the company pays me to promote the product (They don't!). It is their uniquely amazing customer support that won me over.

Download the PDF.

Comments are most welcome.

Inital thoughts on Agile with Axure

2010-02-09T20:50:00.001-06:00

Part 1:

The Settings (Or, making software is like making sausage - you don't really want to know how it is made, but you should)

Immediately one faces the fact that there are way more flavors of Agile than Baskin Robbins ice cream...So perhaps we should begin with the key drivers that lead to typical UX projects. Typically it is the business side of the organization that drives the change, with IT group either resisting change, locked into a technology flavor mindset (.Net, Java, etc.) and in many cases the communications between the two part of the organizations are poor.There are many exceptions, but I want to address realities of large scale projects. In established organizations, despite the desire to use Agile, there are still hard wired protocols and bureaucracy around traceability, change management and sign-offs.

Axure, like the typical UX team, sits in the intersection of messy cultures and is being used as a communication tool to articulate, 'sell' and specify both vision and reality - this is where some of the key risks and opportunities are for us as UX practitioners. By that I mean that the initial Axure prototype is probably very aggressive about rich interactions, features and functionality. The business end gets excited because customers who are exposed to the new vision are pressuring for improvements. The sales department is always hungry for a better product to sell.

Thus, strategic plans and budgets are set around unrealistic delivery targets and often, with very little awareness of the full UX development process. In fact, the UX team is often engaged after the project plan, budget and delivery dates were set (What?! we need to pay for usability tests?!). Moreover, large projects are often broken into phases, which means you can not expect a clean process of creating a prototype, finalizing it and go to the beach, because work on following phases often begins before coding of the previous phases ended - which means that everything is in flux, and the Axure file should be well formed to handle change.

So who are the players, and consumers of Axure output now the the project is in flight?

The UX team (or perhaps you are a single practitioner) - The organizational association of the team is critical - is the team part of the business unit, or part of the IT organization. I've seen both, and, I've seen the team floating with no clear association, which can be worse.

The business owners - and depending on the organization, they may be spread all over the US or worldwide, often with conflicting motives and requirements. - The UX team must make sure that UX requirements are captured in a very formal way - Axure can be used for that, but there are some issues around managing the requirements in Axure. While Axure is not a requirement gathering tool it makes so much more sense to capture UX requirements in it that we may get tempted, and have to live with the consequences later on. Not a big deal if we planned for it, a mess if we did not.

The IT team - In large organization this may be a Hidra, with sub units that are in charge of some aspect of the technology, they may not like each other, or for that matter, even communicate much on a regular basis. And off shore teams are the norm these days, so we have to keep in mind that the output of our Axure project may be consumed by people for whom English in not a native language.

The BAs - In some organizations each group might have their team of BAs - so the documents that are produced include business requirements and specifications, technical requirements and specifications, etc. The UX team typically adds UX requirements and specifications -- All mentioned are often extremely long documents that none really reads because everyone is busy trying to beat the unrealistic deadlines mentioned above. So an opportunity that Axure affords, is generating specifications that are easy to consume, which s is not so trivial, and I'm looking forward for the upcoming resale for some enhancements. Agile does not mean that specs and requirements are not needed - in fact the issue becomes worse - how to track and mange changes from scrums and sprints such that developers and business partners don't get lost in the sea of documentation?

The QA team - this team (if it exists beyond being a place holder) has the worst job - testing scripts are often rendered useless because changes happen all the time - so they need to be able to follow up the rapid changes, and update the testing library in time for testing.

This post was originally posted on the Axure Discussion board.

Comparing Apples to Oranges - The NYT Bestsellers Lists and Kindle

2009-06-11T06:08:00.000-05:00

The June 7th issue of the New York Times Book Review, print edition, had the following Amazon ad on page 21: An arrow pointing at the bestsellers list and the text:
"in the time it takes to skim the bestseller list, you can wirelessly download an entire book." A couple of inches Below that text was an image of the Kindle accompanied by the text:
"Choose from 275,000 of the most popular books, magazines and newspapers. Free wireless delivery in less than 60 seconds."

In the print edition of the Times the bestsellers list is spread across 3 pages:

Page	Bestseller Category	List Category	# of Books
18	Best Sellers	Fiction	15
18	Best Sellers	Nonfiction	15
20	Paperback Best Sellers	Trade Fiction	20
20	Paperback Best Sellers	Mass Market Fiction	20
21	Paperback Best Sellers	Nonfiction	20
21	Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous	Hardcover	10
21	Advice, How-To and Miscellaneous	Paperback	10

# Pages	# Bestseller Category	# List Category	# of Books
3	3	6	110

The Amazon ad suggests that the act of downloading a single book is equivalent to the act of browsing a list of books (perhaps to determine which book to purchase). But it is really a comparison between (a) A pre-decision activity of browsing the list of books, and (b) A post-decision activity, since the download is done after one chose, purchased and clicked the 'Download' button - it is the device that does the work.

Let's consider Amazon value preposition which is divided into 2 phases:

Choose from 275,000 of the most popular

Books
Magazines
Newspapers

Free wireless delivery in less than 60 seconds.

In phase 1, the ad touts a clear quantitative advantage for Amazon: A choice of 275,000 bestseller books compared to the meager 110 books of the NYT. In fact, the ad is positioned on page 21 which only lists 20 books, compared to page 20 which lists 40 books and page 18 which lists 30 books - the quantitive advantage is visually enhanced.

But as Barry Schwartz (not a relative) suggests in his book 'The Paradox of Choice', 'More is Less'.

In the print edition, one only has to choose between books. Indeed, making the choice even in this short list is confusing. What's odd about the NYT bestsellers list is its classification confusion in both the Bestseller category and the list category: Format (paperback, hardcover) is intermixed with genre (advise, fiction, nonfiction), and sales channel (mass market, trade).

This list is clearly not organized with the user (the reader) in mind. It is hard to imagine a reader pondering which a mass market fiction book to get for her Summer holiday. But at least the choice is among books. The Amazon ad offers, in addition to the large quantity of books, also a range of publication types - books and magazines and newspapers -- clearly a scope beyond that of the print list, but also a completely different type of choice and context of choice.

Finally, the interface of the NYT list in print requires the reader to read. Each item includes:

Title
Author,
Publisher,
List price and
A short blurb.

There may be a bias to select the top ranking books thinking that they are also the best books, but because the lists are short and easy to read, it is not an effort to cover all.

Now, the user interface for browsing the same NYT bestsellers list on Amazon's Kindle section does not require one to read. Rather, one may be compelled to make the choice by the covers, ignoring the wise proverb 'Don't judge a book by its cover'.

Here, each item includes:

Cover photo (title and author quite visible)
Title
List price
Kindle price

and here is the interface of all the bestseller books (54) in fiction category:

So, how many books could you download by the time you finish browsing the NYT bestsellers list on the Kindle website?

What We Learn From Animators About Prototyping

2009-06-06T08:30:00.001-05:00

In animation, much like in software, everything that we see on the screen needs to be artificially created. In other words, as opposed to live action film, where the camera captures massive amounts of extra detail because it is part of the physical world, animators must create the ground the characters are walking on, the sky, and everything in between.

The production process of animation can be excruciatingly slow even in modern, computer generated productions. 'Snow white', Disney's first full length feature film took 4 years to produce (1934-37) and ended up costing nearly S1.5 million, a significant sum for a feature film back in 1937. In fact, a list compiled by Forbs, of 25 most expensive films until 2006, adjusted for inflation, lists one full-animation film and many with heavy use of special effects which is a form of animation.

In a recent interview with Terry Gross, Pete Docter described the creative process of the animators team behind the Pixar movie 'UP' ($175M), a process that in many respects is very similar to the process established by animators in the early days of animation at the dawn of the 20th century.

For example, the team created a story reel which Docter, the movie's co-director, described as a "comic book version of the movie". The idea is to build the visual sequence of the movie using rough 'keyframes' - drawings that define the start and end points of a sequence. Team members record the dialogs and add these to the visual roll. In the case of 'Up' the team used immediately available resources such as Docter's daughter who's recording ended up in the released movie.

Animation, has always been slow and expensive to produce because it is labor and technology intensive. Thus the story reel provides the stakeholders and the production team with a good idea of the narrative flow from start to end - before production begins. Gaps and flows can be identified and the script, character models and animation properties can be modified accordingly.

One second of animation, at 24 frames per second takes 12 to 24 unique images. According to an article published in January 1938 in Popular Mechanics Monthly, over 1.5 million drawings were created for Snow White. Fast forward 70 years and production of computer generated animation is still as demanding, and prototyping before actual production is critical.

So in addition to the story reel animators also use a technique called pencil testing. The pencil test helps evaluate the animation quality within a scene. The animators shoot a scene using key frames and in-betweens (the sequence of drawings the connect 2 keyframes), review the result to identify flows in the animation - jerkiness, action that goes too fast or too slow, etc. - and make the necessary changes. Once pencil sketches were approved the production moved on to retrace in ink those rough pencil outlines, yielding high quality drawings, and these were in turn traced on clear acetate cels and painted. A long process indeed.
Another technique that was an absolute must in the day of hand made drawing animation, was 'flipping'. The animator, hunched over his animation table would quickly flip through a stack of drawings - sometimes as little s six or twelve, to get a sense of the flow within a sequence. This was very helpful during the process of creating the in-between drawings.

The similarity between animation prototyping techniques and user interface and user experience design are interesting:

The story reel is like a complete interactive prototype, the one that let's us step through tasks an interactions from login to logoff - check for overall consistency of interaction patterns and usability. Identify gaps in requirements and patterns. It is seeing the forest and also the trees and is important on a project level.
The pencil test is is like testing a single ui widget or screen - is it working according to business requirements? does it comply with our established interaction and visual design patterns? If not, iterate until approved. This is like seeing the tree but not the forest, and is useful on a work-stream level.
Flipping, the quick testing of interaction flow within a ui widget, for example, a dynamic panel in Axure. This is useful on a team member, UXA level.

Choosing a Prototyping Tool

2009-06-06T06:22:00.001-05:00

It seems that only yesterday the mainstream prototyping option favored by user experience practitioners was Visio. Also common were heated arguments on the greatness of paper, Power Point and other low fidelity tools and techniques as the main prototyping instruments. I recall a 2007 uphill battle with colleagues around use of Axure for a large RIA project, where I was met with skepticism and concerns about the validity of the approach. They favored Visio.

Fast forward to 2009 and there seems to be an influx of new tools and with them, potential possibilities to express ourselves to our colleagues, business and development partners. This trend signals that finally the practice of user experience has matured and is large enough to attract software developers. This trend happened with word processors, desktop publishing, illustration, video editing, browsers, web authoring and many others. Eventually the market settles on a couple of applications that become the de-facto tools of the trade, at least until a game-changer enters the field. From this perspective, Axure is a game changer, emerging when pressures on UX to simulate rich interaction rendered tools like Visio useless.
A few points to consider:

What is our interest as a professional community? I would argue that as information architecture and interaction design are getting more complex yet deadlines continue to shrink, we want our prototyping tools to be powerful yet easier to use: We need demonstrate our value in expressing complex applications correctly - and fast. The tools needs to handle the various facets of our work products: As we know, there is a lot more to user experience design than just mocking up screens and simulating rich interaction. Our deliverables include extensive documentation that is consumed by a range of stakeholders.
Features and complexity. I would argue that the successful tool must be feature-rich and fit the granularity of prototyping throughout the design process. By that I mean that we typically start with high-level concepts - fast wireframes and flows. Gradually and with feedback from research and stakeholders, more depth and details are added to the prototype, including interactions and detailed annotations. While we want to simulate rich interactions, I think that it is desirable to avoid becoming programmers, or at least, minimize the need to relay on a scripting language such as ActionScript or JavaScript. A concern is that the more effort is spent on making the prototype interactive, the less flexible the design becomes because we are getting involved in development instead of design. It is possible to create fairly complex prototypes with Axure without ever using raised events and variables, but these features are available to power users. Few of the new tools offer this flexibility. Finally, beyond dragging and dropping some UI widgets on a canvas and simulate RIA interaction, it is the proven ability to fuse team work, richness of interaction specifications, reuse of visual and interaction patterns (to name some key capabilities) that sets a tool like Axure from the new crop of tools.
Proficiency and professional benefits. This is especially relevant to situations where a team of interaction designers is assembled and is required to conceptualize, test and document (fast...) a large, complex application. It makes a great difference if all team members can - in addition to quickly get up to speed on the prototyping tool - master it and maximize its potential. For example, Axure seems to be gaining awareness in the UX community so it is easier to find UX professionals who are familiar with it and can 'hit the ground running' . Another important aspect is that practitioners want leverage expertise gained in one project when moving to another employer or project. If one uses tool A in one project, tool b in another and tool c in the next, there is little benefit in terms of best practice and expertise from a professional perspective.
Shared projects, regardless of the prototyping tool, are not trivial and best practice is still evolving as knowledge around this new, emerging capability is spreading within the community. Developers of prototyping tools that do not support sharing miss on the experiences gained from having to deal with the challenges of collaborative work, especially issues that relate to management of assets, management of multiple releases, etc. Keep in mind that implementing solutions into the tool take time and feedback form practitioners - see the list of desired functionality for Axure to get an idea of how much more we want...
Cost. As others and myself noted elsewhere in this forum, cost plays a major role for the acceptance and adaptation of any tool. As we know, cost is not just the price of the application, but also the time invested in getting to proficiency, dealing with work-arounds if the tool lacks the features needed, or if it is buggy. There is also an interesting phenomenon with price: If the tool is too inexpensive it tend to be dismissed by IT organizations. From this perspective Axure's price point makes it affordable to single practitioner and also makes it a palatable purchase for large teams.
Community and Customer support. Last but not least - The prototyping application and files become critical to our ability to deliver on time. As I wrote elsewhere, the confidence that Axure will respond to an urgent crisis is a major, major point of differentiation for me. I know that postings on this board or direct mail to Support will be addressed. I also learn all the time from reading the tips and techniques that other practitioners post regularly. In fairness to the developers of the new tools, they will have an opportunity to prove their commitment to the their customer base. Ultimately, the success of one tool over another can be often attributed to the strength of the community formed around it.

To be continued here.

This post was originally written as a response to another post in a thread on Axure's discussion board.
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Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis. (Disclaimer text by Dingle)

High Fidelity and Low Fiedelity Prototyping

2009-06-06T06:11:00.002-05:00

Magritte's painting "Ceci n'est pas une pipe" ("This is not a pipe") continues to be the source of delicious musings on art and semiotics almost a century after Magritte created the series of paintings called The Treachery of Images .

The point here is that the prototype is not the application, and keeping this in mind can guide the user interaction team in developing a prototype that is rich and effective, yet not so involved as to introduce complexities to the project.

We are witnessing a dramatic change in the landscape of prototyping tools available to practitioners, and with the tools, business acceptance of and demand for increased visualization of the proof of concepts before development begins.

Ideally, the prototyping process should be continuous and evolutionary, meaning that it is possible to increment the prototype file increasingly adding depth and specifications. So it is a matter of developing a prototyping process that is effective and appropriate to the point of project. Typically, low fidelity works well at the very early days of the design process:

Sketches on paper, cards, post-its, etc.
Sketches in Powerpoint, Visio, Illustratior, etc.

The purpose of these quick sketches is mostly to provide the designer with an initial handle of the concept, quickly experiment with approaches.

To be continued here.

* As a side note, a search for 'this is not a pipe' yields a result set that demonstrates some of the issues Walter Benjamin brought up in 'The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility'. Which image is the pipe of 'This Is Not A Pipe'?

Lessons from History on Prototyping

2009-06-06T06:06:00.002-05:00

A decade ago the discipline of UX did not exist. Not that we did not practice it, but terminology was still evolving, user centered design was in the horizon, and Donald Norman's 'The Design of Everyday Things' was becoming a hit among those of us who found themselves responsible for making software easier to use by introducing the wild concept of accounting for the users in the process.

It is true that personal computers haven't been around for long either, but as the use of computers spread worldwide, several generations of users suffer the consequences of a software with terrible user interfaces at all levels - from operating systems and up - software that was designed with little consideration for ease of use, accessibility and real productivity. This is a generalization which is unfair to those who did care about the user, the user interface and the outcome - the user experience, but the statement does apply in my opinion to the majority of software vendors.

This is not unlike the situation of physical architecture. Of the billions of private residents, public buildings and industrial structures, probably only a few ever benefited from the design of an architect. Not that the solutions were necessarily bad - in fact, many of the structures we see today evolved successfully over millennia. People build their own homes - individually or as a communal effort. Read Donald Harington's 'The Architecture of the Arkansas Ozarks' for a wonderful account of such evolutionary process.

In the classic text 'On the Art of Building in Ten Books', Leon Battista Alberti mentions that Julius Caesar "completely demolished a house on his estate in Nemi, because it did not totally meet with his approval." and continues to recommend "the time-honored custom, practiced by the best builders, of preparing not only drawings and sketches but also models of wood or any other material." (1).

Back in the Fifteenth century Alberti described an event that took place in the First century BC. Substitute 'building' with user interface, and the business value, best practice and positive impact on the end product are still the same. The amazing find here is the reference to a prototype, to a model, that builders and their clients used early on as means of communicating the desired end result.

Alberti writes further that "Having constructed those models, it will e possible to examine clearly and consider thoroughly relationship between the site and the surrounding district, the shape of the area, the number and order of parts of a building...It will also allow one to increase or decrease the size of those elements freely, to exchange them, and make new proposals and alterations until everything fits together well and meet with approval. Furthermore, it will provide a surer indication of the likely costs - which is not unimportant - by allowing one to calculate costs".

In another example of custom use of prototyping, Baxandall writes about the Fifteenth century painter Filippo Lippi, who in 1457 was commissioned to paint a triptych for Giovanni di Cosimo de' Medici, the Italian banker and patron of the arts (1). In a letter to Giovanni, Filippo writes "...And to keep you informed, I send a drawing of how the triptych is made of wood, and with its height and breadth..."

So we did not quite invent the prototyping wheel and I'd propose that instead of floating complex ROI equations and fancy technical terminology as means to convince our business partners that investment in interactive prototyping is worth while, we can reference back to the past and lessons learned from the art of building and of fine art.

To be continued here.

(1) Michael Baxandall, 'Painting and Experience in Fifteenth-Century Italy'.

Best practice for shared Axure projects

2009-06-06T06:04:00.002-05:00

While it is important to develop tool-agnostic practices, in reality we are always empowered and limited by our choice of tools. Although this post references Axure specific functionality it also includes general aspects, the first and most important of which is communications.

Regular and productive communications are the important contributer for successful team work, yet it is easier to say than practice. This is especially true with virtual teams of individuals who work remotely from their homes and on-site teams spread across several geographical locations. But all to often people who are only a few years apart fail to exchange meaningful information.

As much as possible it is important to allocate time for staff development to ensure that all team members posses a level of proficiency that would not only make them productive, but also avoid loss of work due to errors caused by an unknowledgeable team member messing up the shared file. As we know, such calamities tend to happen just before a major deadline.

Team members should understand how to work with shared projects. All should be comfortable with the various options under the 'Share' menu and the difference between options such as 'Get all changes..." and "Get Changes...", for example.
New team members should have an on-boarding deep dive session with a knowledgeable team member to cover the structure of the sites. In large, intense projects new members are often thrown in to the cold waters of a shared project file to sink or swim because the team is at the height of some crunch. disoriented and under pressure to get up to speed asap, the incoming member can be easily lost in the intricacies and work-arounds.
All team member should participate in a weekly status meeting that covers the structure of the sitemap, variables (since those are global and limited) and other important changes. Use web sharing to view the file, make sure that members understands the composition structure of their colleagues.
Despite looming deadlines...it is important to be careful and pay attention before checking in and out. A few seconds of concentration can save hours of lost work.
Team members should avoid unsafe check outs -- checking out pages that are already checked out by another team member - this is critical.
Before you begin work on a page, make sure to 'Get ALL changes from shared directory' - this will insure you have the latest copy.
Update your file frequently by getting all changes.
When done editing a page or master you checked out, check it in so that it will be available for other team members.
Check out only what's needed for your design work, check in as soon as done and check out the next chunk you are going to work on: Avoid hogging files you are not working on but still checked out.
If possible, structure the sitemap and masters in sections such that team members can work on chunks of the file in parallel. Agree on unique page and master IDs and a naming convention to help team members access the right files and communicate.
Make sure to back up the shared file.

Note: Sections of this entry was first published on Axure's discussion board, but I had requests to post it here.

Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis. (Disclaimer text by 'dingle', a frequent contributer to the Axure discussion Board)

DATA.GOV

2009-05-26T09:28:00.002-05:00

A recent editorial in the NYT informed me about the federal government's new resource - Data.gov. As noted in the editorial, the site is still new and does not provide yet any direct data visualization and manipulation widgets, although sometimes there are links to other sites where such widgets are available. Still, this “one-stop shop for free access to data generated across all federal agencies.” as Peter Orszag describes it, promises information architects and user experience designers an unparalleled opportunity to experiment and develop new paradigms of data visualizations. For the most part, access to very large sets of data is not readily available, or so easily found.
Below is the search result for the term 'flu.

The link to the CDC's library of widgets shows a surprising wealth of them readily available for consumption. Embeded in this post is the CDC's FluIQ widget, as a useful example...Check it out:

On Monitizing

2009-05-23T08:38:00.006-05:00

On May 21, 2009 I started a new blog dedicated to user experience prototyping. As part of the Settings flow, I decided that it will be interesting to witness the evolution in the context of ads that Google's AdSense feeds to the blog. Also, I am hoping to get really wealthy as visitors to my blog click away from it on their way to some other destination...

I was really shocked when I first tested the the results after posting my first post and my knee-jerk reaction was to stop showing the ads. The reason, as you may guess was that the ads were suitable more to, shell we say, interactions of the physical nature than to a site than to one dedicated user experience and interaction with software, an activity that typically does not involve body fluids,
I've reactivated a couple of days later and here is the result:As you can see, it is not likely to be of interest to my target audience. But perhaps I'm wrong, a topic for another entry. I am hoping to update this post over time, and am really curious about what is going to transpire.

Update on May 25th:

Still too soon for Google's bots to discover the great contribution of the blog to the practice of user experience design, because the automated ads are clearly not contextual to the site, which now has a couple of posts and some links to relevant content.

Update on May 28th
Already on the 26th there was a noticeable change in the quality of the ads Google generated and displayed on the site: There were all contextual to the blog's content. The illustration below is a comparison of ads One of the lessons of this experiment is the importance of conditioning a site to be as productive as possible from a search engine perspective.

I am not sure how many user experience practitioners are versed in the craft of website optimization and web analytics. In my experience, work on a commercial B to C project typically involves heightened awareness to analysis. It does appear that not enough information architects and user experience designers are considering analytics during the design process. Rather, analytics professionals handle optimization as a technical aspect of the site, and after the site has been redesigned and launched.

Avinash Kaushik's blog Occam's Razor provides important insights, many of which are really relevant from an interaction design perspective. Since the demands (or daemons?) for monetizing anything web are becoming a norm, it is important to consider the information architecture in a way the will be effective, providing value 'under the hood' avoiding transformation of the site or application into a 'Times Square'. Best practice approaches can be adopted from analytics and further developed for the purposes of improved user experience.

But back to the nature of the ads the appear by default on the side before Google and other search engine had time to index it's content.

As you can see in the capture above, Blogger (and I'm assuming other publishing tools) provide the ability to indicate to the bots that the site contains adult content. But despite the fact that from it's inception, my blog was set to 'No', the ads in the first few days assumed (cynically?) that it is, or, that visitors to the site will be interested.

Faceted Browsing and Taxonomy

2009-01-09T14:13:00.034-06:00

This entry is a work in progress intended as a tentative study of current use of faceted (guided) navigation in e-commerce settings and how it exposes underlying taxonomy to the user. This blog entry is NOT a critique of the sites discussed here but rather an exploration of navigation paths, taxonomy facilitated browsing and assumptions made regarding the inherent use of underlying information architecture and its impact on clarity and usability (directly impacting conversion and retention rates).

1. Lowe's.com [Captured January 2009]

There are several ways to navigate the site by browsing. The left column provides groupings that parallel the top horizontal menu. In the left column the user see items grouped by Departments and below that, items grouped by Rooms. Departments maps to the store or correspond to a mental model a user might have of the store, and Rooms map to a home or correspond to a mental model the user might have of a home. Providing multiple browsing models is a nice feature because it supports self identification - the user benefits from a flexibility to be at their comfort level, not the site's.

One can assume that the user is more familiar with the concept of a home, so it is a pity that the navigation the user is more comfortable with is secondary to the one the store's model. On the other hand, some users may also be very familiar with the store model. For example - store clerks or customer service reps. (But in my experience the in-store terminals are generally not similar to a company's public e-commerce store). In any case, the site exposes and organizes the highest level of its taxonomy and access to its products in two ways, which increases the flexibility and and probability the user will select one path to work with and not abandon the site.

The number of items under the Rooms model is obviously much shorter than those under Departments and more over, the Laundry Room is one of the items listed right there on this first level. But, browsing top down path 1 (See image below) is the first the user will encounter, clicking the Appliance link under 'Departments'.

>>> Assumption: The user would know/guess that a dryer is an appliance.

Path 1:

L1.1 - Departments

L1.2 - Appliances (click to get to L2)

If the user is more inquisitive and visually scrolls down to the Rooms section, the obvious, explicit selection is right there. (See image

Path 2:

l1.3 - Rooms

l1.4 - Laundry Room (click to get to L2)

Both browse path involve 2 clicks, so no efficiency is gained in terms of physical effort.

Talking Taxonomy To Kids

2009-01-05T16:29:00.030-06:00

Everyone knows that you need to use simple words when talking to little kids, so 'big' words like classification, clustering, facets and hierarchy (a distasteful term which even some grownups find difficult to spell) are out. So let's start with a tree. Imagine a tree. What's a tree really? You could say that a tree is like a 'parent', and it has 'children': A trunk that splits into several big branches that in turn split into smaller twigs that split into even smaller twigs where leaves sprout and fruit grow. If the child is really curious, you can talk about the parts of the tree that only moles could see if moles could see: The taproot which is the main root that grows vertically into the ground, the lateral roots that parallels the branches, the radicles which is just a word for small roots that parallel twigs, and the root hair zone which is like the leaves. But lets not make things complicated, because we are talking to a child who happens to speak English. We'd have to use words like stamm (trunk), zweig (branch) and zweig again for twig because it seems that the Germans don't have a special word for it, or at least that's what you get from online translators.

So. is taxonomy like a tree? wait, wait... because there is another way to describe a tree: The bole is the part of the tree between the ground and the first branch, the crown which is the part of the tree from the first branch to the top, and the top which is the highest part of the tree.

And...a tree is a plant and there are all kinds of trees and here are just a few: Redwood, Ash, Fir, Spruce, Sequoia. There are banana trees, apple trees, orange trees and how exactly is a Sequoia related to and Avocado tree? And even more: A collection of trees can form a forest, grove, garden, or park which by themselves are not just collections of trees but wider concepts. So of course, the development of a taxonomy involves research, and among other things, one can find that for many domains, especially in life sciences, law, government and many others, it is possible to start the process with an existing taxonomy, see for example the taxonomywarehouse.

It is clear that the scope of concepts in the world is endless due to the Human instinct to stereotype and classify, first explored by Aristotle, or at least - this is our first written record of an arrangement to classes, subclasses and so on, as means to understand our world. But if so, lets keep in mind that children must have an inherent understanding of classification, and by extenuation, of taxonomy. It is only a matter of vocabulary then.

Taxonomy is a communication device, a tricky one because it is important to make sure that the person that communicates the taxonomy and the audience for the taxonomy understand each other. So the first thing is to understand - who will be using your taxonomy and how.

When you talk to a child, you want to talk about the tree using words like brunch, twigs, leaves etc. and you don't want to discuss apical dominance, foliage and phloem because this is not the vocabulary of an eight years old. And since we clearly can apply elementary school education to user experience design, I would add that developing a taxonomy is art as much as it is science, and for that you can read more in Bowker and Star's great book 'Sorting Things Out'.

As a communication device, taxonomy's principal use is in navigation systems and facilitating good search results. But because a taxonomy maps to a known mental model shared by the user and the system, it is important that the appropriate taxonomy will be exposed to the user in navigation systems, drop-lists, and other actionable interface objects. Such a system allows the user to self-identify: I'm a kid, I'm a teacher or I'm a parent/guardian, and the system renders relevant taxonomies based on appropriate synonym mapping. The multidimensionality of relations within a taxonomic plane is supported by explicit content tagging as well as folksonomy - a taxonomy set by users, to provides the necessary flexibility.

Towards A Unified UI Testing Model

2009-01-01T07:07:00.010-06:00

This entry was inspired by a post by Avinash Kaushik 'Experiment or Die. Five Reasons And Awesome Testing Ideas'.

Although 'User' is the operative word in 'User Interface', it took several decades to get usability off the ground as a service companies are willing to pay for. It is true that some companies pioneered user centered design years ago, but I think it is safe to say that the 'main street' of companies involved in any substantial software project considered (and many still do) the user interface mere eye candy. But the evidence for an evolution is the accepted legitimacy of roles such information and user experience architects, usability engineers, interface designers and so on.

As a result of the higher awareness to the UI throughout a software's life cycle, testing the UI during development is now increasingly common as the tools needed to conduct reasonable testing are more affordable, and testing goals are more practical. Consumer facing interface re/design projects are increasingly adding usability testing as part of the pre-launch process and there is certainly a shift from pseudo-scientific testing of eye-movement tracking or user response time to on-screen events, to measures of task flow efficiency and task completion success.

Usability testing software such as Morae and UserVue substantially reduce the expense and limitations of UI testing that were common just a few years ago when usability labs had to be be rented by the hour, and were extremely expensive. In early 2006 I was handed sixteen audio-cassettes of ninety minutes each after finishing a couple of days in a usability lab. The client spent over $10K for the testing and yet the budget did not allow for video taping and there was no time nor budget allocation to go over the audio tapes after the sessions. While we learned a lot form the sessions, and $10K were a drop in the bucket for a multi-million dollar project, the singularity of such an exercise turned it into an expensive line item that was difficult to sell to many clients, whose budget for UI work was limited to begin with.

The truth is that the technology was just not there in terms of computing powers for real time audio and video capture possible now, and best practices were thin, since performing lab tests was a rare occasion for most practitioners. But the big drawback, in my mind, involved limited demographic and geographic distribution of the test participant due to their need to be in a relative close proximity to the testing facility. Today, with web based testing, we re no longer limited to a physical location and are able to sample a spread that is an accurate reflection of an application's user audience. Methodologies and best practices for UI testing are evolving rapidly, and acceptance of this effort is so high such that it is no longer questioned, as long as the cost is reasonable. UI testing prior to (and maybe during) development makes all the sense.

What I often find is a reality in which organizations contract UI design services - especially interaction design and information architects. As a result, navigation systems, page layouts and behavior patterns of landing pages are set during the concept development phase. Companies will pay for some iterations of user validations, but there is always a real budget pressure to release asap and cut costs. I have yet to see a project plan that seriously accounts for sufficient exploration and testing, and have to fight for it time and again. It is not that clients don’t see the value, but they don’t want to pay unless the concept is seriously off target.

To be realistic and practical - It takes significant time and labor (=$$$) to determine and preserve patterns of consistent interaction and visual design approach and the variations possible. The efforts can be significantly bigger when you are dealing with a multi-national presence where one needs to account for many stakeholders as well as contrasting cultural sensibilities. It is very rare to have such luxury and moreover, critics may argue that the best evolution of the redesigned UI will take place in deployment, not in the 'lab'.

And so, in many cases, the UI design consulting firm leaves around deployment time after handoff to the internal development team and this is where the brand new UI begins to fall apart - there is no one internally with the skill-set, time, budget to take charge of testing the evolving interface as it is being readied for deployment. I doubt that The style guides and UI specs are used much; the cynical phrase 'No one reads' is no far off reality partially because specs are difficult to produce and hard to consume. But that is another story.

As it turns out the UI often gets tested again once in production. This is especially true for commercial B2B and B2C RIAs. However, this round of testing and decisions about modifications to the UI are often done outside of the context of usability, often, without the involvement of the UI team that architected it (due to the fact that often, the consultants who were hired to develop the applications UI are not retained after the launch. In fact - the people who do this round of testing often know very little about UI practice OR even look at the UI they test and attempt to improve.

Usability testing:

The testing is performed by usability professionals, part of a concentrated, focused UI effort.
The testing is typically qualitative because the sample of participants is relatively small.
The testing is typically done on low fidelity clickable prototype, a semi-functional POC, or for redesign purposes on the deployed software.
The testing validates the design concept and triggers stakeholders' sign-off, or guides improvements to the existing or redesigned software.

Web Analytics Conversion testing:

The testing is performed by web analytics professionals and the effort is typically not related to a UI effort: The testing is not really focused on the user interface from a usability perspective, but from an optimization perspective.
The testing is quantitative, based on actual web analytics data derived from deployment usage.
The tested user interface is the production UI.

Analytics testing takes time - time to plan the testing strategy, prepare it, but most of all, time to execute and wait to see if trends are changing. We can not assume that the change will take place overnight. Is there a way to attribute time factor to the success or failure of a tested approach? Was it a single element that has contributed to the change, or is it the combination? or is it the latent impact of the brand, of market drivers, reduction of costs and so on.

During development, usability testing is iterative, fast and qualitative. Often this is where testing ends for many organizations, they stop using the consultants and move to analytics testing that is performed by web analytics consultant, or, it is likely that they will have someone in house. Analytics testing is on-going, quantitative, and can be like stabbing in the dark - trying to figure Why without tying it to usability.

Clearly a gap in the interaction design discourse when it comes to web analytics (and testing for optimization). Analytics is regarded as a ‘post’ event, not as something you can be proactive about during the design process. What I hope to see is more dialog between the user experience community and the web analytics community around practical ways to integrate testing and develop a full life cycle approach that combines usability and analytic s considerations throughout. More to come.

Tutorial: Simulate Type-Ahead Using Axure

2008-11-16T09:23:00.018-06:00

I created this audio-visual tutorial a few months ago. Several people have asked me since to post it in this blog. Here is the link: http://www.artandtech.com/type-ahead.html

Real-Time, Quantitative Capture of User Response to Streaming Content

2008-10-11T13:26:00.078-05:00

1. Introduction

Usability studies utilize both qualitative and quantitative methods for capturing user response to the user interface that is being tested. We can measure mouse-clicks, time on task, task completion rates and other valuable data. We can also collect verbal feedback related to ease of use, visual design, layout and other subjective responses. The processing of collected verbal data is expensive because recordings have to be transcribed, tagged and often edited for readability. This is a labor intensive process and if the testing is done with users who talk different languages, translation is also required. Moreover, even when interviews are carefully scripted and prompts are consistent, response are often difficult to reconcile: Participant's answers can be inconsistent, vague, and generally difficult to analyze and interpret.

Verbal feedback is also used to capture participants' response to streaming content and to gage level of engagement with that content. Typically the tester pauses the media and prompts the participant for her or his opinion. The benefit of this method is that the feedback is contextually related to the content which had just been displayed and is fresh in the mind of the respondent. The disadvantage is the labor intensive post session processing and interpretation of the information gathered. Alternatively, a user can be given a questioner at the end of the streaming content. The benefit of a questioner is that it is easier to process and measure the responses, but the drawback is that the participant is not likely to recall in deep detail their response to content or their sense of engagement with content that was displayed minutes ago.

This paper describes a method I developed to capture in real-time participants' response to streaming content as well as their engagement levels throughout the presentation. The key benefits of this method are:

Capture in real-time users' response to streaming content such as web seminars, tutorials and demos, where the user interface itself plays a smaller role in the interaction
Significantly lower the time labor costs associated with processing the feedback, which may help budgeting for larger samples.
Capture response to streaming content by setting your own test pages or from any website or application.

The method involves the use of TechSmith's Morae*, which is currently the only commercial, out-of-the-box software for usability test. The method leverages Morae's capability to captures, among other things, mouse movement and mouse clicks.

2. Methods

2.1 Create your own test page/s

The first approach is to create your own test pages. This scenario works well when you:

Wish to hide the tested content from the associated company's identity by isolating it from the rest of the company's site and the site's URL.
When you are testing several draft variations of the content, don't want to bother site admins with helping you post the stuff and need to run it locally off your machine.

An added benefit is that you can perform the test without worrying about the quality of bandwidth in the test location, or an internet connection all together.

Some technical skills involving the creation of a standard web page are required for setting up your own test pages, but a typical page is really simple, composed of the embedded streaming content - typically a Flash file (So you will need the SWF file), and a single graphics that is used to capture the feedback for content and engagement. See image 1 below:

You need to create an image that will be used to capture the user's responses to content and the user's engagement level. This graphic can be as fancy as you wish, but my suggestion is to keep it simple and remember that the main event on the page is the streaming content, not these graphics. Here is an image I typically use:

The image is divided into 2 sections:

Left side - Response to content. A rating scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being "I don't care -- trivial content" to 7 being "Really important -- Tell me more!"
Right side - Engagement level. A rating scale from 1 to 7, with 1 being "I'm bored" to 7 being "I'm fully engaged"

Morae Study Configuration

To maximize efficiency of logging sessions in Morae Manager, it is best to prepare the study configuration in advance. See image below:

For a 7 based rating scale, prepare 7 markers for content and 7 markers for engagement and label them Content 1, Content 2, etc. Change the letter association for the markers to a sequence that will make it easy for you to use shortcut during the logging. Finally, assign a color to all content markers, and a different one to all engagement markers. This different colors will provide a clear differentiation once you finish placing all the markers.

How it Works:

Ask the user to click the relevant ratings on the content and engagement bars as the content streams. Ask the user to click as many times as makes sense. Morae captures mouse clicks on the bars, which are easy to see and log. (The red triangle in the image below is generated by Moare Recorder during the session.)

In logging the session it is possible to identify with a high degree of accuracy which section of the streaming content the participant rated, and of course, the assigned value. With a big enough sample rate you can get a good insight into participants opinion about the content -- both narration and visuals, as well as their engagement level throughout the streaming.

Some production tips:

For the screen to be aesthetically pleasing and professionally looking, I adjust the width of the image so that it is the same as the width of the embedded content I'm testing.
The buttons on the bar should be clear and easy to see, and easy to click on.
The labels should be clear and easy to read
This is a static image - no need to create mouse-over states.
Keep to the minimum the number of shades and colors used for the buttons: The participant needs to focus on the media, not the buttons, so minimize visual overload.
Differentiate between the low and high scores. I have a gradual shift from White (1) to Yellow (7)
Make sure you have good speakers so that the participant can hear clearly the narration.

2.2 Capture any web page
The second approach makes it possible to capture user's response to any streaming content, on any site. This scenario works when:

You want to test content that is on a production site but you don't have the media file locally
You want to capture response to a section of a competitors site
You want to capture response to streaming content but are also conducting a traditional usability test for the site (navigation, workflow, tasks and so on)
For some reason you can not use self-created test pages.

Just keep in mind that an internet connection will be required in the testing -- try to avoid at all cost a wireless connection and opt for an ethernet cable, if available.

How it Works:
Since a measurement bar graphic cannot be used, I suggest a low tech solution - drafting tape. The simplest method: Apply a strip of drafting tape directly to the monitor, above the clip you want to test. With a sharpie, write 'Content' in the top-center, the number 1 on the left, 2 in the middle and 3 on the right. Apply a second strip on the bottom of the clip, write 'Engagement' and the 3 numbers.

The strips help guide the user to well defined area of the screen where you want them to click. The strip is semi-transparent, so the user can see the mouse pointer then they click, and since they click in areas that are not part of the content object, the streaming is not interrupted by the clicks. When you view the recorded session later, the drafting tape strips will obviously not be there, but since you know their meaning - the clusters of clicks on top and bottom of the clip, and to the left, middle and right - will help you collect the relevant data as effectively as if there was a graphic there. Once this section of the study is done, you can peel the tape off the screen an move on to another topic.

While the example above works best for a 3 rating system, you can setup a more granular system used the left and right sides of the box. However, keep in mind that you want to keep it simple, and that adding too much tape around the clip may mask too much of the screen. Also think about the accuracy when logging the

What you need:

A 1" 3M™ Scotch® 230 Drafting Tape - this tape sticks to the screen but is easy to peel off. You can get it in any office supply store.
Ultra or extra fine tip Sharpies - I use a Blue for the content strip , Black for engagement strip and red for the numbers. (Avoid using Red and Green for labels because they carry an inherent association for bad (Red) and Good (Green), which may confuse the user.
Small scissors (to cut the tape nicely)
Lens cleaner solution to wipe the screen after peeling off the tape

Keep in mind

Don't be sloppy: Cut the strips with scissors. If you have to tear the tape, fold about 1/2" on each side to give the strip edges and straight edge.
Apply the tape as horizontally as you can (Leveler is not needed...)
Demonstrate to the user how you want them to act during the recording and make sure they are comfortable with the mouse going 'under' the tape while they click it.

3. What's next?
Once you capture and tag the sessions, it is possible to translate data to valuable information. There are many interesting ways to slice and dice the data, well beyond the scope of this document. However, as you can see in the graphs below, aggregation of session data make a compelling story about response to content and level of engagement to existing or proposed streaming media. makes helps present to stakeholders important analysis and help develop strategies

------------------------------------------------------------------------
* Can be used with Morae 2 and 3.

The Analog Threat

2008-09-05T16:38:00.006-05:00

Google's new browser has a privacy mode called 'Incognito'. In this mode, sites open in a new window and do not "...appear in your browser history or search history, and they won't leave other traces, like cookies, on your computer after you close the incognito window."

Google warns users that Going incognito doesn't affect the behavior of other people, servers, or software. Be wary of:

Websites that collect or share information about you
Internet service providers or employers that track the pages you visit
Malicious software that tracks your keystrokes in exchange for free smileys
Surveillance by secret agents

These are all sophisticated electronic transgression methods and they sharply contrast the last point:

People standing behind you

This point is needed, perhapse, because, to quote Voltaire "Common sense in not so common". Interstingly, this is the only threat most users CAN do something about if they pay attention...

SOA Predictions for 2008

2008-01-10T21:35:00.000-06:00

Dr. Jerry Smith just published his SOA predictions for 2008. Certainly, the domain of user experience design must become an integral part of SOA. Perhaps at some large companies this synthesis already takes place. But it appears that there is still a massive gap between the front and back ends. Given that simulation tools are just emerging (See Axure), and Visio wireframes still dominate the UEA practice, I doubt that a lot will change in 2008 - The gap in maturity is just too wide.

Still, I would like to append a question to Jerry's predictions:

Will companies finally realize that SOA must also incorporate UEA (User Experience Architecture)? Let's revisit next year.

Basic Search

2008-01-01T07:27:00.000-06:00

The definition of ‘Simple’ requires a whole discussion…but typically, simplicity can be afforded by reducing the amount of pre-requisite knowledge the user needs to have and the number of decisions the user needs to make before taking action.

The screenshot below provides a good opportunity to discuss a number of usability issues to consider when constructing a 'Simple Search'.

1. A text disclaimer such as the one here: “For more search options, use the advanced search below” is more effective if placed at the footer of the box, after the user had an opportunity to review the capabilities of this search control.

2. The actual search field is small and does not indicate the ability to enter a phrase. Entering more than a single keyword will hide part of the term. Finally, the label ‘Enter Keyword(s) which implies discrete words, conflicts the option to check ‘Exact phrase’ which suggests the ability to enter more than a keyword.

3. The option to ‘Restrict by Type’ may confuse the user. Typically, from a user’s perspective, ‘Full Text’ suggests WHERE the search is taking place – on the full texts of the documents. Here, the full text is presented as a type of data, which is correct, but also not very intuitive. Finally, many users may still not know what metadata means. (certainly, users of a ‘simple search’ are not quite the audience that should be expected to know. Note that by default this section is collapsed. The user needs to click and see the choices. Given that there is a default (which is always good), why not show the default, and clicking that will allow the user to see the other choices and make a change. Better yet, consider eliminating this choice all together.

4. Again, the user needs to make a decision about option that may not be clear, or, appear too restrictive. It is quite likely that the user would like to see all the details, so this choice is more appropriate in the display of the result set. Note that by default this section is collapsed. The user needs to click and see the choices. Given that there is a default (which is always good), why not show the default, and clicking that will allow the user to see the other choices and make a change. Better yet, consider eliminating this choice all together and using it in the search results page.

First published at "http://fedora.info/wiki/index.php/Basic_Search_UI"

One Laptop Per Child

2007-12-31T06:08:00.000-06:00

The One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project got a fraction of the attention and resources the iPhone got this year, although it is revolutionary in its design and social goals.

I got one of these laptops, and it is a marvel of vision and technology. It reminds me the first time I encountered a Mac Classic, back in 1986.

Visit: http://www.laptop.org/ to learn more.

Search with Nuance ?

2007-09-13T19:27:00.000-05:00

A quote from a recent article (1):

“...When you search for a crow on Google, you find plenty of references to people named Crow and people who crow about things, and that doesn’t help when you’re studying the bird,” Dr. Parr said..."

What should we expect? A mind reading Google that knows one is looking for Crow the bird, and not Crow the actor?! Results should include both to cover all bases.

It is the lack of context, or rather, the lack of opportunities to provide context during the search flow that leads to poor results. Moreover, even the more sophisticated approach that facilitates narrowing results through faceted browsing does not scale when the categories of knowledge are inclusive, overlapping or cross-disciplined.

Search is easy when both user and search agent know the answer as well as the question BEFORE the search executes. By that I mean the the user KNOWS what the answer should be. This is like searching for your car keys: You know what it is, you don't know where it is. When you find some keys, you know which is a car key.

When the search object is less defined and the search engine confused due to ambiguity, there is, naturally, a lower probability for a satisfactory result yield. Similar to grabbing the key chain a building engeneers carries, things are more complext because there are gazillion keys and they all more or less look the same. Which is the right key?

While a lot of thought is given to providing better interfaces for narrowing and navigating results, little seems to be on on the interface of search input -- the initial oppertunity to provide context.

(1) 'Helping Computers Search With Nuance, Like Us' , NYT, Peter Wayner, Sept 12, 2007

Children and the UI of a Public Library

2007-09-11T13:15:00.000-05:00

Preface
Public libraries offer all children access to an environment that facilitates life long acquisition of knowledge through simple, consistent and accessible interaction patterns. In contrast, public library websites and Online Public Access Catalogs (OPACs) for children are often not accessible and lack age discriminating features to support appropriate reading-level and comprehension skills.

Here is a review the children’s section of the Chicago Public Library's web site and a comparison of the user experience there to that in the children’s reading room. This blog entry is an adaptation to a paper I wrote back it 2004! It is disturbing that little changed, at least at CPL.

A few years ago I had the opportunity to design a user interface for a children library catalog, and will discuss that experience in one of my next entries. For now, here is a link to one deployment: http://apollo.sdln.net/F?func=file&file_name=k-home-SDS

Introduction

What factors influence how children choose books to read? In the physical building of a public library, children often have their own space and a subset of the general collection. The physical organization of the children’s section and the selection of available books, establish the scope of choice for the child. For example, younger children cannot reach books located on the higher shelves and are not attracted by books for older children, which have pages full of small typeface and few or no pictures.

Up to a certain age, children’s choice of books is mostly governed by choices adults make for them. When they choose books for themselves, young children attend primarily to physical properties, such as the cover, illustrations, typeface, paper texture, general conditions and even scent. Recognition of familiar characters, favorite animals and landscapes is a potential attraction trigger as well.

The sensation experienced when handling books assists in the book selection process, and minimal reading effort is required. Children’s experience in public libraries worldwide is similar in terms of the interaction with books and the required learning curve.

While affluent branches offer larger collections and more enmities, the individual sensory experience with books is universal regardless of the surroundings. Furthermore, the organization of the physical environment helps maintain a consistency of interaction as children grow and advance to using the adult sections of the library, facilitating life long relationship between the readers and the institution.

In contrast, the interaction experience with most library children’s catalogs is challenging because usually, a single interface supports material for ages 0 to 18. Moreover, a lot of reading is required for navigating the library web site, and children are presented with rows of bibliographical information from which they have to select when looking for books. Children are often treated as a single group of users when in reality a high degree of differentiation and adaptability is required to accommodate variations in developmental and skill levels.

In this entry I focus on the experience of emerging readers—usually children in the early grades of elementary school. I will review sample screens from the children’s interface of a large urban public library (Chicago Public) and compares the user experience there to that in the children’s reading room. Drawing on the interaction children experience in the physical library structure, I proposes ideas for a universally consistent, age appropriate and accessible design for a children’s library user interface.

Navigation and Independence

Independence in library use is important even at a young age not only because it increases children’s opportunity to explore and enjoy the library, but also because it contributes to the creation of habitual patterns for library use. The more opportunity children have to navigate independently the library catalogue, the earlier they will internalize search and selection routines that ultimately apply throughout the library. Most children’s OPACs, however, do not facilitate independent navigation by the young library users.

Figure 1: Can a 1st grader overcome this screen?

The home screen of the Chicago public library features nine main options from which a user can select (figure 1). A link labeled Kids and Teens is the 8th option on the list. The visual appearance of all choices is uniform, and a child has to read over 20 words just to find where is the children’s section. The words on the screen include terms such as ‘simultaneously’ and ‘databases’.

Figure 2: Where to go from here???

Let us suppose that our young library user selected the Kids and Teens link. The target screen (figure 2) is vaguely labeled ‘Sign of the Owl’. The screen fails to pass the W3C automatic checkpoints for priority 1 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. There is no explicit indication that this screen is indeed the home screen for the Kids and Teens section, nor is there an explanation of what the title means. The screen features a column of 13 menu choices, some of which are comprised of more than 4 words.

There does not seem to be an easily identifiable order for the list of options, and some items on the menu are quite obscure, such as the ‘Thomas Hughes Calendar of Events’. It is an example of extraneous detail that adds to the visual load but has no meaningful value to the user. Finally, while there is a menu item for Teens, there is no menu item for Kids.

Since there is no visual discrimination between the various menu items to help the young reader figure out which item to select, the large image next to the menu is very tempting to click on instead. In fact, an animated caption at the lower right corner invites the visitor to “click to play”. Accepting the invitation, our young reader is linked to an untitled screen (see figure 4). Apparently the topic here is Internet safety; but could you read it if you were a 1st grader?

Figure 3: Important, yet not quite comprehensible to young readers.

The Search link in the main Kids and Teens screen seems promising, but it takes the user to the screen displayed in figure 4: Kid’s Search Tools. This screen too is also not accessible and fails to pass the W3C automatic checkpoints for priority 2 Web Content Accessibility Guidelines. Furthermore, this screen invites the patron to use various search engines, consequently taking the user away from the Chicago Public Library web site.

Figure 4: Kids Search Tools screen. Are you kidding?

The Kid’s Search Tools screen does not allow the user access to the library’s own catalogue. In fact, it turns out that none of the links on the Sign of the Owl screen—the library’s Kids and Teens section—lead to the catalog of the Chicago Public Library. The link to the catalogue is available on the library’s home screen.

Although the Chicago Public Library has a wonderful collection of books for the emergent reader, the library’s catalogue does not facilitate children’s independent exploration of this resource. The library’s OPAC does not have a specialized interface for children. (figure 5)

Figure 5: Item details screen

The young reader will have a hard time trying to find a book using this interface. A typical details screen offers a wealth of bibliographical information most of which is irrelevant and incomprehensible for a young child. The bibliographical record either does not present information that can help beginning readers to select books (e.g. book covers or type size), or presents it in an inaccessible format (e.g. information about the length of the book). But it does not show a picture of the cover, which could greatly help the child choose the book. Of course, we need to assume that the child can negotiate the search screen and the result screen that preceded the details screen… (Figure 6)

Figure 6: Search results screen

The navigation of the Kids and Teens web section is confusing and it does not support independent use by young readers. The options that are likely to attract the younger child do not lead to the screens where books can be selected, and the path to book selection is not clearly marked.

Unlike the library reading room, where the physical arrangement of books allows children to make selections even if their reading skills are still limited, the children’s OPAC relies primarily on the user’s reading skills to navigate the library collection. Consequently, young children remain dependent on adult help when using the Kid’s catalogue and are not likely to develop effective patterns for library use until their reading skills can match the literacy requirements of the library web site.

Direction

We should be able to design an interface that gives children a sense of ownership and control over the library environment. The interface should take advantage of knowledge about interaction patterns of children with books in the physical library, and be an adaptation to the digital domain.

To be accessible for all children and their caregivers, the interface must conform to the strictest accessibility guidelines offered by the W3C. This should be probably the highest priority for such a design.

By implementing existing standards such as xhtml and css, it should be easy to integrate the interface, as a plug-in, to any library system and gain cost and maintenance efficiencies: Budgets for public libraries are tight, resources limited and IT staff stretched thin.

Librarians should be able easily and quickly customize, maintain and update content on the library site and not be bothered by proprietary code. More importantly, consistency across library sites can create opportunities for children to collaborate regardless of geographical boundaries. In addition, having a familiar interface to a new library when a family relocates will help the child adapt faster to a new environment, as the s/he can leverage knowledge of the previous system.

In commercial educational software user interaction at an appropriate age and reading level has been available for many years. Similar approaches should be applied to the library interface. The current cataloging standard used in the U.S supports age-specific grouping of the target audience into preschool, primary, pre-adolescent and adolescent readers; and there is also a less specific category of general and juvenile readership.

A library interface that is sensitive to these categories of young readers and can filter in a meaningful way is an important step towards children’s independent navigation. In order to accommodate varying reading abilities in the library interface, librarians would have to ensure that the bibliographic records of their holdings are cataloged appropriately. Nonetheless, the effort required to introduce new cataloguing practices for children’s books is worthwhile because it can significantly enhance the ability of the interface to support children’s independent use of the library online catalogue.

Summary

In the process of writing this entry I sampled dozens of public library websites worldwide. I am sad to say that most shared many of the issues discussed above. I chose to write about the Chicago Public Library because I live in Chicago and this is the system our family uses. As opposed to e-commerce where patrons have many choices of vendors to choose from, the local public library has no non-commercial alternatives.

The role of public libraries in education and civic life is critical, especially in rural and inner city communities. The web interface of the library should provide children and their families with the same ease of use and accessibility afforded by the brick and mortar building. I hope that researchers and practitioners will join forces with librarians and children to quickly improve the situation.

The Modern, Conventional

2007-09-09T20:46:00.000-05:00

The Mark of Cain started out as a protection device but you can imagine people asking Cain where they could get theirs, and his response “all you have to do is…”

But what to do if you don’t have a sibling and you really want to get the cool mark? Kill another relative, or better yet, a complete stranger, and here we are, today, far from world peace.

Lack of context is to blame for misinterpretation of symbols and signs.

Take for example this sign:

I see ‘Flag a Cab’ but it is supposed to mean ‘Arriving Flights’. OK, not a big deal.

What about this one:

I see ‘Crocodile Feeding’ but it is supposed to mean ‘Litter Disposal’.

Finally an interesting one:

I see ‘Cabinet Handle’, and you, perhaps tired of my games want to scream ‘It’s a ‘Phone’ stupid!

I bet kids do not understand the meaning of this sign, although they know its function. We understand cultural disconnects, especially of the sad ‘Tarzan’ type where the supposedly primitive third world is perplexed by our modern one. But as the last sign demonstrates, the ‘modern’ is not immune to exposing its mortality. Suddenly you experience being old if you remember the Telephone.

Kids may know the function of this sign because of similar signs they see, for example, on the iPhone and on most other cell phone:

Representational association by resemblance evolved into a representation by convention. Two and three generations removed from the original object, context was lost, but function is carried over 'because it was always like that'.

About 10 years ago Marcel Marceau performed in Chicago and their were many kids in the audience, and everyone had a good time. But in one of the skits the kids were silent because they they did not get the pantomime centered around a rotary phone.

Inventing the Wheel

2007-08-22T06:26:00.000-05:00

Often in strategy meetings, someone will say something like: "well, there is no need to reinvent the wheel"And the wheel will not get reinvented.

But the wheel is reinvented all the time, and for good reasons.Consider the wheels in your life: In your car, train, airplain, bikes, rollerblades, elevators, shopping cart, Blackberry, iPod...They all share the 'wheel' attribute - circular objects that spin to afford action.

But the context of use requires innovation and consideration of the object's other properties, such as materials, size, degree of freedom, etc.So reinventing the wheel does make sense sometimes, because you don't want your airline to be equipped with Flintstone’s era tires...

Being There

2007-07-31T14:55:00.000-05:00

I am writing this entry while waiting - my son is getting a haircut.

I typically pretend to read the cars magazines they have here while listening to mundane conversations, but today my face is glued to the screen as I type.

This entry was composed on my Blackberry, you see.

So I got to think about 'Experience' vs. 'User experience', an old issue, similar to armchair travelers-bloggers, doers-dreamers?

"I like to watch." Being There, Directed by Hal Ashby.

A Universal Usability Matrix

2007-07-31T06:13:00.000-05:00

In over two decades of practicing user interface architecture in one form or another, I sought to infuse some consistency and methods in measuring the success of new user interfaces, compared to those being replaced.

In recent years, standards such as NIST CISU-R (NISTIR 7432) provide much needed guidance in the areas of usability requirements and testing, but so far I find this approach very effective, especially when dealing with large, complex interfaces.

The universal usability matrix that I present here provides a method to estimate the impact of a current user interface on clients and end users, and how a new proposed interface compares. Replacing the typical anecdotal, qualitative assessments that a current UI is 'bad' or 'inefficient' or 'Not user friendly', the matrix affords:

Consistent, objective and quantitative evaluation of a current and new UI

Identification and prioritization of the most problematic tasks in the current UI from a usability perspective

Comparison of the effectiveness of new UI as early as wireframing phase

Quantitative support to demonstrate to stakeholders and customers improvement in the new UI, that typically translates to TCO such as reduced staff, reduced training time, higher productivity, etc.

The matrix typically includes 3 sections:

UI Load – An inventory of all interface elements the end-user encounters during interaction. Yes - Just count the windows, dialogs, buttons, pull-downs and other object the user sees, including labels. -- These impact the visual load and the cognitive processing effort required to digest the flow. The higher the count, the more complex the interface. When variations in the flow of the same task exist, (typical in a globally deployed software with a single localized/customized UI), count major variations, since UI loads will differ.

Task Priority – Based on frequency (Occurrence x repetition) and efficiency, higher ranking tasks are most critical. High priority tasks with a high UI Loads are the most critical

Task Impact – add context by reflecting the usability profile weight and the task priority.

An important aspect of the usability matrix is in its ability to provide context to different customers. Especially relevant to UI of enterprise software where very small and very large sites need to be supported, and when the software is deployed globally, and large variations in workflows and definitions exist:

Usability Profiles provide the context for the universal usability matrix. The profiles are used in evaluating the Task Impact score. Each task has an associated ‘cost’ in terms of the time it takes to complete one instance of the task (efficiency), the time it takes to perform the task repeatedly as required to process all students. (Productivity), and the associated usability profile. Profiles have properties and attributes that are most relevant to the project.

There is no limit to the number of profiles used, or to the number of properties associated with the profiles. However, I found it best to limit the number of profiles to those that reflect the most typical clients. The process of developing the matrix is most successful when practical. Too many profiles have diminished returns since typically most attention is focused on the extremes.

Here is a basic, and in my opinion generic and reusable template to develop a task priority score. I use Excel or a Filemaker database to document the actual interfaces:

1.
Property: Occurrence
Attributes: Annually, Monthly, Weekly, Daily
Attribute Weight: 1,2,3,4
Note: The higher the Occurrence, the higher to weight.

2.
Property: Repetition
Attributes: 1 to 10, 11-30, Over 30
Attribute Weight: 1,2,3
Note: Number of times the task is performed during Occurrence period. The higher the repetition, the higher to weight.To isolate Task Frequency use Occurrence X Repetition

3.
Property: Efficiency
Attributes: Less than 1 minute, 1 -2 minutes, 3-5 minutes, 5-10 minutes, 10-15 minutes, Over 15 minutes
Attribute Weight: 1,2,3,4,5,6
Note: Estimated time to perform a single task instance without exceptions. The lower the efficiency, the higher to weight.

4.
Property: Productivity
Attributes: = Efficiency x Repetition x Occurrence

5.
Property: Task Priority Score
Attributes: = Productivity

Finally, I am sure of that someone, somewhere may have developed a similar idea - I would love to know. Otherwise, feel free to use and extend this framework.

The Interface is the Message

2007-07-27T06:57:00.000-05:00

I just got a Blackberry Curve yesterday. I've had a chance to play quite a bit with the iPhone and I find that the two devices offer distinctive, different and yet valid approaches to the user interface challenge.

While the Curve does much more than the iPhone and costs less, it does not support direct manipulation and rich data visualizations/transformations that the latter offers.

The user experience of these two devices is thus fundamentally different, and cannot be generically summarized as a form over function issue. Yet, as usual, it ends up being the CONTEXT of use that determines acceptable usability trade offs.

Direct manipulation is most effective when one can concentrate on the device with both hands and visual focus. It is less effective when one is involved is other activities like driving or excerscsing. So if the context of use IS the iPhone, direct manipulation makes sense.

Marshall McLuhan's "The Medium is the Message" comes to mind. The iPhone's user interface is the focus on attention, not the actual task that is expected from the device as a phone. This is a contradiction to good ui design that, at least in my mind, needs to be transparent to the user.

Whis entry is not a critiscisom of the iPhone. Realizing we are in an evolving world where a shift is taking place from hardware to software, to Human.

"Me Too!" Data

2007-06-20T16:15:00.000-05:00

In his monthly coulmn 'Technically Speaking' (February 2007, American Libraries), Andrew Pace wrote:

“The lines between desktop and intranet, and extranet and internet, continue to blur…will libraries continue to be the hotspot for…finding?”

I hope so too, but it also appears that, to paraphrase Andrew, the lines between library and extranet and intranet continue to blur. As a result, the library may stop being a destination for discovery of particular physical items, as it blends into what is becoming an infinite, homogeneous body of bits (the haystack-sorry for using that again..:-).

Yet, a side effect to the development of search engines is a new situation where information WANTS to be found and the competition over screen real estate and ranking is getting sophisticated and fierce.

This, in my opinion, represents a real danger for making true discovery possible in the future. And here, I think is also the opportunity for the transformation of librarians and library science – guiding the development of search and discovery tools in a way that will make original discovery possible.

First posted on: Thursday, March 08, 2007

Complications When Out Of Context

2007-06-20T16:12:00.000-05:00

It was this time in the transatlantic flight: I finished most of the food on the tray, breaking my promise to myself to avoid airline food... The little piece of cheese I actually hate, smiled at me from under the organized mess of plastic containers, carefully refolded napkins (to save space, don't you know...) and food leftovers. The temptation was hard to resist, the promising red glow of Cellophane under which hiding a soft yellow cheese I hoped to like this time!

In front of me set an older genteman whoes face I could not see, and I noriced, through the tiny space between the seats, that he was intensely reviewing his sophisticated looking soft cheese token.

I instantly lost interest in my cheese and focused on him and his cheese, trying to predict next steps. Clearly, I thought, this person does not fly often. Perhaps even, this is his first flight! So to him, everything is new, sophisticated looking and even frightening.

After a little while the man unwrapped the cellophane, but little did he know how complicated life can be: He was now turning between his fingers a round red piece of something. He turned it left, and right, up and down for a few long seconds.

Finally he just took a bit into the wax and immediately put the thing on his tray. I could not see his expression.

OK - So he did not figure out that in odrer to get to the cheese, one is supposed to pull on a string that's embedded in the layer of red wax, peel the wax and undress the hidden treasure - the soft yellow cheese. It is a bit of culinary striptease at 40K high in the sky, and I can not get this instance out of my mind, especially when thinking about interaction models and task design...

User's possible thought process:

What is this food? He assumes it IS food: Well...it was part of the meal, no ?!

Ask a fellow traveler? - perhaps too embarrassed, shy or mute.

Experiment! -- try out -- how bad can it be?! The risk is low.

Perhaps, complex, unfamiliar settings (being on an airplane for the first time + contact with unfamiliar food item) ignite some instinctive over-thinking that tends to lead to unexpected results. This is different then regular exploration, where the user IS in a mode of expecting the unexpected.Or, perhaps the person actually liked eating his cheese with the wax, but upon taking the first bite, decided to stick with his promise not to eat airline food...

Seek and You Shall Find

2007-06-20T16:10:00.000-05:00

The faster a user can transition from typing a query into a search field to typing a number in a credit card field, the happier are both user (customer) and business.

Not surprisingly, “Seek and you shall find” has been the catchphrase of successful search engine vendors. This maxim encapsulates the main thrust of successful interaction within the commercial domain: task A (seek) directly leads to outcome B (find). This interaction model is vectorial—its directionality is governed by the wish to achieve the optimal outcome.

Based on the vectorial interaction model, successful commercial search engines eliminate the vast landscape of the Web by providing patrons with a 'relevant' result set, quickly — on the first results screen and often in the top record. The fact that these search engines simultaneously provide an entirely unusable result-set of hundreds of thousands of records further emphasizes the underlying goal of providing the single relevant match for the search.

Given a result-set of workable dimensions (e.g. 25 links), the user would have been likely to explore it, but the paradoxical combination of results presented by the commercial search engines does not offer the user real choices. Rather, it conditions the user to view the action of searching and its outcome as inseparable, providing an instantly gratifying experience packaged as a volitional choice process.

Different from the “Seek and you shall find” vectorial model, is a model of user-collection interaction characterized by the phrase “Seek so you can find”. Here, the relationship between task A (seek) and task B (find) is more reciprocal and dynamic. It suggests a spiral interaction model in which the outcome emerges as a synthesis enabled by the search process. Whereas the vectorial interaction model works well for commercial search engines, I believe that the spiral interaction model is more appropriate for the academic and scholarly domains.

Commercial search engines help users find a needle in a haystack—and this has never been easier. Google’s ability is amazing even to those who understand its underlying technology. Nonetheless, finding a needle in a haystack (vectorial model) is not, in fact, such a big deal when you have the right equipment—a magnet in the case of this analogy. Only the needle attaches to the magnet while the haystack becomes immaterial.

Most research and academic electronic collections, on the other hand, are serving patrons who are interested in finding a piece of hay in the haystack (spiral model). The magnet becomes useless; the key functions of assigning relevancy and ranking of information become dependent on human capacities such as critical evaluation, synthesis, and decision making.

First posed on: Thursday, September 14, 2006

The Memory Palace Interface

2007-06-20T16:08:00.000-05:00

In his book The Memory Palace of Matteo Ricci(1), Jonathan Spence describes a memory system devised by a 16th century Italian Jesuit priest. Matteo Ricci’s goal was to find a way to store in one’s head the sum of all human knowledge, so he suggested the following idea: Depending on how much one wants to remember, one can build in one’s head virtual urban centers of various sizes. These imaginary cities should be complete with fully furnished palaces, homes, public meeting places and so on.

Each one of these imagined spaces would serve as a memory location to reference a piece of knowledge. It would be possible “to walk” through this vast mental construct to access this or other item or bit of information. Five centuries later, I find Matteo Ricci’s idea fantastically intriguing and completely relevant rich knowledge applications and UXD.

First posted: Wednesday, September 06, 2006

The Iceberg Problem

2007-06-20T16:04:00.000-05:00

For every complex problem,
there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong
H. L. Mencken

Overview
A collection is a potential, a discovery waiting to happen. Since digital collections are only accessible through their user interfaces, the role of the user interface as a facilitator of discovery cannot be underestimated.

It appears, however, that while academic electronic collections have grown exponentially—and often as a result of significant institutional investment, the utilization rates for many of these collections remain lower than expected. Computers and broadband networks are ubiquitous, patrons are computer savvy, and researchers are excited about the potential of electronic resources--what then stands in the way of greater utilization of electronic scholarly collections?

Driven by substantial industry investment, significant advances in e-commerce over the last few years dramatically changed users’ expectations for usability and quick gratification during online sessions. Many institutional libraries, on the other hand, are facing shrinking budgets and diminishing resources just as the raising popularity of commercial research tools makes the success of academic collections increasingly contingent on enabling quick and easy access to the wealth of resources they offer. For collection developers, this situation suggests the need to take a closer look at the user interfaces that provide access to their collections.

Icebergs and Penguins

Icebergs are a good metaphor for the relationship between collections and the user interface. Like icebergs, most collections are largely invisible. The user interface, or the tip of the iceberg, does not reflect the actual scope or depth of the submerged mass. Some collection portals attempt to attract patrons by using gimmicky interface designs intended to create a contemporary look—these are the penguins of our metaphor.

Still, server log analyses, used like the underwater equipment necessary to explore the submerged mass, often reveal that only a small chunk of the collection is ever used. Analyses of inter-library loan requests support the frustrating realization that patrons remain unaware of much of the content available in the collection.

The iceberg problem can be framed as follows: What can be done to facilitate interaction patterns that help patrons realize the discovery potential of the available electronic resources and, by extension, justify current and future investment in the collection? I believe that the answer is in the user interface.

In what follows, I would like further to explore the conceptual and strategic relationship between the user interface and collection utilization. Utilization, along with usability and accessibility, are no longer the obscure jargon of narrowly technical discussions. Increasingly these terms permeate the electronic resources discourse. Yet the topics they represent often remain only loosely connected to the efforts of many collection developers.

This is understandable given the traditional separation between content and containers, or the collection and the technology that makes it available. Organizational structures often reflect and reinforce the boundaries between content and technology, making it difficult to establish effective communication between decision makers on both sides.

The resulting disconnect between the visible and submerged parts of the collection “iceberg” can lead, not only to decreased utilization, but also and more problematically, to an inversion in the relationship between collection development and improved usability and accessibility. Connecting Tip to BaseCollection developers often conceptualize the value of their collection for patrons in terms of quality and scope.

From this perspective, the collection development process tends to focus on uniqueness and growth. To achieve uniqueness, collection developers use their domain expertise to guide the direction of further investment in subscriptions and other electronic resources with the intention of creating collections that are unique in quality and strength. Growth is related to richness and wealth of content concentration—two central factors in making any collection authoritative and influential in its particular domain.

The centrality of growth (whether highly focused, widely inclusive, or both) as a means to increase the appeal of the collection is further highlighted by the unprecedented availability of new content and an apparently matching increase in demand. Uniqueness and growth are inherent in the mission of collections and constitute key motivators for collection developers. Yet despite being key attributes of collection development, uniqueness and growth become problematic when considered from the perspective of the delivery and consumption medium for electronic collections—the Web.

To explain this point, I will first examine the role of growth using the concept of “zero sum gains”, which I borrow from economics. Zero sum gains means that in some circumstances, the value of continued investment can diminish to the point of becoming meaningless. With billions of pages indexed on various search engines, the Web is a medium to which the concept of zero sum gains clearly applies—especially from the perspective of the end-user.

Growth is meaningful only if the end-user realizes that an increasingly large number of resources is available in the collection. Consequently, it is quite possible to invest in the growth of a collection without attaining a comparable expansion of its utilization.Uniqueness too is a complicated construct given the pace at which competing alternatives emerge on the Web. The co-modification of information on the web inevitably implies susceptibility to high substitution rates.

In other words, the cost of switching from one website to another is minimal to the end-user. To understand how the low cost of switching affects the relationship between uniqueness, investment and utilization, let us contrast electronic collections with brick and mortar ones. In traditional museums or special libraries, we can see uniqueness in action.

For example, the availability of a Vermeer masterpiece in a certain museum makes that institution a unique destination for Vermeer fans and scholars. Yet the availability of a digital impression of the same Vermeer masterpiece in numerous digital collections does not make any of them a unique destination.

On the contrary, each of these collections runs the risk of becoming interchangeable with all the others. I am not suggesting that considerations of utilization, accessibility, and usability displace uniqueness and growth as guiding concepts and motivating principles in the process of collection development.

Rather I would like to integrate the two perspectives represented by these concepts. Much like the two differently positioned but nonetheless inseparable parts of the iceberg, a scholarly electronic collection and its user interface constitute a single entity. In the remainder of this article I will consider how we can implement an integrative framework—one that can facilitate a dynamic interaction between the development of content and user interface—in the discourse on electronic collections.

I propose that we begin with a closer look at the patron, or the user in the user interface construct. ConclusionIcebergs dissolve overtime--their size diminishes until they finally melt away--and so will the iceberg problem discussed here. Collections will become highly visible through the implementation of user interfaces that would be developed with industry standards and metadata protocols.

These interfaces will support interaction models that fit the unique requirements of their patrons for knowledge synthesis through interactive and accessible direct manipulation.

Oy-Way Pointers

2007-06-20T15:52:00.001-05:00

I Parked the car in a multi-level garage, close to a sign with several attributes of my spot: 'Level 3', 'Orange' and 'Aisle B'.

That should be enough for mental note taking, but I worried that it is likely I'll forget the attributes immediately unless I repeat the mantra '3-b-orange' several times. And also... is there a 'level 3, aisle B, Red' or a 'level 3, aisle B, Blue' etc?

I use the camera in my mobile phone to take a spot-snapshot. Weeks, months after I've parked in that garage, I have evidence, an artifact, of being there: A place of no importance, no flag left behind...Yet documented.Another example: I found the last parking space next to a coffee shop. After inserting the first quarter, the meter did not respond. Being one of those meters that control 2 spots, 'Left' and 'Right', I tried another coin because I was not sure if I paid attention to the correct slot. But there was not response, so I gave up, and upon my return to the car, a ticket waited on the windshield.

It is unlikely I'll have to use this photo as evidence, but I do have a 'documentation' of the broken meter. A pointer to an otherwise erasable event. I ended up sending a letter to the parking office, and the ticket was voided. I did not use the image as evidence, but it is posted here. Years from now, perhaps long after this particular meter is pulled out of commission, its image will still litter snapshots of internet files. Is this consumable content?

On Federated Search UI

2007-06-20T15:51:00.001-05:00

It's a very ancient saying,
But a true and honest thought,
That if you become a teacher,
By your pupils you'll be taught.(1)

The daunting task of finding a needle in a haystack has never been easier. Or, so it appears. The web and in turn Google, Yahoo and other search engines (to which I will refer as Yogles) liberated a previously untapped human desire to locate obscure bits of information for personal consumption. Suddenly, millions of people are researching not only best airfare, pet rocks, organically correct coffee beans and lovers, but also complex medical conditions, dietary supplements or the secret life of Barbie and Ken. And the amazing thing is… this stuff can be found!!!

An activity that used to be limited to academic and research settings and required years of training and specialized knowledge is now reduced to the phrase “Google it!” This is probably good for Human Kind, but if you are developing sophisticated federated (or meta) search software you are in trouble. While scientific search still requires expertise to navigate the exponentially growing sea of knowledge, users increasingly demand the task to be as simple as Yogle makes it appear.

The user interface problem for the developers of federated search tools can be described using the agricultural haystack metaphor. Finding a needle in a haystack can be easy if you are equipped with the right tool, say a powerful magnet. This is what happens with Yogles--the magnets. MetaSearch tools try help with a more complicated task. It involves searching for a particular piece of hay in the haystack; clearly, a magnet is not as effective. Here, we face a challenge of a higher magnitude.

Developers spend a great deal of effort and imagination on creating fantastic search engines. But these, like all engines are buried under the hood, and most of the work done by the tool is transparent to the user with the exception of speed. The users, on the other hand, care little about HOW the search is done, and more about WHAT is found. The Yogle user interface underscores this gap: a single search field is very easy to use but the results often include thousands of records, and there are absolutely no organizing tools to manage a retrieved set or past results.

The rational for this minimalist approach to the user interface may be that a particular engine can be so good that what you are looking for would be displayed on the first screen and even in the first line. The problem is that the information displayed on the first page or line is often based on what OTHERS were looking for. In other words, it is easier to search for a coin under the light post, but what if the coin you are after is on page 75,233 out of 270,008?

By becoming a de facto standard for searching, Yogle’s user interface inflicts users with high expectations for ease of use and satisfaction in accomplishing a search task, even if the search task they need to perform is as remote in complexity and scope from the common search as an Amoeba is remote from Humans. Moreover, while the starting point of the search process has been popularized and has now become familiar to millions, we still lack widely accepted interaction patterns for organization and management of large sets of retrieved data.

In order to build a successful user interface for a federated search tool, developers would benefit from understanding the mental models that users create in order to deal with the entire search process. The process of profiling users--building use-case libraries that describe user types, scenarios of use, goals, workflows and outcomes--is common to software development. The problem with modeling for federated search UI is that many of the users themselves lack a clear mental model of what search, retrieval and analysis mean! In fact, a wide majority of users may not know what a federated search means.

Most software applications enable users to perform familiar tasks. As such, software represents the next level in the evolutionary ladder of productivity. For example, the word processor replaced the typewriter, and both advanced letter writing from the use of the pen, pencil, and feather. The introduction of e-Mail further reduced delivery speed and made the use of paper optional. Despite all these changes, the task itself--communicating in writing has changed little since its inception. Users are able to perform with software familiar tasks that have predictable outcomes. When the user’s perception of the task is closely replicated in the user interface, the application is perceived to be intuitive.

For most users, however, meta searching electronic data is not a familiar task. Users have to negotiate a lot of new technical information, such as terminology, scope of search (where are we searching), the impact of logic (AND, OR, NOT) on the result set, how ranking is determined and so on. Further, the absence of established workflows and interaction metaphors complicates mapping federated search activities.

The Yogle search engines excel in mapping to a common search structure. They work well when we know what we are looking for, but just don’t know where to find it. The challenge – and yes – the opportunity for developers of meta search tools is to come up with a successful user interface metaphor that encompasses the complete discovery process and reflects a wide range of user skills and expertise in searching for knowledge. The user interface of federated search tools requires a revolutionary rather than an evolutionary change, and it can only be achieved through collaboration among developers, librarians, patrons, and other stakeholders. We may even consider changing the name for this class of software to “MetaDiscovery Tools” to project a notion of a complete process that covers the search-retrieve-analyze-manage cycle.

Footnotes
1) From the soundtrack lyrics for ‘Getting to know you’ in the movie ‘The King and I’

Note to the reader: This is a reprint of my talk at ALA summer 2004, Orlando, LITA Pre conference Friday, June 25, 2004 Usability Issues in MetaSearch Interface Design

Interface This!

2007-06-20T15:50:00.000-05:00

Imagine interfacing with an expensive keyboard that has dozens keys, most white, some black and none labeled. Each key performs a different function and numerous key combinations are possible. It takes years of long daily practice to become proficient and instructions are written in special code that requires years of real-time decoding expertise. Finally, this keyboard is a real pain to fit on the seat tray of an aircraft even in first class.

Welcome the piano user interface. In fact, we are surrounded by funky interfaces in our homes, workplaces, cars--mostly facing the challenges they present without much objection. (On this topic, I highly recommend Donald Norman's insightful book "The Design of Everyday Things", about the psychology of interfacing with common objects, i.e. doors, faucets etc.) But why is it that users seem to accept challenges such as the piano interface, which has not changed for centuries, while developers are compelled to work on improvements to the user interface of software?

Any software that has been around for several years has to accommodate substantial increase in functionality introduced by creative development and customers needs. Eventually, the interface itself may reach a saturation point that renders evolutionary changes to the design obsolete, and requires revolutionary approach.

Think of it as a house that was originally built for a young family. The kids have all grown and have families of their own, but they insist on staying in the house. Rooms and sections are added where possible to accommodate all residents, and everyone is happy. There comes a time, however, when providing newcomers to the family with a map and some written instructions to help locate the kitchen doesn't cut it anymore. Other solutions are required.

Unlike architecture, the design of software user interface has a short history and it involves only two common interaction types: The Command Line Interface (CLI) facilitated by the keyboard, and the Graphical User Interface (GUI), facilitated mostly by direct manipulation of objects on the screen.

CLI places significant burdens on the user's memory. It requires storage and retrieval of the application's functions dictionary. As a result, a novice user may require a long period of internalization but can gain substantial increase in operation speed over time. The GUI provides the novice user with instant access to most major functions through direct manipulation of objects such as menus and buttons. However, requirements for eye-hand coordination are high and operation is relatively slow because the user needs to locate functions on the screen, then move, point and click the mouse in order to operate the system.

These actions cannot be optimized significantly over time. Moreover, in a desktop environment, the large muscles of the hand are required to perform very delicate and precise motions for which they are not designed. Holding a mouse and staring at the screen for long periods of time, and the need to switch frequently between keyboard and mouse, result in discomfort and even potential injuries to the user. GUI may be dangerous to your health...

ATM machines are a good example for the successful implementation of GUI: These devices support a small set of secure workflows, each with predictable outcome. Interaction time is short and a touch screen affords genuine direct manipulation. Users are prompted with relevant feedback such as "You have no funds in your account" and can cancel an operation before it is executed. Finally, the chances to get a receipt for cash withdrawal but no actual money are very small.

In contrast, Expert Systems complicate the lives of interface designers and their users. Only a fraction of functionality can be displayed any given time, limited by factors such as screen size, network bandwidth, server load and visual load. Additionally, and most importantly, many of the tasks and workflows are not trivial. They require knowledge both of the task and of how the system affords the task--two items that often do not correlate. The software can perform a particular task, but the user interface does not offer an easy way to get to it. Increase in functionality reduces the effectiveness of graphical interface and increases the load on short and long-term working memory. Training and retention are a real issue as well as standardization of workflows across an organization. Most Expert Systems have a high learning curve that is closely linked to the limitations of the user interface in bridging the expert user with the expert system.

We have a long way to go before Microsoft Windows and other computing de-facto standards change to facilitate transparent correlation between work-related tasks and system functionality. Until such developments occur, work with real users is a methodology that can insure successful interfaces.

First posted on: Friday, September 01, 2006

OOPS

2007-06-20T15:49:00.001-05:00

Optimism is defined as "The doctrine, asserted by Leibnitz, that this world is the best of all possible worlds." (American Heritage Dictionary (AHD))

Optimum, there, is defined as "The point at which the condition, degree, or amount of something is the most favorable."

Development of user personas as means to model interaction context, is becoming a common UXD practice. Indeed, relativity makes the 'best of all possible worlds', or 'The optimal UI for a particular application', a bit hard to define, unless context is established for user and interaction model.

But what is the difference between a persona and a stereotype?

A persona is contextual. AHD's definition: "The role that one assumes or displays in public or society; one's public image or personality, as distinguished from the inner self."

Stereotypes reflect a more rigid, non-contextual construct: "A conventional, formulaic, and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image." (AHD) One needs to be aware of the danger in mixing persona with stereotype, yet, be aware that good interaction is based on ease of learnability, often gained by consistency and reuse of interaction patterns.

So, a library of personas will make sense. But will the personas become stale and stereotypical?

First posted on: Thursday, August 24, 2006

Sitewrecks

2007-06-20T15:47:00.000-05:00

A few years ago, while waiting at Heathrow for a connection flight to the US, I struck a conversation with a Nigerian who was setting up a Malaria foundation. Before he boarded his plane to Lagos, I volunteered to help with the foundation's website.

Over the next couple of months we communicated via email, and the site went up here: http://www.malariafoundation.org/. After that, we lost touch, and as I visit the site from time to time, it is clear that it has not been touched since the launch.This experience is similar to other experiences I had, where there is a great deal of enthusiasm to do good, but it is hard to follow up - both for me and for the organizers, in upkeep and long term maintenance.With little technical and organizational resources, I think there are many thousands of 'Sitewrecks' - websites setup by foundations and nonforprofits - who do not make it through the long voyage of on-going maintenance.

The solution is to set up a grass-root movement, similar to 'OpenSource' that will connect talent from all over the world, with organizations, and help with that. I am talking about a long-term relationship, not just to setup the site. Perhaps such an effort exist already?

First posted on: Monday, August 21, 2006