Are sweeter:  which is a reason why users stay on

When a website is clear it becomes more endear’d

Leading to increased visits and subjective satisfaction

Being used with great ease and not wanting to leave

Accomplishing tasks with minimum error scares

Knowing I can recover if something goes amiss

Though winning near the goal – yet, I do not grieve
For using this graphical user interface design is bliss
With a high level of memorability, this interface design is a breath of fresh air!

Based on “Ode to a Grecian Urn” by John Keats

The idea behind this series of blog posts is to look at famous poems and use them to shed light on issues that affect usability, wireframes, wireframing tools and user interface design. If you have some suggestions of poems that you would like for us to interpolate, please feel free to do so by leaving a comment with your request in it.

Though still unfinished pride of expertness

Thou wireframe of an interface design

A rapid paper prototype used to express

Ideas of layouts and navigation that lurk in the mind

What icons and buttons envelope thy shape

Of links and portals that strive with growth

through the fiber optic cables of an ISP

Streaming gigabytes of info with ease for you and me both

What mad pursuit ever since the struggles of Netscape

When the ripe World Wide Web became destiny

The Netflix app user interface will allow members to organize their materials by personal preferences, genres, new arrivals and individual instant queues.  Members will also be able to access their Netflix content from both 3G and Wi-Fi networks, though Wi-Fi will provide faster and more reliable streaming and downloads. So after you have finished downloading music, checking email, and Facebook stalking, you can always watch a movie on your iPhone—if you even have the time left.

User experience, or UX, highlights the subjective experiential perceptions that come along with human-computer-interaction, or HCI, and product ownership. ISO 9241-210 defines user experience as “a person’s perceptions and responses that result from the use or anticipated use of a product, system or service”. The term itself was brought to wider knowledge by Donald Norman in the mid-1990s just as recent advances in computing technologies moved HCI into practically all areas of human activity. UX planning goes beyond fixing usability issues of a user interface design. In order to properly conduct UX planning one has to begin with the user. We need to take into account what they say, do and the decisions they make. According to Jesse James Garrett “User Experience is not about how a product works on the inside. User experience is about how it works on the outside, where a person comes into contact with it and has to work with it”

UX is about maximizing design and research in such a way that positive experiences occur at the intersection where users come into contact with your product. Experiences are momentary and brief, sometimes isolated and sometimes part of a multi-layered process. The customer always acts in the present influenced by former experiences, knowledge, abilities, and preferences. Forthcoming experiences, expectations and hopes also influence the present as users ebb and flow on a river of experience. The goal of UX is to meet a user’s exact needs without fuss creating products that embody simplicity and elegance, making them a joy to use. Achieving this requires a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design. This requires teamwork and collaboration across an entire team.

With UX design the whole team has to take the users’ views of a graphical user interface design and ask themselves if their product fulfills all of Peter Morville’s “Facets of the User Experience”:

1.    Is the application useful for the individual user and his specific task?

2.    Is the application usable for the individual user and his specific task?

3.    Is the application desirable for the individual user and his specific task?

4.    Is the application valuable for the individual user and his specific task?

5.    Is the application accessible, i.e. available to every individual user, regardless of disability?

6.    Is the target findable for the individual user and his specific task?

7.    Is the application credible for the individual user and his specific task?

UX thrives on the iterative development process that begins with the basic strategy where proof of concept is established via Information Architecture, usability testing of prototypes (e.g. wireframes) and interface design until a detail concept is birthed. While working towards a detailed concept it is important to quickly come up with a rough concept as that allows for experimentation and rapid iterative evaluations of use cases and proposed interface design alternatives.

In order to facilitate a whole team’s involvement in UX design the target user has to be the centerpiece, like the Sun in our solar system. If a profile of the target user is not to be had then scenarios of use or workflows will suffice.  Developing a persona(s) of a target user, as well as the environment that precludes them, allows all members of your team to visualize how to use their respective attributes and strengths synergistically in creating a winning interface design or other product. Good UX, just like a good team, is about the sum being greater than the parts with the real ‘architects’ of an interface design being the target user.

Google’s Call me feature invokes images of Skype, except it is integrated into every internet user’s control center: email.  If Google is able to turn Call me into an easy and internationally accessible part of their platform, it could provide Skype a fair bit of competition.  Integrated user interfaces make things easier for the user.  If users only have to log into one service to email and make phone calls etc. an organization like Skype could take a hit because they do not offer the wide range of features that Google, and by extension Gmail, does.  Luckily for Skype, not everyone is a Gmail user.  Still, Google’s newest feature shows once again that they are fearless about trekking into various internet services terrains and are not hiding the fact that they want a share in all of the properties that make up the world wide web. So is Google trying to create an internet monopoly?  That’s a bit of a sensational stretch, but at the very least Google makes it clear that they want a share in everything and do not want to make life easy for their competitors.

1.    Stage 1  – General Knowledge: This stage of UX knowledge indicates that the designer or organization has little understanding of their users beyond general assumptions about what the users want, think, and need.  Thus, this level of understanding of the user is very broad and does not lend itself well to interface design evolution based on what users want and need. Instead, it is a simple way of brainstorming and predicting what users might want and what they trend towards.

2.    Stage 2 – Understand User Behavior: This second level of UX understanding means that you or your company are now employing testing methods, such as usability tests, to ascertain UX information from clients and/or users in order to design interfaces accordingly or make the necessary changes to your existing interface design.  This is a level that all organizations should try to achieve if they are serious about usability and UX success.

3.    Stage 3 – Influence Your Users: This is the stage in which you not only determine what users want to make a system functional, but also what they want to make a particular interface design interesting or unique.  In this stage, you have developed a process of measuring UX feedback to the point where you know how to craft systems that are unique and will entice users; you are influencing them to use your site for more than just functional purposes.

The UX hierarchy that Calabro introduces shows that if you are serious about interface design, then you definitely want to make it your or your organization’s goal to reach the third level.  You want to generally understand your users, specifically understand your users, and ultimately influence your users relative to your interface design.

According to Joseph C Lawrence’s article “Five reasons why user experience thinking is essential” there are five important “UX mantras” that every designer should keep in mind when designing a user interface (as paraphrased below):

1.    UX design is about the users: Keeping the users at the center of your interface design will allow you to create websites and applications that aren’t just characterized by functionality, but also by individuality based on what users want and need beyond the structure of a site—sometimes a basic, functional structure is too boring.
2.    UX design requires testing: UX testing will help you learn not only how users interact with your site, but also how they want to interact with your site.  Thus, you will be able to analyze the feedback and make the changes necessary to infuse your interface design with individuality.
3.    UX design is psychological in nature: Websites are dynamic and intertwined with almost every interaction in our daily lives whether it is socializing, traveling, or shopping etc. Since the web is now such an integral part of the way people live personally and professionally, interface designs must now be more than a collection of pages and data—they must be designed understanding the psychology of what motivates people to perform the interactions facilitated by websites and applications.  UX design allows designers to gather this vital information.
4.    UX design is a harmonizing force: UX design can tie together all of the diverging goals of web users and designers in order to create a unique and usable interface design.  Understanding how users use an application and what users want gives designers and other stakeholders the information required so they can tailor their business goals and methods to the needs of the user without jeopardizing their own enterprise.
5.    UX design is an interdisciplinary method: The dynamic and integrated nature of today’s websites and apps requires web developers to understand not only computer software and programming but also an assortment of other fields: psychology, business, and marketing to name a few.  UX design transcends into all of these fields because users are human and humans are by nature interdisciplinary.

Using Lawrence’s “UX mantras” can help you keep your focus on the users which will ultimately distinguish your site from others that are similar, increasing your interface design’s popularity and success.  The better you understand your users and their needs, the more seamless the process of using your website or application becomes for them. This makes users happy and they will want to use your site above others because it is designed to understand what they want and respond to their needs.

Usability testing expert users isn’t drastically different from testing novice users (you can still use card sorting and other standard methods), but one thing that is important is pre-usability test preparations.  Here are a couple of things to keep in mind when beginning the usability testing process with expert users:

1.    Make sure that expert testers comprise a demographic most consistent with and important to your interface design.
2.    Make sure the tasks are realistic and relevant based on how your users have previously employed the site.
3.    Try to obtain user information concerning what expert users have liked about the site in its previous form and what they haven’t like.  You can later compare their answers with the way they responded to the changes that you have made to the interface design after conducting the usability test.

Bottom line: Don’t forget about the dedicated experts!

If you have an evolving website that has accumulated a reasonable amount of success in the cut throat world of the internet, then it is worth testing your core users, your expert users when conducting usability tests on new interface design additions or changes.  They are the ones who have used your site in the past and they are the ones who will bolster it into the future.

1.    Familiarity.  A web site as popular and (dare I say) archetypal as Google needs to be familiar to the user.  The plain white screen background is one of the hallmarks of the Google interface design.  It makes the user experience simple and is in no way distracting.  Over the years people have gotten used to Google’s basic design, and changing this learned pattern decreases the user’s comfort and familiarity with the site, a big usability no no.

2.    Universality. A site with such a diverse range of users needs to be equally accessible to all.  There were likely many users who enjoyed the artwork that graced the screen of Google’s homepage.  But many were probably confused, maybe even annoyed by it.  Lack of contrast or not knowing how much else besides the obvious background design had changed may have made users insecure.  The brilliance of Google’s homepage design is that it is so simple and uncontroversial that it makes the site attractive to everyone. Thus, the more universal the interface design, the more popular it will be among users.

There are many more factors that contribute to website usability, but Google’s new background image feature struck at the heart of the user’s expectations formed by two principles: universality and familiarity. Having a universal interface design that users are familiar and comfortable with is a great asset for a website that should not be put at risk.  As redundant as it is to say, interface designers must keep user needs and experience at the forefront of the interface design process.  However, this interface design platitude is worth eternally repeating because as Google’s background images faux pas shows us, even the big boys make mistakes.