Customer Feedback while using the product

I have always told people outside our profession that having a user use the product while giving us feedback is oh so much more valuable than performing a survey or focus group. The Journal of Consumer Research published by The University of Chicago Press has an article I must have.

"Is There a Substitute for Direct Experience? Comparing Consumers' Preferences after Direct and Indirect Product Experiences" by Rebecca W. Hamilton and Debora Viana Thompson.

Abstract:
We show that direct product experiences (e.g., product trials) and indirect product experiences (e.g., reading a product description) result in different levels of mental construal and product preferences. Study 1 demonstrates that increasing experiential contact with a product triggers more concrete mental construal and increases preferences for products that are easy to use relative to those that are more desirable but difficult to use. Studies 2 and 3 show that the effect of product experience can be attenuated by encouraging consumers to think concretely prior to product exposure and by asking consumers to choose products for others instead of themselves.

If you have a subscription, please let me know if the article is worth the subscription cost. I am looking for some metrics that show the benefit of product use versus recall or perception studies.

Customer Demographics, Behaviors and Motivations

I went searching for the lastest buzz on product experience, but didn't find any new sites or online references of note, well except for that Fast Company article about the 22 year old CEO of FaceBook. I have a Fast Company subscription and read that in the magazine. It is always a good read.

So I searched for Customer Needs Summary since I am in the middle of creating one for one of my projects. I found an interesting site I had never seen before and I found references to where they got their data and I followed the trail, losing track of time in the process. I was looking for demographics, behaviors and motivations of the target users for the product I am researching and designing. I found some of this data, plus a great PPT at Educause Connect. What interested me most was the generational motivation information.

I also found some interesting articles on AJAX, Social Computing and Web 2.0.

UPA2007 EP Rodeo Topic: Integrating UCD with other Methodologies

I was able to participate in the Experienced Practioners Rodeo at UPA 2007 on Tuesday afternoon. We covered four topics in depth and I happened to be the note-taker for one of the topics. We created a simple slide deck to summarize our Integrating UCD discussion.

Other topics included Agile & UCD, Accessibility and Hand-Held Usability. I hope to see those discussions posted as well.

UPA 2007 Contextual Inquiry Examples

Debbie McConnell and I presented at the UPA 2007 conference. Our first talk was about making the transition from web design to small screen design, "Designing for Small Screens: Crossing from Web to Product Design."

Our second talk, "Contextual Inquiry: Get Out of Your Cube!", was about using the skills you have acquired doing studies in an office setting and some tricks we have found for preparing to study in non-office settings like warehouses, manufacturing facilities, medical settings, high security environments and other environments that have potential safety issues.

I promised to make sure that the examples I displayed would be made available in several ways, one of them was on this blog. So, if you were able to find the blog, even though I could not remember the URL, please feel free to get a copy of the presentation, checklist and observer log.

A Great User Experience Definition

I have served many roles in my professional career and my title and self-affiliation has changed over time to be more inclusive of all the types of skills I have mastered over the years. From quality assurance anlayst, business analyst, systems analyst, data analyst, usability analyst to UI designer, interaction designer, product designer to my current self appointed title: User Experience Designer. I feel like this is the best fit now, since I incorporate user research, design and evaluation on all the projects I juggle.

Kimmy Paluch wrote a great article, take a read.

Design Process with Measurable Results

A designer is often called upon to support their design choices, especially those that lead to a higher cost of manufacturing cost. The designer will need to be able to help the accountants understand how the design will influence the return on investment. The design process should include qualitative and quantitative unbiased evaluation techniques that will either support or deny the additional costs. The new product design needs to be compared to previous product benchmarks as well as against leading competitors.

Chuck Jones, Cheif Designer, Whirlpool has instituted a standardized company-wide design process that produces measureable results by putting design prototypes in front of customer focus groups and takes detailed measurements of their preferences about aesthetics, craftsmanship, technical performance, ergonomics, and usability. "Whirlpool charts the results against both competing products and its own previous iterations, giving it a baseline of objective evidence from which to make investment decisions." See the full article at Fast Company.

Identifying potential user errors

Gathering Information
Collecting data during field observation is greatly facilitated by having a protocol of what you will be looking for with an outline of what you know of the users, procedures, tools and techniques they might employ during the session.

Analyzing Information
Once you have the data collated, grouped and categorized you can more easily see trends, best practices, and potential user errors. Identifying and mitigating these potential issues during the design phase is one of the key outcomes of a successful site visit.

Issue identification
The Medical Device Reporting arm of the FDA describes user error to be any error a user might make while using the product. If a product has been found to have instances of user error, they feel the product may be incorrectly branded, not have clear enough directions for use or not provide adequate warnings. If a product is found to have these issues, the FDA may require additional labeling to mitigate the potential use errors.

While doing site observations we often see many things we couldn't imagine because the context of use is not the same as the conditions we anticipated.

Here are some areas to keenly observe while in the field:

• How is the product held, positioned, manuevered and carried by the user?
• Where is the product in relation to the user?
• Where is the product placed when in use and not in use?
• How is the process, procedure, or task flow different than we anticipated or advised?
• How are the techniques or task steps evolving in the field?
• What supplementary tools or aids are used in addition to the product?
• What does the user need to "tell" the product?
• What does the product need to "tell" the user?

And most importantly:

• At any time, could some get hurt? Financial loss, pain, security, embarrassment, etc.

At any site visit, you will see something unexpected and you can imagine many more potential issues than you actually see occur. People will find a way do anything more effeciently and they will find ways to use the product that we never imagined. This is why it is so important to continue to do field studies on products, even well established products.

Clearly identify all the things you think might go wrong and try to design them out. Potential user errors are much like potential risk or potential side effects. Just because you identify it, doesn't mean it will happen, but it is better to know what you might want to avoid or what you might do to mitigate a error before it happens.

UX as change agents

User Experience professionals are the bridge, the glue, the change agent of product development projects. They help to create a vision that is verifiable by the users the product is intended for. Read more from Paul Sherman at UX Matters.

Audibility - Decibles and Frequency

I am doing some research to help define a standard for the audible interactions of a handheld device. The sound is used to create a confirmation of an action, to remind the patient of an action they are or should perform or a warning that they need to take action. I have reviewed what similiar products are doing and also what normal everyday things sound like.
Here is a list from of the approx. decibel rating of common sounds from Answer.com:

30 Soft whisper
35 Noise may prevent the listener from falling asleep
40 Quiet office noise level
50 Quiet conversation
60 Average television volume, sewing machine, lively conversation
70 Busy traffic, noisy restaurant, alarms of medical equipment
80 Heavy city traffic, factory noise, alarm clock
90 Cocktail party, lawn mower
100 Pneumatic drill
120 Sandblasting, thunder
140 Jet airplane
180 Rocket launching pad

Above 110 decibels, hearing may become painful
Above 120 decibels is considered deafening
Above 135 decibels, hearing will become extremely painful and hearing loss may result if exposure is prolonged
Above 180 decibels, hearing loss is almost certain with any exposure


It is important to understand that sound is measured in both decibles and frequency. Decibles(dB) is the strength of the sound, while frequency(Hz) is the cycles per second of the sound. Each person will respond to the combinations of dBa + Hz with the perception of some being louder than others. You can test your hearing at The University of New South Wales - Music Accoustics site.

Features a user may not have thought to ask for

My family and I have been fascinated by the videos you can find at YouTube.
My Jeep Liberty lease is coming up in 2007 and I have my eye on a Lexus. Lexus came up with a car that parallel parks by itself. I wonder if market research data determined that someone like me is often a terrible parallel parker. I can't imagine saying in a user interview, "I stink at parallel parking." But, if you had time to do some contextual inquiry and you went for a drive with me downtown where we had to park, you again would not see me struggle to parallel park, I would rather pay to park in a ramp than to make the attempt. The point is that interviews and contextual inquiry get a good glimpse of a user's reality, but there is always so much more to discover and design sometimes needs to back away from what we see users doing and be inspired by the problems that have not been solved yet.

Lexus LS460 Parallel Parking

Process Research via Focus Groups

I don't recommend using focus groups to gather your user research, but I do recommend using them to provide clarification and expansion of the data you have gathered during site visits. After conducting a site visit study at a handful of sites in your target population, hosting a focus group will help you to validate what you observed and be able to define patterns of behaviour across the wider audience.

If you are designing a product for a process that may have a variety of users and protocols when using the product, you will never be able to see the scope of that variation by doing site visits alone. This is when a focus group of subject matter experts may help you validate, while further defining, and describing the processes that will have the most predictable and successful results with the product.

This kind of focus group will generate the best results when you do some upfront planning and make sure you have a support team with you when facilitating.

FOCUS GROUP PLANNING

Invite the right people (leaders, practioners, researchers)

Provide the proper incentive (status, cash, opportunity to influence and learn)

Provide enough information for them to come prepared. (schedules, agendas, notes)

Location, facility and materials (near attendees, comfort and AV/whiteboards)

Create a facilitation team (product leader/expert, facilitator, notetakers)

Roles and responsibility assignments for the facilitation team

FOCUS GROUP PREPARATION

Record the session objectives. Ensures capturing data needed to make design decisions

Structure the agenda of the session around meeting the objectives

Remember that we are human and need frequent breaks to stay engaged

FOCUS GROUP FACILITATION

Make sure the group understands what you hope to learn during the session

Always start the session by introducing everyone and their role

Begin with what you currently know about the process and product

Ask them to challenge any of these assumption and clarify anything that isn't quite right or may be different in their experience

Next ask them to help you fill in the blanks of your knowledge. What don't we know about the process, what are we missing?

Lastly, allow them to describe their likes and dislikes of the product.

If you already have some early concepts, you might want to share them and ask the team to help you fix or refine these concepts, now that you have a deeper and more accurate understanding of the complexity of the project

The most important factor in getting good data from a focus group is having a facilitator the understands and acheives the objectives of the session. The facilitator must also be very good at introducing the agenda segments and facilitating the conversation to keep it moving, keep it on track and to engage all attendeees.

If the process and product are very complex, I have heard of having multiple notetakers that focus their attention on one or two of attendees. This way none of the conversation is missed. I haven't tried this yet, but I intend to soon.

Augmented Reality

While watching Monday Night Football with my family, I realize how much I like the yellow first down marker that is digitally overlaid over the video feed. I wonder what technology makes that happen and what do you call that?

They do it by combing an image of the real environment with an image that is virtually created but intended to give the user more perceptive understanding of the real image. You call it Augmented Reality and J. Vallino has written about it extensively during his PhD research. Anytime you combine virtual reality with true reality you get this augmentation, a combination of truth with embelishments.

A good example of this is when a MRI image of your knee is annotated by the radiologist directly onto the image. The doctor might circle the area of interest and indicate their diagnosis. The surgeon may than take a look at the MRI image with and without the annotation. The surgeon may add their own annotation to indicate the angle at which they intend to reattach an injured ligament. The intention of augmenting the image is to provide more perceptive detail that improves the performance or understanding by all of those who view the augmented image, not only can you see the injury, but you can see the surgical repair intention. It will be much easier for the next person to recognize the injury and suggested treatment than just looking at the original MRI image alone.

Find ways to augment your reality!

Interactive Web TV

Have you played along with a game that is being televised? My teenage boys like to watch the Game Show Network (GSN)and I was intrigued by the variety of interactive play formats.

My son played along with Playmania with his cell phone. He texted a message to a number displayed on the screen and then waited for the gameshow to call him back. I wasn't too impressed at 0.99 cents a text and no one called him back to play.

The other interactive formats have more appeal and no cost. The two games I tried to play along with were Lingo and Chain Reaction. They both were modifications to the games on screen, but you are solving the puzzles televised on screen at the same time. The response time was quite good, but you could only use your mouse as an input device for the words games. It would have been a lot more efficient for me to type my 5 letter responses for LINGO.

I am always pleased to see the gaming industry push the envelope and taking advantage of new technology techniques. It gives us a chance to dream of how we might apply it to productivity gains in non-entertainment products.

Web Technology Trends

I enjoy randomly surfing the web to stay on top of how new technologies are being used successfully on sites and new technologies that are still in exploratory phase.

Successful use of AJAX
I like the new design of the SimonDelivers online grocery store. They have made their shopping cart and recommended items present on every page while shopping in a very clean and streamlined manner. Probably not 508 compliant, but the design intention is good.

Interesting new technology with Blaze
Take a look at this 3D Mizuno wedge golf club animation by Holomatix. Wow! Realistic and the ability to manipulate by panning, zooming, rotating in 3D space is great. I can think of lots of opportunities for providing these interactive images. I wonder how effective these are in helping a person make a purchasing decision? Does it matter what the product is? What types of products would this be most effective with? How could this be used in the education, training and support field? Great potential opportunities here.

Usability Test Facilitation Techniques

UNDERSTAND BUSINESS>PRODUCT>TEAM
A great usability test facilitator does more than just show up on the day of the test, they spend some time making sure they understand the product, objectives of the business and concerns from the project team. A great facilitator participates in the test planning process so they understand and help define the learning objectives for the test session.

CHOOSE THE BEST TEST METHOD
There are many test methods to choose from, but I really like, especially for low-fidelity or limited functionality prototypes is the interview guided task protocol. In this method, a task list is prepared in advance with usability objectives defined for each task. But the session starts with a conversation with the participant to understand how they currently use the product and in which situations. Then we have them do the pre-prepared tasks they identified that they perform during the interview, plus any other tasks the participant identified that we, the project team had not identified during the planning phase. BONUS - more user and task analysis input at a usability testing session.

I have observed and coached many great facilitators. Some of these tips may seem so basic, but you wouldn't believe how often I need to remind myself of these during the course of a test day, especially on the last day.......

FACILITATION TIPS
Greet and Set at Ease

Set the participant at ease, by making friendly conversation, smile :)

Remind the participant that they are not being tested, the product is, anytime they seem to be getting frustrated

Interview

Use eye contact and share information about yourself

Start your interview questions with the least personal to most personal, you need to earn their trust

Task Testing

Let the participant know that you won't answer their questions, but you would still like them to ask them out loud and be prepared to answer them at the end of the test session

Position yourself out of the line of site when transitioning to the task portion of the test session

Never lead the participant, be very careful of any words or body language you use

Save all of your questions until the end, but bring the participant back to areas you have questions about

Probe only at the end of the test session, not after each task

Avoid "training" the user, unless the project team feels compelled to, then only after the post testing questionnaire is complete

Resist Clutter and Digital imagery that pops

I, like so many people, receive way too many interesting email newsletters, magazines and professional journals. I do try to scan as many as possible and read at least one article of interest. If I scan and don't find one of interest or the day is just to0 hectic, I toss. I will be getting another edition in a couple of weeks anyways and if I didn't toss it, the clutter in my house would be too much. I have also learned that once I file a digital newsletter in my computer, I will never have time to look at it again.

This being said, I do want to share an article from one of my favorite digital design newsletters, SitePoint Design View, about creating better digital images in Photoshop. I had never heard about HDR, so this was eye opening to me.

Humor from Blimps are Cool

I was randomly listening to MP3's at ODEO today and ran across the Blimps are Cool blog. I don't normally support developer bashing, because developers help me bring many of my designs to life, but this was just too funny. If you want to tickle your funny bone, take a read.

Interactive Architecture - Urinal Video Games

I found a great site today on interactive architecture.

They had a funny article with video clip about a project at the MIT Media Lab on an interactive urinal. The combination of the virtual with the physical is what intriqued me the most. The stream producer was able to fire the stream at different areas of the backsplash in an attempt to hit the corresponding images on the video screen.

Take a look at the video, don't worry you won't see anything objectionable.

Playaway Digital

On my trip to the UPA 2006 conference, I purchased a nifty little audio book, Cell by Stephen King that came with its own player, earphones and batteries. The player details and other book titles can be found at www.playawaydigital.com.

All you had to do to get started was pull the battery protector out and hit play. The user interface is intuitive and easy to control, but the simplicity and completeness of the product is what really impressed me.

I am nearing the end of the book and hear are some things I determined are not as good as they could be:

battery consumption, the player came with two batteries and I am now on battery number four.

If the battery does run out, the player doesn't always remember where you left off. Sometimes it does, but sometimes it doesn't. Not sure why.

The black and white LCD display is very hard to read in bright light or no-light.

The book chapter identified by the narrator is not the same as the chapter number display on the player. They should come up with a chapter mapping, so if the narrator says "Part 2, Chapter 1" the player displays something like "P2, CH 1".

The play button is easily depressed when bumping along in my laptop bag, thus the need for some extra batteries. ;)

Overall, a great product and I can't wait to start my own collection! In fact, the playaway website even had suggestions for how to share your titles with others. If you want to swap titles sometime, drop me line - paying shipping is a lot cheaper than buying a new book all the time.

Power Outage

As I was working from home this morning, the power suddenly went out. It wasn't raining, nor could I hear thunder and lightning. There is construction out behind our house, so I figured I would don my walking shoes and investigate.

All the houses along my street were dark, but the construction area was quiet today. The heavy rains last night and sprinkles yet this morning were keeping the heavy equipment parked on higher ground.

I walked around the block and more quiet houses. A neighbor I hadn't met before was standing at the end of his driveway and asking a question. I held up the universal sign for "just a sec", one finger slightly raised and my hand moving in and out from my body, while I pressed the stop button on my mp3 book, "Cell" by Stephen King.
Have you seen these new audio books yet? They are basically a mp3 player with one full length book, ear phones, lanyard and triple A batteries. Amazing! If only I could download these books to my iPod, it might be a little cheaper. Removing the plugs from my ears, my neighbor and I confirmed each others suspicions, it wasn't just our own house without power, the whole neighborhood was impacted.

We stood at the end of his driveway talking about working from home and what we did for a living. He is a main frame, C programmer and he let me know that he thought Java was a waste of time and money when xml, C and others could do the job with a lot less lines of codes. As we were standing there, the Xcel Energy truck pulled up to his power pole, and the neighbor asked jokingly if he had too many computers running. The lineman jumped down from his truck, walked to the base of the pole and lifted a very stiff squirrel by the tail and said "Nope, this thing did it."

So here we were, standing at the end of the neighbor's driveway, wondering what could of caused this outage, when just 50 feet away, in almost plain sight, lay the answer. The neighbor and I are fairly intelligent human life forms, but we didn't know that the second most common cause of power outage was squirrels, so we didn't look for it or see it. We were also only casually observing the outcome of the outage because there was nothing we could do to fix it.

I see relationships between daily life and product design all the time. Here is what I learned from discovering that squirrels have a mysterious obsession with transformers:

If the user knows a products purpose and use, they will find the features they need in it.

The user must feel that the product is something they own or have control of or they will only use your product casually.

Make a product self evident and allow it to instruct the user as they are able to tackle more complex features.

Make a product personalizable and alllow the user to feel in control of the product.