QuickPanel: Air Travel
Must it be so miserable? Cheap fares and favorable weather may be outside the reach of good design, but surely some aspects of the flying experience could benefit from a little UX love. We asked a few of our experts how to make trips to the friendly skies more user-friendly.
What are airports doing, and what can they do, to become nicer places to spend time?
The reason why we have so many bad experiences… is that the parts in between are not designed at all.
Andy Polaine: We talk a lot in service design about the transitions between touchpoints being as important as the touchpoints themselves, if not more so. The reason why we have so many bad experiences—even with services whose individual parts seem well-designed (think of even good airline websites and check-ins)—is that the parts in between are not designed at all. Those dead spots don’t have to be filled with entertainment and lots of noise, but they could be way better than standing in a long queue in very dreary surroundings.
One example of this is the security area in Göteborg Landvetter Airport in Stockholm, which is decorated like a nice hotel foyer, as you can see in this photo I took.
(I rushed the photo because I’ve gotten so used to the idea that I might get arrested for taking out a camera in security, although probably no one would have minded. There’s an article and another photo here.) It still has X-ray machines and scanners, but they’re clad in white instead of jailhouse grey; it’s actually a pleasant environment to wait in and doesn’t make you feel like a criminal. I think a lot more could be done to encourage that third space downtime rather than trying to use it to force more stuff onto us.
Mike Fisher: To Andy’s point, one of the recommendations I made to [an airline I consulted for] a while back had to do with making their gates more pleasant and traveler-friendly. Fortunately for all of us, in the last few years some airlines have begun to look at their gates as part of the overall experience—in some cases offering simple conveniences like power plugs, etc.—though I think overall they could go further.
Some airports (Portland comes to mind) have done a good job of improving the experience of their public spaces and making them more relaxing and traveler friendly. Minneapolis’s Humphrey terminal has several areas set aside with restaurant booth-style seating areas with power. And at each of the terminal elevators they’ve thoughtfully placed pencils and notepaper for travelers to write down the location of their car.
Sadly, I have yet to come across a good TSA experience; they seem to be varying shades of awful.
Sadly, I have yet to come across a good TSA experience; they seem to be varying shades of awful. Even if we assume that body scanning is necessary (I certainly don’t think so, but that’s a different conversation), there’s plenty of room for improvement in terms of logistics and basic service design. For example, at the U.S. airports I’ve seen there appears to be no system in place to quickly respond to increased passenger flow by bringing more agents online to check boarding passes. I suspect they have some system for this, but if they do, it’s not adequate. Instructions could be better, too. I’ve watched a lot of novice travelers get caught up in various shoe/belt/laptop/toothpaste conundrums because the rules are explained inconsistently or not at all.
Indi Young: The airline I consulted for seemed to think that the “club” lounges were what they should concentrate on. We heard quite a bit from passengers about both gate and lounge experiences. There was a lot of frustration expressed by people hoping to use the lounge but being refused entry. (The airline has very complicated policies regarding when passengers can use the lounges.) But the airline was putting effort into its lounges and its check-in process, not the gate experience.
…they ignored our findings because they’re not used to investing in something that doesn’t directly return a profit.
I think they ignored our findings because they’re not used to investing in something that doesn’t directly return a profit. Investing in improving the “dead spots,” as Andy put it, would result in more passengers choosing that airline, but that isn’t a directly connected profit. At least that is what I think their reasoning is; I was blocked from speaking with the decision makers. (I’m still trying.) Oddly, the airline was also interested in creating a vacation-choosing service. None of the 100 people we listened to needed help figuring out where to go on vacation, but I think our findings fell on deaf ears. Someone higher up was excited about lounges and vacation-choosing services, and so that’s what was happening.
Meanwhile, as a contrast to Andy’s photo of Göteborg Landvetter Airport, here’s one I snapped (surreptitiously, for the same reasons) of an obstacle passengers have to navigate to get through security in San Antonio International Airport.
A lot of people may not realize that airports’ customers are, in fact, airlines, not passengers. How does this impact airports’ attitudes toward the people who flow through their space?
Indi Young: In my year-plus with [a major airline], I found out they have an “attitude” about the airports. Airports aren’t owned by them, and any physical upgrades, especially infrastructure upgrades, are done by the airport itself. It’s kind of like leasing office space. You do your own decor, but most of the stuff is already in place. (Seats, doors, windows, carpet, outlets, etc.) You could negotiate for some upgrades, but somehow the attitude is to not prod that sleeping dog.
Andy Polaine: Yes, this will be news to a passenger who has spent anything between a few hundred to a few thousand dollars on tickets, only to be treated like a criminal at best and mindless shopping robot at worst. It is an example of a broken, reverse or negative service ecosystem from the customer perspective.
…it’s not about an ongoing relationship, but selling someone a ticket and getting out of the relationship as quickly as possible…
It’s also a great/bad example of how the cracks between the different service providers aggregate to form an experience crevasse. Each provider or department believes it’s someone else’s job to deal with experience X (the “attitude” Indi mentioned). I’m sure, if it was about branding, the airlines would put pressure on the airport to change the decor. When it is about passenger experience, they don’t have to bother because they’ve already got your money. That’s what happens when a service is sold with a product mentality—it’s not about an ongoing relationship, but selling someone a ticket and getting out of the relationship as quickly as possible with the minimum amount of commitment.
Why is there such a difference between countries in the quality of air travel?
Andy Polaine: There are some real differences that are, in my experience, usually cultural clichés but relatively true. I recently experienced the difference between Germany’s Lufthansa and Singapore Airlines on my way to and from Australia. Same planes; very different cultures of service and ambience. Singapore was very much about warm service; Lufthansa was efficient and not unfriendly, but a little bit withheld. These are small generalizations, and I’ve experienced the opposite on both airlines, but this was my overall experience.
There are also cultural norms in the sense of what passengers have been educated to put up with. I see Americans taking their shoes off for the X-ray machines as a matter of course, even though they’re not required to. They’ve just clearly gotten used to having to go through such a rigamarole with TSA.
Mike Fisher: I traveled to Tel Aviv on El Al a couple of years ago and found both the in-flight and in-airport experiences fascinating. El Al not only served reasonable food (at least by American standards), they left plenty of snacks in the galley area and encouraged passengers to “graze” while stretching their legs during the long flight. I think on a U.S. flight you’d be either admonished or tackled for taking food from the galley without explicit permission.
…in Tel Aviv, the security agents couldn’t care less if you have a bottle of water or a tube of toothpaste with you…
At Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, the security agents couldn’t care less if you have a bottle of water or a tube of toothpaste with you (in fact they laughed when I asked if I should throw it away). Instead they watch expressions, body language, and other factors that can reveal a potential troublemaker. They achieve a very high level of security with a relatively small staff, and without wasting resources the way TSA seems to. Baggage gets scanned by machine but people receive individual scrutiny. It’s a smart system and in my view far less invasive than what we’ve become used to with the TSA.
Indi Young: In the U.S. sometimes the flight attendants are not completely on board with the airline, if you will allow me that euphemism. Flight attendants often belong to a separate organization that frequently fights with management. I’m not sure about gate and counter personnel, but in all cases, it’s these employees who interface with passengers the most. Again, attitude plays a big role, whether positive or negative. The passengers I listened to didn’t tell stories about differences in countries (except Amsterdam’s airport, which apparently draws everybody’s ire). They did tell stories about individual personnel members who treated them with great suspicion—assuming that this passenger was thinking the worst or being greedy, and letting that assumption influence their treatment of this passenger.
…we were unable to get the higher-ups interested in a study involving gate personnel or flight attendants.
In our research, we were unable to get the higher-ups interested in a study involving gate personnel or flight attendants. The one flight attendant that I got to listen to at length is a purser on international flights—she’s in charge of all the personnel on the plane, except the captain and others on the flight deck. She even complained about the attitude the flight attendants had: “I’d rather be serving the masses than catering to the asses.” Or vice versa. She implied that flight attendants (clearly not all of them) either prefer to work in Economy and deal with passengers’ uppity demands with a level hand, or to serve in Business or First Class, where the demands are at least valid, because passengers have paid more, but they tend to treat flight attendants like servants. You can begin to see where flight attendants, and gate personnel, come from; they don’t like being treated like servants. They don’t like being asked for extra services that aren’t a part of their normal work process. They try to limit their interaction with passengers and treat everyone with their own rote style of interaction. One flight attendant told me, “I’m only here for safety.” Of course, this is not true of everyone. I wish I’d been able to hear from the gate personnel and flight attendants. But to answer the question, the differences in treatment come more from the attitude of the personnel, based on their work conditions and how they personally handle dealing with hundreds of passengers a day. Many airlines don’t seem to have any strategy around this. Some do.
Like what our experts had to say? Guess what: you can have them bring their brains to you. Mike Fisher, Andy Polaine, and Indi Young are available for consulting and training through Rosenfeld Media.
Stephen Anderson will write Design for Understanding
The UX community may be mushrooming, but it still manages to retain something of a small-town feel. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Stephen Anderson, our newest author-to-be, for quite a few years, and have been following his work for even longer.
I’ve always hoped we’d have an opportunity to work together, and now I get my wish—Stephen will be tackling Design for Understanding, due out in 2015. It’s an ambitious topic, but if you know Stephen from his presentations and writing, you know that he has an absolutely incredible knack for making the complex clear. Really, I can’t think of someone else who could pull it off. And I’m thrilled that he’ll be writing a Rosenfeld Media book.
From Information to Understanding
If you’ve made it here, you’ve no doubt figured out—“this guy is writing a book about…” Well, what is this book about?
Let me answer that with an email I received a few months ago from a health care organization:
With the Affordable Care Act taking effect later this year, we are all very focused on trying to help consumers understand the confusing world of health insurance and to help educate and drive them to make better-informed healthcare decisions (e.g., taking better care of their health, going to Urgent Care vs. the ER if it’s not a true emergency, choosing a generic over a brand-name drug, etc.).
So how do you help someone understand— truly grok—something as complex as health care options? How does one move from that place of bewilderment to the sudden “I get it!” point of enlightenment?
That’s what this book is about. The means by which humans make sense of new of complex information. For those of us who design experiences, this is about how to design for understanding. While there’s plenty I could write about here, this picture sums up much of the territory I hope to cover:
At this moment, I’m interested in the connection between play and learning. How, when you start to play with something—especially a concise representation of a difficult concept—pattern recognition sets in. We learn through playful, visual (and spatial and…) interactions. Yes, interactive visualizations will be a focus of this book, but I’m more interested in exploring how things like vision, spatial memory, or physical interactions contribute to sense making.
The best single introduction I can offer at this time is my 15 minute TEDx talk on this subject:
Basically, how do we get from “I don’t understand…” to “This finally makes sense!” How do we get from information to understanding?
I’m thrilled to be writing this book. I’m thrilled to be writing this book with Rosenfeld Media, a publisher very invested in the writing process and production some of the highest quality books in my library. I’m thrilled by the writing team forming around this book (I can’t wait to tell you about some of the truly stellar people who have agreed to help me with this book). And finally, I’m thrilled to be writing this book with you. Yes, you. While there is much I’ve already learned, I’m more excited by all that I will learn by sharing as much a possible along the way.
Stay tuned—exciting times ahead!
QuickPanel: All About The Benjamins
The new $100 bill went into circulation Tuesday. While Benjamin Franklin’s mug still stares out at us in mild rebuke (“You’re buying that?”), the bill introduces bells and whistles previously unseen in modern U.S. currency, such as color, raised printing, and embedded images that can be seen only by tilting. USA Today gives us a look.
The $100 bill is the most frequently counterfeited American banknote, so enhancing security was a major driver of the redesign. Still, counterfeit bills account for less than 0.01 percent of all American currency in circulation.
We asked three UX experts to weigh in on this high-tech re-jiggering of an American icon.
Rosenfeld Media: Stodgy though U.S. money may be compared to the colorful bills of other nations, it is certainly distinctive. Might abandoning the hallowed greenback damage the American brand?
Jason CranfordTeague: Abandon the greenback? Why not just abandon paper money altogether?
The difference between U.S. currency and British currency reminds me of the difference between a user experience created by developers versus one created by designers.
But if we are stuck with it, the appearance—at least for branding purposes—seems beside the point. Don’t get me wrong; I really like money with aspirational characters such writers, scientists, and philosophers à la the British pound. It helps promote national pride and a sense of shared history, but that’s interesting about once (the first time you see it) and then becomes irrelevant. The difference between U.S. currency and British currency reminds me of the difference between a user experience created by developers versus one created by designers. U.S. bills are primarily concerned with functionality—aesthetics seemingly an afterthought. On the other hand, British bills are both functional and aesthetically pleasing. However, it may be the very utilitarian appearance of U.S. currency that differentiates it from other world currencies and makes it feel more reliable.
Christian Crumlish: Perhaps, although this makes me a bit sad, sort of like hinging American exceptionalism on the fact that we’ve successfully resisted the metrics system. There are some interesting accessibility drawbacks to the mighty uniform greenback. For one thing, a blind person cannot tell by touch if they are handing over a sawbuck or a Benjamin.
Christina Wodtke: Brian Collins once defined brand by telling a pirate story: the Jolly Roger is the brand promise that looting and pillaging fulfills. The reason the Jolly Roger is so powerful is because pirates who fly that flag come over on your boat and you are well and truly in trouble. That’s what made it so powerful when the Macintosh team flew it over their group that rivaled the Lisa. The moment someone flies that flag and then plays nicely, the game is over.
The greenback has always symbolized a stable and growing economy to the degree that countries switch to it when their economy is in trouble. I’d worry more about what is happening in Congress right now than what color our bills are. Because the day the greenback symbolizes ideology over stability, our brand will die worldwide.
I don’t think the challenges Yahoo faces has anything to do with their logo font, or who designed it, and I don’t think the U.S.’s brand will move one inch toward toward ruin because Ben gets a splash of color.
Rosenfeld Media: Most of the changes address audiences, such as counterfeiters and financial institutions, who aren’t consumers. How might these changes impact how consumers see U.S. currency–and the institution behind it?
Jason CranfordTeague: For usury users, the security features are obviously key to prevent counterfeiting. However, for most users (i.e., the public) what matters is how quickly they can tell the difference between the different denominations. The new bill addresses this somewhat by adding the tactile feel of raised printing. This should be of value to sight-impaired users especially, but the key differentiator of size was still not addressed. Most paper currencies will vary the size to make it easier to identify denominations at a glance. U.S. currency is still one- size-fits-all.
Money becomes invisible in some ways, except for its information content.
Christian Crumlish: I doubt the typical citizen is going to even notice such a change, especially those aimed at counterfeiters. Even when they went to those “large head” designs (which I love and find a bit, if I can admit this in the U.S.A., more European), it didn’t seem like most people paid them much mind. Money becomes invisible in some ways, except for its information content.
Christina Wodtke: Most people hate change of familiar objects they know and understand. The more radical, the more they refuse to accept it. If it also causes them to change their habits, they like it even less.
Take the dollar coin. It looks different, it feels different, and most importantly, it requires you to change your habits to carry and use it. People who don’t usually carry a coin purse must consider one, and when you reach for a dollar you must change where you reach and what you expect to grab. Dollar coin after dollar coin has failed, to the degree the U.S. treasury now stores $1 billion of them.
The Benjamin has two key assets that will help it make a smoother transition: first, everyone wants a Benjamin and, second, not everyone has one. If you are rich enough to have easy access, you probably use credit cards. If you are poor, just holding one is special, and I don’t think you’re going to fuss much over a small color change. The security need is just the spoonful of sugar to make the change more palatable.
Rosenfeld Media: Are there any usability concerns with this new bill, or with U.S. currency in general (for example, the lack of a dollar coin)?
Jason CranfordTeague: I love dollar coins. They are easier to carry, easier to use in machines, easier to tip with, and last longer, meaning that they cost less to use. Most currencies now offer at least a single unit coin (pound, Euro, etc.) with some currencies having coins in denominations of 2 and 5 units.
From a usability standpoint, dollar coins seem like a no-brainer. The problem is that the designs seem to have fallen flat. The Susan B. Anthony coin in the late 1970s looked too much like a quarter, and cash registers didn’t have separate spaces for them. You might also argue that since this coin featured a prominent leader in the women’s rights movement there was some sexism involved.
Over the years, it’s become fait accompli that a dollar coin will never work and that US citizens will never accept them. Given recent failed attempts to bring in a dollar coin with US Presidents, I’m afraid this is something that will never happen for the US.
Christian Crumlish: I’ve long been a fan of, and believer in, the value of a dollar coin, but it’s hard to argue with the fact that three attempts have, for various reasons, failed to meet the needs of the U.S. public. (I’m also a big fan of getting rid of pennies.)
Like Third World countries who leaped over landlines to go straight to cell phones, we’ll probably never fix our money. We’ll just move to the next best thing.
Christina Wodtke: Our money is not the best. It’s confusing to blind people, who have to fold corners to keep track of the value. Even sighted people can easily hand over a five when they mean a twenty, and it makes it easy for con artists to excuse flimflammery as honest mistakes. It’s flimsy, and rips.
But it’s our money. We handle it every day. It reminds us of our hard efforts and promises rewards to come. Emotionally, change will be hard. The key problem is the U.S. government has never explained to its citizenry how they will benefit from the change. The points Jason makes are in terms of him, the end user; yet when the government talks about change, it is always how it benefits them in terms for fraud and efficiency. If you want to make change happen, you must sell it and sell it hard.
I think we’ll go to all-plastic cards before we go to new money. I think we see that as more and more farmer’s markets have vendors who use Square. Like Third World countries who leaped over landlines to go straight to cell phones, we’ll probably never fix our money. We’ll just move to the next best thing.
Like what our experts had to say? Guess what: you can have them bring their brains to you. Jason CranfordTeague, Christian Crumlish, and Christina Wodtke are available for consulting and training through Rosenfeld Media.
QuickPanel: Launch a Healthcare Exchange with No User Testing?
The Wall Street Journal just informed us that “Groups Leading Insurance Sign-Ups Haven’t Tested Program’s Web Tool” (login required, sorry). The exchange sign-up process, expected to take as long as 45 minutes, would help U.S. citizens through complex issues, such as understanding their coverage options, deductibles, and prices. But it hasn’t even been tried by the community workers whose job it is to help citizens through the process.
Still, “a state Department of Health spokesman said… that everything was ‘on track’.” Good idea? We asked some of our UX experts to weigh in on the process:
Rosenfeld Media: Should state governments have delayed launching their health exchanges to perform user testing, even if it meant missing their launch deadline?
Steve Portigal It’s interesting that in some contexts we applaud moving quickly, launching in beta, and having real users give feedback to help refine the product. Granted, there’s more at stake here for the producers (e.g., the states) and the users than there would be (say) for an app that finds dog walkers in your area, but it’s intriguing how we reframe this as a clusterfuck already. Meanwhile, if there’s a “should” here, it’s that they should have developed a plan that included time to expose the exchange signup process—in whatever form—to real people.
If just one small piece fails, that can be enough to keep someone from succeeding.
Aarron Walter: Healthcare is complicated even for the experts who drafted the legislation, so it should come as no surprise that U.S. citizens with varying levels of proficiency with technology and the English language will struggle and fail to enroll in the new ACA system. Lives are quite literally at stake. If healthcare is to be a fundamental right of Americans, then the system that provides it needs to be usable and accessible for all on day one of the launch.
Whitney Quesenbery Was there really “no usability testing”? Or was there not enough testing, so that each piece of the system was strong? I know that work on the health exchanges started long ago, including some early design research and templates. But a design framework, even with a good interaction style guide, is just the start of a large complex system, and getting all those details right is a real challenge. If just one small piece fails, that can be enough to keep someone from succeeding.
Rosenfeld Media: Just like flubbed launches, delayed launches are embarrassing. Is there a sweet spot here? In other words, at what point is continuing user testing less valuable than launching?
If there’s a “should” here, it’s that they should have developed a plan that included time to expose the exchange signup process—in whatever form—to real people.
Steve Portigal: Context is everything. If the thing you are launching is on the front page of every paper and your vociferous opponents are willing to shut the government down rather than have you launch, then you probably want to be as flawless as possible. Launch a reduced experience, but make sure it works. If you are delivering a product for a small set of elite users, you have more forgiveness baked in. Backlash is a function of hype (see: iOS7).
Whitney Quesenbery: I’d like to suggest a different question. I don’t think there was any way that the opening was going to be delayed—that just isn’t politically feasible in the current context. Maybe the question is what could have been done to make the first 24 hours more of a success.
The real test of the usability of the system will be what happens after the opening day (or week) rush. First, they need to solve the technical problems. The best designed site is useless if you can’t sign on or if you hit bugs. Then, we’ll be able to see if people can understand how to set up an account, compare their options, and complete an application.
I agree with Steve’s comment above that a better process for getting everyone ready—especially the front-line health workers is the big “should.” Demos, training, and support could all have helped everyone be more confident that they knew how the exchanges would work. It’s really hard to see something for the first time on the day that you’re supposed to be helping others.
Rosenfeld Media: If you were consulting for an exchange that had launched without user testing, what advice would you be giving them this minute?
Steve Portigal: Pay my invoice ASAP. Okay, more realistically, I’d be encouraging them to develop a triage plan. What are the elements of the experience (e.g., accuracy, completion, actionable) that are essential, and how can they, even anecdotally, begin to take the temperature of those measures and to develop a way to determine iterative changes and rapidly issue incremental releases.
If healthcare is to be a fundamental right of Americans, then the system that provides it needs to be usable and accessible for all on day one of the launch.
Whitney Quesenbery: I’d want the team out in the community health centers and listening in on the support lines, observing, listening, and learning. Make sure they know where the barriers are and understand exactly what problems people are having: Where is the process is confusing? Where people don’t understand the instructions or information? Where is the interaction counterintuitive? It’s an opportunity for doing usability testing in the field and seeing first-hand how the marketplaces are working. Those insights are critical to both prioritizing the work of fixing problems and making sure any changes are done right. The worst thing they could do is flail around. Fix the most immediate and visible problems, and then keep working on the others in a careful way.
Like what our experts had to say? Guess what: you can have them bring their brains to you. Steve Portigal, Whitney Quesenbery, and Aarron Walter are available for consulting and training through Rosenfeld Media.
Sara Wachter-Boettcher on the Biggest Mistake in Responsive Design
This week we asked Sara Wachter-Boettcher—one of the instructors at our Responsive Design Studio (Mountain View, October 15-16)—to discuss a huge responsive design screw-up:
Rosenfeld Media: What’s one huge mistake organizations make when they embark on responsive design?
Sara Wachter-Boettcher: They think that it’s all about front-end development. Slap on some media queries and fit things to a flexible grid and you’re done, right?
But really, effective responsive design starts much earlier: at the strategy phase. As you design for devices of any size and shape, it becomes more important than ever to have a crystal-clear idea of what you’re trying to communicate and what your users need. You can’t design the look and feel and then figure out what you need to communicate later; there’s no space for that on small screens.
Instead, you have to make every single design decision align with the purpose of your site and the information you need to communicate—because that’s the only way you can be sure your point is going to get across as screen sizes shift and devices change.
To do this, you have to start with strategy, focus on content and messaging, and get everyone—designers, developers, writers, CMS specialists, everyone—on the same page early in the process. This is a challenge for many organizations that are used to working in silos or strict waterfall processes, but it’s only when we get more collaborative early in the process that we can get everyone working toward a shared vision. This is, of course far preferable to building an experience that is viewable on a small screen but is disjointed, difficult to understand, or fails to meet business and user goals.
Rosenfeld Media: Thanks Sara!
See you in Mountain View next month at the Responsive Design Studio?
Aaron Gustafson on the Biggest Responsive Design Mistake
This October 15-16, we’re hosting a Responsive Design Studio in Mountain View, CA! Come work with experts Sara Wachter-Boettcher, Aaron Gustafson and Jason CranfordTeague in this two-day, in-depth studio that weaves together content strategy, design, and development to form a complete look at what it takes to plan, write, design, and code for responsive and adaptive experiences.
In preparation for the studio, we asked expert Aaron Gustafson about one huge mistake that people keep making in Responsive Design and how to avoid it.
Aaron Gustafson: Tackling a site build that will work as well on smaller, mobile screens and larger, stationary ones is a lot more involved than rearranging content on a page. In addition to the visual design implications, a web team needs to consider page rendering performance, interface responsiveness, and what the continuum of experience should be for users as they move from a smaller, less powerful device on a mobile network up to a large (or perhaps giant) display with a faster processor that is hard-wired to the network or connected via wifi.
These considerations should factor into the strategy and system design process and should be part and parcel of all UX deliverables. Having integrated teams—UX, visual design, front-end, and back-end folks all working together—that can deliver this sort of documentation is crucial for the success of these types of projects.
Rosenfeld Media: Thanks Aaron!
Register for the Responsive Design Studio by 9/20 to get the Early Bird Discount!
Mobile Design Strategy: Don’t Make This Mistake
On September 12, our next event, The Mobile UX Summit, is coming to your virtual office! We’ve asked Josh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.
This week we talked to Greg Nudelman about an important mistake to avoid in mobile design strategy:
Greg Nudelman: I think one huge mistake people make is to assume that by using a simple app porting service they can turn an iOS app into an Android app. While this may work for some games (well… sometimes… and sort of), the same assumption FAILS for any content or search-driven apps in most other categories. The truth is there are about one million apps in each of the app stores (Android and Apple) so the competition is fierce in every category.
There is simply no substitute for knowing the OS conventions and using some of the basics as the anchor to start your mobile design. And OS formats are changing rapidly—witness nothing less than fundamental changes in both leading mobile platforms from Android 2.x to 4.x and Apple iOS 6 to iOS 7. And if you do decide to break the app conventions, it helps to know them first—that’s where design pattern books can be of help; books like Theresa Neil’s Mobile Design Patterns Gallery (O’Reilly Media, 2012) and my own Android Design Patterns (Wiley, 2013) are great resources. So to succeed with your mobile app, you will need to:
- Understand the conventions of the OS you are building for
- Start with a simple paper or sticky notes prototype to allow yourself to explore various design directions, fail quickly and cheaply and iterate rapidly
- Test early and test often to make sure the app uses the appropriate patterns and meets your customers’ needs and does so in an original, intuitive and delightful way
Good luck and see you at the Summit!
Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!
Designing Media Queries: A Few Great Resources
On September 12, our next event, The Mobile UX Summit, is coming to your virtual office! We’ve asked Josh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.
This week we picked Brad Frost’s brain about media queries in Mobile Design.
Brad Frost: Here are some of my favorite resources in regard to designing media queries properly:
Determining Breakpoints in Responsive Design – Tim Kadlec’s book Implementing Responsive Design provides a treasure trove of helpful tips and information for wandering down the responsive road. He discusses how to determine breakpoints in responsive sites not by popular device widths, but rather by your content and design.
The EMs have it: Proportional Media Queries FTW! – Lyza Gardner exaplains why using relative units instead of pixels for media queries results in more accessible, future-friendly experiences.
There Is No Breakpoint – Ben Callahan explains why “What breakpoints should I use?” is a foolish question to ask.
Essential considerations for crafting quality media queries – Zoe Gillenwater provides a massive list of techniques, pros, and cons for many media query techniques.
Tweakpoints – Jeremy Keith explains how the crucial difference between major breakpoints and minor breakpoints.
Rosenfeld Media: Thanks Brad!
Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!
Mobile First Design: Don’t Make This Mistake
On September 12, our next event, The Mobile UX Summit, is coming to your virtual office! We’ve askedJosh Clark, Brad Frost, Theresa Neil, Greg Nudelman, Jason CranfordTeague, and Mike Fisher for 27 tips and 2 case studies on designing mobile experiences. You’ll walk away with new mobile UX insight and skills, get some questions answered—and the session recordings are included with your registration.
This week we asked Theresa Neil about the most important mistake to avoid in mobile design strategy:
Theresa Neil: There is actually a clinical term for a harmful practice I see occurring in the mobile space; it’s called the Hipster Designer Disorder. This affliction is characterized by an intense need to create novel designs just to be different.
It can be addressed by familiarizing oneself with existing design patterns and usability best practices.
All joking aside, this problem costs companies time and money in creating custom controls and interfaces that are frequently confusing to their users.
Sign up now to reserve your virtual seat at our Mobile UX Summit on September 12!
