We had a guest speaker come in to talk to my Brownie Guide group on Monday for their Disability Awareness Badge. In a wheelchair at 21, Anne has gone on to become a successful solicitor who has sailed the Atlantic well before the internet was established. But Anne has offered me a view about how making experiences amazing, beyond simply functional, is the key to her living her life to the full.

We talked about Christmas shopping, working from home, sources of information to improve life with a disability and how charities are behind the times with technology. Nowadays, with the technology available, Anne can be just as able as I am, but she is also more bound to using it than I am. Focussing on just Christmas shopping, this is when it really drills home that when you make an effort to make an experience amazing for your customer, for some you are massively enhancing the quality of their life.

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Content is a major way of communicating messages, but on the web we can be prone to believing that aesthetics sell and end up neglecting the written content. Good copywriting is about understanding how it makes the audience feel and persuading them using both language and imagery.

Mark Vincent is one of our accessibility testers. He has been buying clothes online for the past 7 years – his screen reading software reads what is on the page for him, but the only way he can visualize clothing is through the image the content creates in his mind. He has written a guest blog for us to understand what the web “looks” like to him. Try to imagine the product yourself only through the written cues before you follow the link.

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The key to good communication is to know exactly what to communicate to your audience so you can help them do whatever they are doing. This focus on audience needs is more important than being squeaky clean with reality. When backed by clear insight into the needs of your audience this means you aren’t really lying at all (that would be dishonest and despicable) – rather you are ‘enhancing the truth’ and communicating well according to your audiences goals.

Lessons from the London Underground

Geographical and the iconic London tube maps

Last week on University Challenge a set of questions for the students was to identify London underground stations on a map which was drawn with geographic accuracy rather than in the iconic Harry Beck 1931 style. Read the rest of this entry »

On the whole, humans are visual creatures, which makes sense when you think about it as sight allows us to perceive, identify, and act on objects outside of our reach. As such, many designers go to great lengths to attract customers by designing displays that are visually appealing. However, if you only consider vision, a number of interaction opportunities to make interesting, impacting and memorable designs slip through our fingers.

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Today the UK Drivers Standards Agency (DSA) announced that there will be a new ‘independent’ driving section of the driving test. This will be 10 minutes in the driving test where the test candidate will NOT receive step-by-step instructions from the examiner, but will rather be expected to drive unsupervised and without prompting.

Road safety minister Mike Penning said: “the independent driving assessment gave test candidates the chance to show they have the “necessary skills to cope with the sort of traffic conditions they will face every day”.

Making it real is a good thing!

A good move we think – in testing anything, whether it’s a person’s skills or the usability of a website, it is important to make the test as close to reality as possible (some term this ‘ecological validity’ we just say ‘making it real’). When we do lab based usability testing or testing in the field we always strive to make it as natural as possible, and amongst other things this includes avoiding giving prompts or directions and just letting the person get on with what they were doing without interruption.

How far will they go in making it real?

The driving test candidates won’t be penalised for getting lost and can ask for help with directions if they wish – they are being examined not on their navigation (thank goodness otherwise I know many people who would never pass) but how they drive by themselves. It will be interesting to see how far the examiners will go in making the testing more realistic –  for instance will they allow sat navs? -  if so, would the candidates be penalised for swearing at them (as often seems to happen somehow in my car)? And what about screaming kids, and argumentative spouses….?

see:

• BBC News: Driving test change introduces ‘independent’ section
• DirectGov: Independent driving and riding section of the practical test
• Bunnyfoot: User testing services

Image by tgraham via Creative Commons

Why is it that Apple’s App Store hosts over 200, 000 apps and has served over 3 billion app downloads despite only being launched a mere two years ago? What makes apps so popular and how do you harness that popularity?

Our most recent app testing for a major household name revealed 2 key reasons why apps were preferred to browsing the web: people like apps because they are immediate and Read the rest of this entry »

It is sad news this morning to see Dundee based game developers ’Realtime Worlds’ going into administration. So, what happened? Read the rest of this entry »

One of the great attractions in Edinburgh is the Zoo, my kids love it. We have been members for five years and spend many days of the summer holidays wandering around. Over the last few years I’ve seen the Zoo marketing develop and on my last visit was particularly impressed by their recent flyers. They have successfully combined maps, plans for the future, members information and all manner of other info into one neat, slick and usable handout.

The flyer is a standard DL sized concertina folded affair but what nicely sets it apart is that it has a built in information architecture and is really easy to use.

The concertina has an offset fold that exposes a small border. The borders show the title of that section and make it easy to find and fold to that section. The borders act in the same way as tabs do within a webpage. They conceal a large amount of information in a small space and provide the user with a quick introduction to the contents.

Having these tabs makes it easy to find the section you are interested in and avoids the problem of either having to open up the entire concertina or folding it up in some weird way to expose the bit that you are interested in.

If the zoo were not a fantastic trip in and of itself, I would heartily recommend popping along just to pick up one of these flyers.

If you’re aware of any similar excellent examples we’d love to hear about them.

Advances in mobile, social media and gaming technologies have moved the field of user experience into almost all areas of our daily lives. This has created a shift away from traditional usability (as you knew it) to the much richer scope of user experience, where users’ feelings, motivations, and values are given as much, if not more, importance than the traditional measures of efficiency effectiveness and subjective satisfaction.

Social media in its broadest sense is the opportunity for people to have a conversation in various places and in a variety of ways. It covers linked in groups, facebook, myspace, virtual communities, slideshare, flickr, dig, delicious, you tube and various blogging platforms like twitter and wordpress etc

By these various platforms your average Jack (or Jill) can broadcast a “word of mouth” conversation to thousands all over the world. For brands it enables creation of a loyal community, being closer to consumer opinion and innovation. Handled well, brands can create a stronger emotional engagement for users with lasting reach. This means better bottom line results, whether measured by traffic, sales, retention or recommendations.

As the use of social media becomes more mainstream for companies, we often come across it during user testing sessions. Below are my three top tips for getting the best user experience from your social media activities.

Bunnyfoot’s 3 C’s of social media user experience;

Community:

• Take the time to know your community / users. This will ensure you engage them with appropriate use of social media.
• Know what content they are interested in, why they have joined your community and then ensure they are rewarded with appropriate content.
• Don’t miss an opportunity to innovate always be thinking how you can use social media to make their lives a little easier e.g in the case of a cooking TV channel, provide the option for the shopping list to be texted to a phone or link directly to online shopping where they can order all the ingredients immediately.

Conversation:

• Make sure there is relevant and up to date content, which means dedicating resource.
• Don’t socially squat. Having a share link to your twitter account or action to join your facebook page is not a conversation or strategy for growth.
• Be real. We ran testing last month where the ‘Discussion’ area was, in fact, a pre loaded Q&A section, not in real time and not what was expected. Furthermore the facebook page offered little value to users, so they had no reason to either ‘like’ it or suggest it to their friends.

Content:

• Be relevant. If your social media strategy includes the use of blogs or TV channels make sure these are relevant to your user group and the most effective way to get the message across. We ran some testing on a site for 13-16year olds – they immediately engaged with the videos but switched off after a few seconds when they realised the content wasn’t interesting to them.
• The length of videos should depend on the context, however generally best to keep them as short as possible.
• Allow interaction to ensure people can skip in the video and comment on its value.
• Don’t clutter or overload the page with calls to action if you want to use the channel as a driver to purchase products.

Wireframing with a desktop app? Oh come on – that’s so 2009.

Recent months have seen a slew of online web apps specifically for the creation of low-fidelity, clickable prototypes. It all started with “Balsamiq” some time ago now (complete with Comic Sans default font scandal) and has quickly progressed to an alarming array of free and affordable options.

Over at Bunnyfoot towers we’ve been giving them a spin. Here’s a quick rundown.

Mockflow

http://www.mockflow.com/

Pricing: 1 mockup with 4 pages is free, or $49 per year for pretty much unrestricted use.

The overall experience feels swift and straightforward after initial bump of a UI learning curve. The key differentiator over others on test here is the ability to co-edit mockups with collaborators. Online chat is also built in, making it easy to work together to craft your dream app.

Other nice features include align guides as you draw, a comprehensive library of components and quick and easy sharing (both private and public).

The main gripe whilst editing was the lack of keyboard shortcuts (at least on a Mac), making every copy and paste a menu selection.

screen shot of the mockflow application

iPlotz

http://www.iplotz.com

Pricing: free for 1 mockup with 5 pages. Subscription packages from $15 per month to $495 for 10 users with desktop and online access.

Phew. iPlotz is a beast. As well as wireframing, you also get an array of project management features, including to-do lists and completion status. There are also other powerful features such as version control, fine drawing tools, HTML export and annotations. It also makes a mean cappucino if you ask nicely enough!

Putting together a mockup is fairly straight-forward, once you’ve become accustomed to the (quite busy) interface. The default “sketchy” style is similar in feel to Balsamiq (see below), but a little less “play school” in feel.

Of course the trade-off with many powerful features is simplicity. The overall experience is more akin to a desktop app and takes some determined effort to feel comfortable.

screen shot of the iplotz application

Balsamiq

http://www.balsamiq.com

Pricing: free for online use, $79 for desktop app.

Balsamiq is fairly well known in web circles, and courted controversy with it’s choice of the oft-slammed font Comic Sans as a default (although you can change this).

The overall experience is not bad: drag, drop and edit works reasonably well. You can also search for widgets and add them to your canvas with the press of an enter key, speeding up the drawing process. There are some nice human touches: there’s an inspirational design quote as the app loads.

You can export your design, but unfortunately you can’t easily share your mockups – you need the desktop version to do this.

Overall, the end result feels a little too playful for serious heavy duty projects – we’re not sure how well it would go down in the financial sector for example.

screen shot of the balsamiq application

Mocking Bird

http://gomockingbird.com

Pricing: free (currently still in beta).

Probably the slickest of the apps on offer here, Mocking Bird has a clean look and easy to learn UI.

Like Balsamiq, you can get stuck in and create a mockup without creating an account (you get a prompt to signup on save).

There’s nothing drastically new on offer in terms of drawing tools, but they work well and there’s a comprehensive library of components to start you off.

Public sharing is also pretty straight-forward, making it easy to send out a link for user feedback. There’s no private sharing unfortunately, although the URL is sufficiently obscure.

On the downside, it’s not straightforward to create precise pixel width layouts (there’s no ruler or way to specify exact sizes) and no page masters or templates to save on copy and pasting.
So will we be throwing away Axure anytime soon? Well, the job is not entirely done — there’s a gulf between quick and dirty concept tools and full-blown, enterprise standard specifications. It also requires a client with a good understanding of the design and user research process and confidence in the value of low-fidelity, disposable prototypes. Oh, and maybe a soft-spot for Comic Sans.

screen shot of the mockingbird application

The biggest boon has got to be the ease and speed of sharing (anyone trying to upload an Axure prototype with its 1,000s of spacer gifs via a slow connection will feel our pain). It’s dead easy to get an idea online for client review and a rapid round of user feedback.

Got your own favourite, or an opinion on these apps? Have  you used them on client projects? Let us know.
Author: Neil Collman, Senior Consultant, Edinburgh