This week in the ux-clinic discussion group:

One of the bad habits in my company is the drive-by critique: we throw so much criticism at UI that it’s common for people who show a prototype or new design at a meeting to get pounded on by everyone: tons of questions and criticisms, and downright cynicism. It’s not personal - it’s the flavor of the group, but for folks who have to show creative work it’s just not fun. After a few minutes of critique, the discussion usually moves on to other things, leaving the designer on the floor.

How do you change the flavor of how critiques are done? Or is this just part of working on UI in this industry? We have to show our work to groups, but there has to be a better way.

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | 3 Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum:

I’m an information designer and developer, aka technical writer. I’ve recently been told that the v1 of our new product will not have context-sensitive help. The engineering team lead says “too bad; no one reads the documentation anyhow.”

I believe it’s impossible to design a totally intuitive UI, since everyone’s intuitive is different, and frankly, we’re not perfect as designers anyway. I think this means documentation has an important role - but since it’s my job, maybe I’m biased :)

So I’m curious about how other organizations either include documentation / support as a first order part of the experience, or how they justify depricating it given how often even the best designs fail their users. Is documentation something easily cut on your projects? How do you justify (or argue against) this?

- Help with help

Posted in UX-Clinic | No Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum:

I’m a lead designer (manage team of 5 usability and design folks) who was told last week to merge with another UX team. I’ll be the overall manager, but I’ve never managed a group this large. My team services about 10 projects across the company, and we’re a centralized and self-contained org.

I see 3 options:

1) Keep the org flat for awhile. Until I see a path, stay with one manager (me) and 10+ reports.

2) Split into a design team and a usability team. I’d be the uber UX manager, with one design lead and one usability lead.

3) Cross-discipline. I’d mix roles on both teams, with two UX leads, and some designers and usability engineers reporting to each of them.

Opinions?

Posted in UX-Clinic | 3 Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum - the horror of the small screen:

“WooHoo! We just shipped a massive redesign of our online banking website. 6 months of work finally launched and we’ve been partying like mad. The bad news is that the launch was so successful, our CEO has committed us to making a mobile version of the site: cell phones, PDA, you name it, we need to design a version of the site that works on these tiny formats.

Mind you, this was never a requirement - we fought over this months ago and all agreed we wouldn’t do this. But ha ha - now we are.

Has anyone been in this situation and can give advice on how to plan/manage/shape/design so that it doesn’t suck? Our organization has never tried to do this before and I fear they’ll expect an experience as good as the full site, which is impossible.”

- Signed, The horror of the small screen

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum - Leading the design skunkworks:

My UX team is convinced that to achieve their goals they need to go underground - go off and build a prototype, on their own, and show it to th team only when they have something amazing. They don’t want to partner or negotiate: they want to create their blue sky vision and return, so to speak, from the mountain.

Historically i’ve been a politician between UX and the rest of the org, but I would like to try a skunkworks approach, however I’ve never done this sort of thing before. If we go too far on our own, why will anyone listen? How do we keep the project underground? I’m looking for a primer on leading the secret design effort.

- Leading design skunkworks

Posted in UX-Clinic | No Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum - Blog-’O-Rama:

We’re a tragically hip start-up and recently we’ve gone blog-mad. There’s pressure to reframe much of our website into blog style designs, most notably, by designing pages in blog chronology style. This makes sense some of the time, like for press releases, but for other parts of the site it makes no sense at all (page about our executive team that isn’t updated often). What’s are some good guideliens for going blog/chronology centric, but also for staying away?

-Blog-’O-rama

Posted in UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum - Death by comparison:

I’m a usability engineer on a major web site. Our senior managers are addicted to data. Hard core data. They make all decisions based on metrics and what the call “the metric function” - the equation that best determines what success is.

So when it comes to usability, the only studies they’re interested in are comparative ones, where I do A/B testing, or in some cases A/B/C testing. Even when we prototype or experiment, they always want the data housed in comparative data.

How do I get them out of this data rut and recognize that usability engineering involves more than generating numbers to put in charts? Or is this how most of the tech sector sees usability: a number factory?

Posted in UX-Clinic | 2 Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum- Being the UX hero:

Our group is in the process of launching a new version of our external website, but the solo developer left before it was finished. He claims it’s 90% done. No UX priniciples were used up to this point (we were busy on actual products). None of us have time to take it over, but we have a budget to bring in someone else.

I have two fears / opportunities:

1) There’s an opportunity to teach my org a few things about how UX should be done. If we bring someone in, will they be seen as the heroic talent, saving the day, and not my UX team?

2) If the day is saved, by us or by a contractor, I don’ t want the wrong lesson to be learned. I want to make sure that everyone understands this is not the right way to go about designing things (apply design magic dust in the last stretch). So how do I get design involved without teaching management and the org the wrong lesson?

- Being the UX hero

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum- Lost in the tag cloud:

Here’s this week’s situation:

We finally got buy in to fund a future thinking blue sky design exploration for future releases of our software and websites. Problem is: we can’t decide if we should have internal designers do the work, or hire out a fancy firm. The debate is raging and I’m on the fence (and it’s my call & budget).

What’s the best way to do the following:
1) Manage an intentionally future thinking design project with few constraints
2) Decide on internal vs. out-source staff
3) Deliver something that doesn’t seem like a waste of time.

- Captain blue sky

Posted in Design, UX-Clinic | No Comments »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum- Lost in the tag cloud:

I do both design and usability for a midsize start-up (30 people) in the newsreader space.

We’re vulnerable (at least our VP is) to UI trends - as soon as our competitors do something, he’s running around telling everyone we have to do the same thing.

Last week, one of our competitors switched to a tag, and tag cloud UI for their website, and as the night follows day, our VP is now pushing us to redesign with a tag, and tag cloud model.

I have my own opinions, but I can’t find any ux research on tags and tag clouds - what problem do they solve? When should you use them and when are they a mistake? Should they really be the primary way to get around a website? I’m looking for both opinions and data to help me sort out my stance, but also to add some thinking to our trend-happy debates.

- Lost in the tag cloud

Reference: A screen shot and some examples can be found here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tag_cloud

Posted in UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum- Drowning in customer love:

We’re a small UX group (designers & usability engineer) for a large website - we constantly face the problem of decision makers who believe in customer omnipotence - that if the customer say blinking green, we should do blinking green. If they ask for 150 links in the nav bar, we should put 150 links in the nav bar. etc. All sanity goes out the window in our org if an important customer asks for an insane thing.

We’ve tried a few times to explain a better way to use customer input, but there seems to be this impenetrable, literal faith in “the customer is always right” that we can’t get past, and it’s hurting our work. We’ll be paying for some of these bad decisions for months to come.

Two questions:
1. What’s a better philosophy for using customer input/opinion
2. How do you convert people to that philosophy (without brain transplants)

- Drowning in customer love

Posted in UX-Clinic | 1 Comment »

This week in the ux-clinic discussion forum- Novices vs. experts:

What’s the best way to tackle a comprehensive redesign of an application when there is already a large user base familiar with its clumsy UI? How do we provide a better solution for new users without alienating existing users who are now comfortable with the quirks (flaws) of the existing system? and how do you go about convincing management that it’s a worthwhile exercise?

I’ve spent the past few months working on a 5 year old application used by extremely competent technical users. The user base continues to grow and at the same time new functionality and features are “bolted on”, typically through increasingly long lists of tool bar options. We know that new users struggle with the UI but it’s very low on management’s list of priorities.

What can be done?

- Novices vs. experts

Posted in UX-Clinic | No Comments »