Category: General Stuff

I’ve recently had the great opportunity to present to a small group of startups being incubated within our Citrix Startup Accelerator division regarding good design practices, and partnership with designers towards product excellence. As part of that presentation, and in subsequence follow-ups, I’ve created a “primer” collecting useful pointers, references, links, and articles into a single document for startups to use. Nothing secret, and certainly suitable for a broader audience. I’m happy to share that here below. I may evolve this into a more full-scale presentation for various conferences at some point too. Enjoy!

Overall Design Process

Discovery > Conceptual Design > Detailed Design > Implementation > Post Ship
(all the while doing research, user studies, testing, etc.)

More about “design process” in a couple prior posts:

https://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=78

https://www.ghostinthepixel.com/?p=71

 

Suggested Design Principles

Provide smooth and direct interactions
Use smart defaults where sensible 
Help the user complete tasks efficiently

Present information clearly
Group and prioritize data logically
Show only what’s important
Enable successful decision-making

Performance matters
Set proper expectations
Respond quickly to user inputs
Acknowledge delays with grace and humility

Be modern
Embrace emerging UI trends
Leverage what’s popular and familiar
Design for the user, not just a feature

Respect your users
Minimize interruptions
Speak their language and be honest
Anticipate their needs and protect them from harm

 

Question Your Interface…

For every UI item (button, icon, field, etc.) ask: What problem does this solve, how does this support the user’s goal?

Is adding another feature or UI item helping or hurting users from achieving their goals…and supporting your value prop?

Every additional UI element is yet another visual signal that has to be viewed, learned, understood, and tried out, thus increasing complexity.

How much complexity do you truly need in your product? How much of that complexity can be pushed to the back, “behind-the-curtain”?

Keep referring back to your UX value prop statement to help with your UI design decision-making!

 

Know Thy User!

What is your product’s value prop? What’s the core benefit for the user?

Who is your target user and what are their a) current pain points and b) unmet needs? Can you verbally paint a picture of their “day in the life” and how your product fits in it? What’s the story?

What is your user’s primary 80% tasks, activities, and goals? How does your product enable those goals? Focus on the 80%, not edge cases!

What contexts and scenarios would your product be used in? At home, in a coffee shop, on a plane, at the office, etc.?  Focus on the 80%, not edge cases!

Is it for a mobile device or stationary situation (desktop PC, etc.). Are there multiple screens and devices involved?  Focus on the 80%, not edge cases!

What is the emotional outcome you seek? How do you imagine the user feeling after using your product? Again, connect this back to their tasks, activities, goals, and contexts of usage.  Focus on the 80%, not edge cases!

Complete this sentence: User X needs Product Y to achieve Goal Z for W reason/purpose. That’s your UX value prop in a nutshell. This requires a deep understanding of your user’s context and goals.

Related Resources
Basic Discovery Questions for Scenarios
Basic Discovery Questions for User Profiles
Basic Discovery Questions for Functionality

 

Useful Design Articles

Designer Founders

Design Primer for Engineers

How Designers and Engineers Can Play Well

IDEO Human Centered Design Toolkit

Steve Jobs’ 6 Pillars of Design

 

Additional Pointers

Dieter Rams’ 10 Principles for Good Design

Jakob Nielsen’s 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design

AskTog’s First Principles of Interaction Design

Carsonified’s 10 User Interface Fundamentals

Fred Beecher’s Nine Essential Characteristics of Good UX Designers

Keith Lang’s Top 10 UX Myths

Below is an excerpt from a recent piece I’d published for an IT industry journal, offering “predictions” for 2012 around design matters. It was a fun piece to write, in cooperation with our Citrix PR team. I usually avoid publicizing any kind of  “predictions” (you almost always get in trouble, either for inaccuracy or overhyping) but took this cool opportunity to frame a case for certain UX trends and themes. Enjoy!

 

 

2012 will certainly see further market growth and technical evolution of enterprise virtualization technologies, along with competing cloud platforms for public/private data access. From a user experience (UX) perspective, however, certain drivers are starting to become apparent as “consumerization”emerges as a common theme amongst enterprise software vendors–thanks to the skyrocketing popularity of iPhones, iPads, and “Apps”.

 

1. Ubiquity of content: Partly due to virtualization & cloud tech, we can now access any content from any device, any place. We will live in increasingly “blended” modes of work AND play, from updating your Facebook status (discreetly) at the office, to revising spreadsheets while in line at Starbucks for your Venti latte. Indeed, it has become an entitled expectation to be able to do so among Gen Y & millenials entering the workforce.

 

2. Fluidity of information: Much like the NFL Mobile Network commercial where a football fan enjoys the exact same game across morphing devices (from TV > phone > tablet > laptop > etc.) that information remains the same and “mutates” according to each device’s particular form factor and screen size or capabilities. Yet all the while it’s one constant uninterrupted flow, optimized for the context and device with device-based and network-based intelligence (bandwidth enhancements, off or on-loading resources, etc.). All of that is done invisibly so the consumer has no idea, nor should they.

 

3. Personality of service: As Robert Brunner of Do You Matter, a good book on creating cultures of design savviness, has explained: People  simply love their chosen brands, which matter even more so in highly contested, fragmented technology spaces. People LOVE Dropbox, Netflix, Evernote, and so forth…and will react harshly when things change for the worse (See: Qwikster). Asking for patience during downtimes or flaky service just doesn’t cut it anymore. So while IT admins roll out new cloud-driven IT systems, the service impact will reflect their brand and shape their users’ (and employees’) perceptions. Tone of voice, personality, and value of service all add up. You gotta have emotional connectivity, not just IT data connectivity. People have to WANT to use your service to positively fold into their daily lifestyles of work and play…and feel good about sharing that with their friends and family (the viral, social effect).

 

In the end, 2012 will be the year of emotionally resonant simplicity that blends with people’s lifestyles, not just their devices or apps but tapping into their needs for have ubiquitous, fluid, beautiful experiences across virtualized and cloud-based platforms. We’ll see this emerge in Home Entertainment (Cloud-based TV that “help” your choices), Home Automation (Cloud-driven thermostats that “know” your energy usage), and Wearable Computing (Smart health monitors, like Jawbone Up, FitBits, Nike Fuel, to support wellness habits) even In-Car Telematics (Cloud / Virtualized systems for a car to run entertainment, navigation, etc.). The possibilities are truly endless, but the choices will be determined by total quality of UX.

I remarked the other day to one of our design directors how often it seems my “throwaway” diagrams of an overall workflow (objects / people / actions / outcomes) spark some very critical (yet unaired) business discussions: what are we really making, which market does this serve, what’s the monetizing scheme, and overall profit model? Indeed, I find that’s one of the very valuable, even influential, aspects of being a UI designer for a product team…not just creating spiffy comps and cool prototypes with nicely annotated specs, but raising those basic questions with simple diagrams.

It’s the subtle insinuation of deep purposeful forethought to help make powerful stakeholders sit up for a moment and reflect upon the true collective aims of this project…an effort absorbing such sizable time and expense. And they don’t have to be slick gorgeously rendered diagrams either…just basic pen/whiteboard style or “back of the napkin” sketches, abstractly representing relationships of parts and wholes, action pathways, preceding and dependent elements, causality and outcomes. Loose gestural diagramming is often best, with the crudeness implying the ideas are still formative stages of early iteration and suitable for adjustment.

Such quick rough diagrams have a certain rawness and energy that perhaps gets business execs & stakeholders thinking at a level more primal than slick Powerpoint decks and Illustrator posters. But for whatever reason, these diagrams can serve as valuable doorways to critical conversations about what’s the core business problem we’re trying to tackle, not just the UI we’re trying to ship. And, perhaps more importantly, it will get those execs, even the CEO, to diagram out their thinking of what matters most to this project, and to the company mission. That’s how design can really help the business, beyond a cool deliverable, towards elegant simplified thinking.

While it’s understandable in this era of cool, beautiful designs marketed on app stores that a start-up (or any company for that matter) desperately wants “someone to make the UI pretty”, it’s vital to understand that a designer provides significant value beyond “pretty pixels”, or “easy usability”. A designer of digital products & online services should be treated as a partner and leader in the product development process.

Below is a quick breakdown of what we’ve discussed within Citrix Product Design as a model of framing how designers can and should function as leaders within a company, for long-term organizational gain. Designers within the team, or organization, offer the following leadership value:

Indeed the best designers know how to blend beauty and purpose flexibly, with a mix of creative thinking and analytical decision-making. They could very well be a company’s most valuable team addition, striking a model of design leadership that elevates everyone’s game within the company.

I just love how Devs and PMs often ask me (or my talented peers) to make “it” pretty. Usually the “it” being something that’s a total riot of buttons, icons, menus, tables, and randomly thrown stuff, already “pre-designed” by the esteemed stakeholders like aforesaid PM or Devs. Understandably it’s all borne out of good intentions (or we optimistically presume so)…We in this field often have heard this far too many times before, this seemingly harmless, light-hearted, yet teeth-grindingly irksome request. Can you (please) make this pretty for me? After all, it’s just a few colors, fonts, images and — voila! right? Oh and can you have it ready by 5pm or tomorrow at the latest? Thanks so much!

Of course, there’s so much more than whipping up a few colors and icons… And just what is it that makes this particular, simple request so bothersome, even offensive to designers? A few quick thoughts, as this has come up recently at a few talks I’ve given to folks in various contexts, in terms of requesting help from designers. And as designers, we’ve all encountered this at some point!

Foremost, “pretty” is a pejorative to a serious, well-intentioned designer. It is a word that smacks of triviality, frivolity, and altogether not-so-serious work..in a word “silliness”. It’s also somewhat vaguely sexist, but the primary issue is what it implies: window dressing and lip gloss treatment, that’s merely superficial veneer, to dress up a train-wreck of a product lacking nuanced, strategic forethought of use and quality.

Also this notion implies that the work of a designer is not legitimate work of industry, struggle, overcoming, and finally deliverance worthy of achievement. There is indeed a heroic journey no matter how you proceed, from empathic analysis, to creative synthesis, with prototyping and iteration, gauging user feedback, and so forth. There is significant effort and difficulty in the trials and efforts of “making something pretty”, and worthwhile.

So what should devs/PMs request? Instead of “making it pretty”, it’s far more productive to ask how to partner with designers in identifying the proper problem to solve, generating solutions that fulfill user’s goals, enable users to stay on task by creating something that is usable and desirable. How can PMs and Devs help designers solve the problem and deliver a beautiful, powerful solution to drive total sales, meet market targets, promote overall brand value, and provide something that’s strategically valuable, not just ephemerally cute or pretty. In other words, how can we ALL team up together to tackle flawed thinking and deliver a smartly thought-out product or service.

And besides, when it comes to “prettying up” the UI, that in itself really refers to clarifying, illuminating, emphasizing, adding structure, coherence, utility, value, and meaning that supports a person’s goals…echoing the words of legendary designer Paul Rand. How to make it more visually communicative, with hierarchy, balance, proportion, scale. How to make the product or service more emotionally resonant, such that people will love it, and demand more or spread a good word to their peers, and find delightful use in their daily activities. After all, this is really a big step towards going beyond “pretty” and delivering promising, impactful value, which is what we’re really striving for, though our non-design stakeholders may not realize it. We have to help educate our friends in Dev and PM what it really means to “design pretty”, and delivery effective value as product  design partners.