Indi Young on generative versus evaluative research

As part of our ongoing series of short interviews with Rosenfeld Media people, we turn to Indi Young, the author of our first book, Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with User Behavior. Since its publication in 2008, the book has become a perennial favorite; we just keep printing more!

RM: What’s the biggest mistake people make when it comes to mental models?

Indi Young: Someone said to me last year, “So I still don’t understand how to set up a scope to find out why someone would buy an iPhone over a Windows phone or an Android phone.” That would be evaluative research; mental models are a structure to contain generative research. The scope this person would explore generatively would be, “Tell me your thoughts around staying connected while on the go.” With a scope like this, you will hear the goals people have in mind—”Keep track of where the kids are,” “look up my client’s business address to find nearby parking,” “let my husband know I’ll be 30 minutes late getting home,” “change my flight reservation because this meeting is running long,” “listen to that new song my friend gave me after I get home, on my quality speakers,” “give that report to my co-worker after I finally remember during dinner at the pizza place,” etc., etc.

These are the things people are trying to get done, and they might use a mobile device to do it. Or they might use a phone book or the TV or a map or a piece of paper. It doesn’t matter. What matters is how each goal is supported. Does the Android phone support “give that report” as well as an iPhone or a Windows phone? You’d look at how each of these devices helps a person accomplish each of the goals. If there are stronger matches between certain devices and certain goals, then that indicates why a person might select the device with the stronger match. But just asking for the matches is a weak use of a mental model. Instead, use it to think up more specific, stronger ways to support a particular goal, for a specific subset of the audience.

Another mistake is the assumption that a lot of time and effort is required to create a mental model. Folks get scared off and never try one. True, if you go interview a bunch of people then yes, it will take six weeks or longer to get through all the steps. But you can also get a lot of insight using short essays people write about their thought processes regarding a particular scope. Or you can re-use existing research and your own knowledge of the customer perspective. These are a few ways to create, or at least sketch, a mental model within a week.

John Ferrara on “gamifying” experience

John Ferrara, author of Playful Design, is the subject of today’s mini-interview. If you find John’s answer interesting, you might check out the longer interview he did with Jenn Webb of O’Reilly Radar. Or, of course, buy John’s book.

RM: What’s the biggest mistake people make when it comes to creating game experiences in everyday interfaces?

John Ferrara: Paying insufficient attention to the quality of the player experience. It’s important to understand that there’s an innate selfishness to gameplay. People don’t play games out of loyalty to your brand or because they want to solve world hunger. They play because they value the experience. To the extent that designers trade off enjoyable gameplay to serve their own purposes, they are shooting themselves in the foot.

This is what concerns me most about the gamification fad. Too often, “gamifying” an experience means adding points and leaderboards but leaving it otherwise unchanged. This is even implicit in the word “gamification”, which suggests an experience that is by its nature something other than a game but dressed up to resemble one. These kinds of approaches will not survive because they don’t value gameplay, and so players will not value them.

Successful implementations recognize that games need to be games first, and give the highest priority to the player experience. These are intrinsically rewarding games that are enjoyed for their own sake. Their designers value play and understand it as a fundamental function of living.

Rachel Hinman’s The Mobile Frontier is now on sale

We’re overjoyed to report that Rachel Hinman’s much-anticipated book is now available! Here’s the blurb:

Mobile user experience is a new frontier. Untethered from a keyboard and mouse, this rich design space is ripe with opportunities to invent new and more human ways for people to interact with information. The Mobile Frontier will help you navigate this unfamiliar and fast-changing landscape, and inspire you to explore the possibilities that mobile technology presents.

If the testimonials from folks like Josh Clark and Luke Wroblewski don’t grab you, check out what readers are already saying nice things about the book.

Also peruse the table of contents, FAQ, the 390 illustrations, and an excerpt that UX Magazine has kindly published. They’re also giving away five free copies in an oh-so-easy-to-enter contest.

We hope you’ll enjoy The Mobile Frontier; please let us know what you think!

10 tips for better UX surveys

Are you a bit sceptical about surveys?

I was too – but researching this book has changed my mind.

If a survey is going to happen anyway, we need to make sure it’s a good one. So the first part of this talk has tips for better questions.

If you’re doing a survey from start to finish, the second part of this talk has tips for a better survey process.

View the slide deck:  10 tips for a better UX survey from Caroline Jarrett

Retiring an ebook format

When we published our first book back in 2008, we sold it in two and only two formats: paperback and a screen-optimized PDF. Both had been extensively researched, carefully conceived, and user tested. And we thought we were hot stuff for bundling print and digital from the very start.

Since then, the reading experience has changed dramatically. (To understate things dramatically.) In response, we rolled out printer-optimized PDF versions of our books, so customers could print them out more effectively. Then our books came out in iPad-friendly ePub format. Then, MOBI for the Kindle.

After the mad shifting of sands underfoot, things seemed to stabilize over the past year or two. A large portion of our sales are now digital only, and of them, ePub and MOBI files are the clear formats of choice for reading on mobile devices.

The odd man out? Our old-fashioned (four year-old!) screen-optimized PDF. And that makes sense—why use PDF, a format conceived for print, when there are newer formats designed to be used on your favorite mobile device? Additionally, publishing is a low-margin business, and producing a specially-designed screen-optimized PDF almost doubled our layout costs.

So, goodbye, screen-optimized PDF, and thank you. We’ll continue providing printer-optimized PDFs, as well as ePub and MOBI ebooks. When the ebook sands shift further, we’ll keep up. And our ebooks will remain DRM-free.

Please let us know if you have any questions or suggestions.

And as a reward for getting this far, you get to be one of the first to learn of our newest book, which just soft-launched a couple hours ago. Apropos of this discussion, it’s Rachel Hinman’s The Mobile Frontier. And here’s a 25%-off discount code to use when purchasing it: EASTEREGG (good for the first 25 people to redeem it).

Now on sale: Playful Design by John Ferrara

It’s here! John Ferrara’s Playful Design: Creating Game Experiences in Everyday Interfaces is now on sale.

John’s book is not yet another title on gamification. Playful Design instead takes a healthily skeptical and highly practical approach to showing how user experience designers can achieve great things in the real world through games.

The book’s introduction, testimonials, and its 137 images are all available via the book’s web site. And the good people at .net magazine were kind enough to publish an excerpt. Check’em out, then order this lovely new book as a four-color sewn binding paperbacks and in three DRM-free ebook formats (PDF, ePUB, and MOBI).

(By the way: our long publishing drought is over—our authors suddenly seem to be getting super-productive!—and we may put out as many as eight new books in 2012. So this might be a good time to check out our Future Pack—our next four titles at 25% off).

New book signing! Lisa Welchman will be Managing Chaos

We’re thrilled that Lisa Welchman has begun work on a new Rosenfeld Media book, Managing Chaos: Web Governance for the Enterprise (due out later this year).

Lisa is doing us all a service by taking on the 800 lb. gorilla in the room. Regardless of how much we invest in UX research, design, technology, or content strategy, it’s all too likely these efforts will fall flat if web governance hasn’t been addressed. Why? Well, so many of our organizations are messy environments that are rife with political intrigue and outright turf warfare. But there’s hope: better web governance will make your web environment the agile, coordinated business channel it was meant to be. And there’s no better person to tackle this topic than Lisa, who’s been at it longer—and more successfully—than just about anyone on the planet.

Interested? Then sign up here and we’ll email you when Lisa’s book goes on sale (we’ll send you a code for a nice discount as well). And if you can’t wait for Lisa to finish her book, you really ought to attend her web governance workshop in Washington, DC, this May 9.

Two questions for Whitney Quesenbery on storytelling

Storytelling is a powerful tool, and thanks partly to a certain book, UX practitioners are using storytelling to supercharge both their research methods and designs. So we’re pleased that Whitney Quesenbery will teach Using Personas and Storytelling Effectively, one of our full-day UX workshops, in Washington DC on May 7.

RM: What’s the biggest mistake UX people make when it comes to storytelling?

Whitney Quesenbery: Many people take “storytelling” too literally, looking for a classic short story or other ways of “performing” a story. That’s one kind of storytelling, but there are many more. Like so many other UX concepts, there’s (big) Story—the idea of infusing context, characters, emotion, and imagery into our work—and there’s (little) story, all the ways we can do that, from personas to the narrative arc of an interaction.

RM: What’s one thing you wish you knew about storytelling before you started writing about it?

Whitney Quesenbery: I wish I knew more about ways to use story that aren’t as comfortable for me. That’s why the collaboration with Kevin Brooks was so great. His oral storytelling and use of stories in design innovation complement mine for understanding the user experience.

Since the book came out, I’ve talked about storytelling in UX with a lot of people around the world. It’s been awesome to keep learning from them and trying new ways to incorporate stories into my own work.

Three reasons why your response from your panels may not be what you want

What might turn an honest, happy respondent into a despondent cheat?

(more…)

Luke Wroblewski on the Most Common Web Form Mistake

Web Form Design remains our best-selling title, and it’s not surprising—Luke Wroblewski took a topic that sounds painfully dry and made it a joy to read. And powerful too: poorly-designed web forms can negate much of your site’s value, but Luke’s book is packed with straightforward and often easy fixes.

RM: What’s the biggest mistake people make when it comes to Web form design?

Luke Wroblewski: Focusing on the layout or technical implementation of Web forms instead of their role in a conversation with people. In most cases, it’s the questions we ask and how we ask them that make or break form conversion, not a fancy layout or technical solution. Yet many teams will spend months designing and developing new Web form designs that ultimately don’t move conversion. A lot of this effort is probably better spent taking an outside-in look at the requirements in your forms. That is, seeing things from your customer’s point of view—not yours.

You can even go so far as scripting or acting out what an ideal conversation with your customer might be. For example, if you are offering home loans, a useful conversation might go something like this:

“How can I help you?”
“I’m trying to see if I can afford a home.”
“I can help you with that, is this your first home purchase…”

Whereas, a typical Web form conversation goes more like this:

“First Name”
“Umm ok I guess”
“Last Name”
“Phone number”
“Wait why do you need my phone number?”
“Agree to my terms of service!”

Clearly there’s a big difference between these two approaches.

RM: Are users really willing to have conversations with us? Don’t they take some comfort in the anonymity of interacting with faceless organizations through forms?

Luke Wroblewski: They are if they want what’s on the other side of the form and the conversation is clearly helping them get it. No one’s going to take the time to hand over a bunch of information unless they have some reason for doing so. The key to turning the process of collecting that information into a conversation is understanding that motivation: they want to buy something, they want to get a rebate, whatever it happens to be. When you know why people are there you can ensure your questions align with their goals or explain situations where people may think your requirements don’t. Even better, you can align your visual and interaction design with those goals too.

But if you are asking if people want to have actual back and forth conversations with personified paper clips, the answer is probably no. Thinking in terms of a conversation doesn’t mean you literally design it that way (though you can and I’ll be discussing that in the workshop!). It means you’ve thought about your requirements & process in human terms. Not just in terms of databases, marketing requirements, and legal mandates.

RM: So what’s the second biggest mistake people make with Web form design?

Luke Wroblewski: I may have been too kind in my first answer because I assumed that an organization actually takes the time to think about and carefully design their forms. More often, though, forms are just a label/input field version of the name/value pairs in a database. Many people don’t realize how much you can do to improve critical interactions like checkout, registration, and so on. They simply assume “a form is a form” and that’s it. There’s a world of optimization, science, and art that can be applied to forms to great effect, which is what this workshop is all about—not only what’s possible but the details behind how to do it.

Hope to see some of you at my workshop!