natasha's corner

Recently, Jared Spool and Robert Hoekman, Jr. addressed the question of making a career move from developer to designer on their Userability podcast. I listened to it with great interest, having made this move myself not too long ago. Jared and Robert had some great advice, like to just start observing how people use your software, but I thought I’d add some thoughts from my own experience.

I found there are four things you need to do in parallel: learn, stay current, practice, and evangelize. Sometimes you’ll focus on one more than others, but to be successful, you really need to juggle all four. (And it doesn’t stop after you’ve made the switch, you just have less to learn and more to stay current on.)

Learn

Although a lot of design is common sense, you still need to learn how to recognize what sense is “common” and what is not. To this end, I recommend attending conferences and seminars and reading books.

Depending on where you live, there may be a local SIGCHI, UPA, or IxDA chapter that organizes events and seminars – that would be the first thing to check out because local events are usually less expensive and more intimate than the big national conferences put on by these organizations. Regarding the bigger conferences, I can’t speak for UPA or Interaction, but CHI tends to be more academic, so it may not be the best use of funding (if you’re lucky enough to get it in this economy). I found UIE’s UI conference to be great for a beginner, with great speakers and day-long seminars that cover subjects like design strategy, intro to interaction design, paper prototyping, and many others in full detail.

For books, I recommend Robert’s first book Designing the Obvious and Don’t Make Me Think by Steve Krug. These are quick reads, but they manage to cover a lot of design basics – definitely enough to get you started. Books like About Face by Alan Cooper, while comprehensive and often recommended, are more useful as references when you need to look up how to solve a particular problem. It’s not something you’ll want to read cover-to-cover (unless you have a lot of time on your hands).

Stay Current

There is a bit of overlap between learning and staying current, but I think they deserve to be called out individually because the resources you use are different.

To get and stay current in the field, you should make Google Reader or another RSS feed aggregator your best friend. Blogs are by far the best way to stay in touch with the design community. Here are a few that I recommend:

• Signal vs. Noise
• UIE Brain Sparks
• Boxes and Arrows
• Seth Godin’s Blog

If you find an author you like, they probably have a blog – look it up. If you do some development, read developer blogs. Subscribe to Gizmodo if you have time to spare. Whatever you’re interested, subscribe to the feed and you’ll be on top of all the latest news, trends, and techniques.

Another fantastic resource for staying current is the SXSW Interactive conference. This will be the best investment you make, guaranteed. You’ll be surrounded by bright and creative people and all the emerging technologies. It’s a great motivator and a great way to meet all those internet ‘celebrities’ like Jared and Robert (not to mention Kathy Sierra, Jason Fried, Jeffrey Zeldman, and many others).

Practice

The only way to become a designer is to design. Even if it’s not in your job description, start incorporating design techniques you read or hear about.

Do some hallway usability tests, make a paper prototype, create some mock-ups before diving into the code. One of the first things I did was create a paper prototype and run some usability tests with people in the office. We got some great feedback this way that led to a much better design. It’s amazing how much a quick and dirty usability test can uncover.

Another thing you can do is start asking questions: Who are the users? Why do they need our tool? How do they currently accomplish their tasks? Why do we need features x, y, and z? What workflow are we trying to support? These are the types of things a designer needs to tackle for every project, so the sooner you start asking questions, the sooner you’ll figure out the right questions to ask. If you’re lucky, you may get to talk to some real users and observe them in their environment.

Find the low-hanging fruit for your project – something that would be easy to improve – and do it. It may not be the most visible thing or lead to impressive results, but at least you’ll get to practice your skills and it’ll give you something to talk about when you need to convince others of the value of design and usability. The more you do, the more people will start to see you as the “expert” in the field.

Evangelize

There’s no getting away from this one. You have to be passionate about great design and usability and you need to talk about it. Make it a point to know all the key decision makers in your company and meet with them on a regular basis. Even if it’s over coffee in the break room, you need to spread the idea that usability is a priority, not a “nice-to-have”. It’s usually not hard to convince people that usability is necessary, but it is hard to get them to act on that belief.

One of the things I did is establish a Usability Special Interest Group where we review our current products and mock-ups, read and discuss design-related books, and share other interesting information we learn at conferences or read online. We have a group of people interested in usability (developers, managers, interaction designers, and technical writers) who learn together and all now evangelize usability on the projects they’re involved with. In addition to being a support group for like-minded individuals, it’s also a great way to spread the influence.

What you do will depend on your organization and its culture. Just find the right people and talk, talk, talk. This is a great way to establish yourself as a usability expert and to start swaying the company culture in the direction of usability, where they will actually value your work.



Remember, it’s better to ask forgiveness than to ask permission. The best way to make the switch to interaction designer is to start doing the work. As a developer, you are intimately involved in your products, so you have a great chance to influence them. Don’t wait for someone to ask you to design something or run a usability test – just do it and then present the results. Time may be a concern, but if you don’t find the time for design, no one else will either. Learn, stay current, practice, and evangelize and soon enough, people will see you as the designer you want to be.

Then order your new business cards.

“If we say your package will arrive on December 2nd, then it will arrive on December 2nd – even if we have to ship it back and forth for a couple days.”

This seems to be FedEx’s philosophy, anyway…

I expect my package to arrive tomorrow at 7pm sharp, even if the driver needs to circle around the block a few times.

Computer: “Warning: out of dark matter!”

Leela: “That’s not a warning! A warning is supposed to come before something bad happens.”

Computer: “1 second until engine shut down.”

Leela: “That’s more like it.”

– Bender’s Game

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– The Daily WTF

This made me do a double-take. Why would it think this photo had anything to do with the BostonCHI meeting? Well, that’s because it was uploaded while the BostonCHI meeting was going on (and it was in my calendar).

I don’t know, doesn’t seem all that intelligent to me. Others disagree, though.

Last week my husband and I visited Greece. It is a truly beautiful country, no matter where you go – and we went just about everywhere (well, as much as we could in 9 days). One thing that immediately struck me about the country, or perhaps more about the people, was the level of personal service.

It started with our first hotel in Athens. We arrived tired and sweaty from having gotten 3 hours of sleep in the last 32 hours and a long walk which didn’t seem so long on the map when we decided to do it instead of taking the metro. It was still well before check-in time at the hotel and our room wasn’t ready yet. However, there was a room at a sister hotel and we got “upgraded” to that one. When we asked where the other hotel was, the woman behind the counter told us to sit down and relax, her colleague from the other hotel would come get us. We waited about 10 minutes when the woman came over and said she’d take us over herself. The sister hotel turned out to be just a block away and we ran into her colleague on the way, who took us the rest of the way there.

Sure, we could have found the hotel ourselves, but they personally made sure we got there. American hotels would just hand you a map and send you on your way.

The second example of personal service came when we rented a car. I made the reservation on Expedia and we went to the airport to pick it up. We were dismayed to find that the company we rented from (Thrifty) did not have a booth by the other rental companies. It turned out we had to call them and they would bring the car to the airport for us.

We agreed on a place to meet and only had to wait about 15 minutes until a man from Thrifty came and found us. He had a colleague with him who presented us with the contract. I probably would have thought this was pretty sketchy if we hadn’t already pre-paid for the car. They asked us where we wanted to drop off the car, which surpised us. We had assumed we’d return it at the airport. However, that was very out-of-the-way from the hotel we’d be staying at the night we planned to return the car. We gave the Thrifty guy the address of our hotel and told him when we could meet him there to drop off the car. We did pay a little extra for this, but it was almost as much as the metro would cost us to get to the hotel from the airport and would save us a lot of time. They showed us our car and we were on our way.

At the end of the road trip part of our trip, we met another Thrifty guy at our hotel and he took the car. It took the guy almost an hour to get to our hotel by bus since the metro wasn’t running, but he was there and saved us from making that nightmarish trip on a bus through Piraeus (the port for Athens).

Again, we could have picked up and dropped off the car ourselves at some rental facility, but instead they brought the car to us. Very different from my experience renting cars in the US where everything is set up for maximum processing efficiency. Get on a shuttle, stand in line, sign papers, get a key with a number, find the corresponding parking space number, check out as you leave the lot. Returning a car is equally process-efficient and equally impersonal.

The final stand-out example was at a restaurant in Nafplio. It was our second day in Greece and we were just starting to get used to just sitting down at a table in a restaurant instead of waiting to be seated. We happened to pick a place that was frequented mostly by locals and apparently didn’t have a menu. As we sat there, confused, the head waiter gestured for us to come inside and look at the food. If you’ve never been at a restaurant in Greece, the head waiter pretty much runs the place. He is typically the only waiter AND the host. He keeps track of all the diners, brings everyone’s food, and rings up everyone’s bills. He is a very busy person. So the fact that this guy took us over and personally explained all the choices in the kitchen to us was a big deal. He didn’t talk down to us, even though it was obvious we were clueless tourists, and provided us with the same level of service as the locals.

When is the last time your American waiter took you to the kitchen and explained all the choices on the menu?

It was an interesting experience being treated like a person and not like a customer. We get so used to being “processed” as customers in the US that such personal attention is truly a breath of fresh air. It’s not that Greeks are more friendly – if anything, they’re less friendly, at least to Americans. It’s just a different mentality of seeing people as people, not customers and thinking of your business as a way you reach out to people, rather than as a service you provide. You don’t lose any professionalism by being more personal, but you do gain trust because we trust other people more than we trust anonymous friendly clerks. Trust is very valuable because people will come to you if they trust you and they will recommend your business to their friends. It’s a worthwhile and enjoyable endeavor. After all, business owners are people too.

Take the time and money and effort you’d put into an expensive logo and put them into creating a product and experience and story that people remember instead.

– Seth Godin

When you try to access a page that doesn’t exist on the Nokia website, you get a funny “oops” image:

Try it out – there are a couple other images you can get if you refresh.

This is a great example of fairy doors that are funny and don’t get in the way of the main goals for the website.

[Thanks to Jeff for pointing this out.]

I was at an A.C. Moore store today and had an interesting experience at the checkout counter with the elderly clerk.

It all began when she condescendingly insisted on calling me “honey” (I’m sure she didn’t mean to be condescending, but I’m not a little girl). I took my purchases out of the basket I was carrying and she said, “You can put the basket down right over on that counter, honey.” I said, “Sure, I will.”

She scanned all my items and I took out my card to pay. She looked at it expectingly and even though there was a credit card reader in front of me, I asked if I should just slide it through (you know, ’cause sometimes they prefer to do it manually). She must have taken that to mean that I had never seen such a contraption as a credit card reader before so she helpfully gestured as she said, “You just slide it right here on the side, honey.” Ok, I slid it through.

“I’m going to need to see your card, honey.” I gave it to her.

“Now, it’s going to ask you a question, honey, and you should press ‘Yes’,” she said as I was already confirming on the screen that the total was ok.

“Great, honey, now you need to sign right here in this box,” she said as I was already signing. At this point, I was getting tired of being talked down to and said as calmly and pleasantly as I could, “Thank you, but I know how these things work.”

She completely ignored what I said, and explained, “Now you see, honey, it’s going to come up right here on this screen,” and she gestured to the computer monitor in front of her where my signature was displayed. “Uh huh,” I replied.

“Ok, here is your card back, honey. You have a nice day, ok? And don’t forget to put the basket over on that counter, dear.” Feeling about 10 years old now, I wished her a nice day and walked out.

Sheesh, it’s certainly an experience having an old lady explain to me how a computerized system works. And please don’t call me “honey,” even if you are a sweet old lady.

Rhapsody provides a subscription music service so you can listen to anything whenever you want and wherever you are, automatic playlists based on music you like, and “channels” that provide a continuous supply of new music either based on your own preferences or by genre. Your library is synchronized across all computers that you use.

It’s also a music player and a music store, but here lie its main weaknesses and it really doesn’t offer any advantages over iTunes (with the exception of $0.99 DRM-free tracks). In fact, as a music player it’s quite bad. All the problems I have with Rhapsody come from its music player functionality.

iTunes, on the other hand, is a pretty good (though bloated) music player, has a good music store, and is integrated with iPods and iPhones. Rhapsody doesn’t work with Apple mp3 players because of Apple’s restrictions, so you have to buy something other than what is arguably the best mp3 player on the market.

The only place Rhapsody and iTunes overlap is in the music player and music store functionality. Since Apple does a better job with these two components, it would be ideal to somehow merge Rhapsody into iTunes. Imagine having your current library of purchased music combined with the unlimited library of Rhapsody. Imagine your “Genius” playlist being populated with songs you can listen to right away instead of having to buy them first. Imagine loading up your iPod with a Rhapsody channel of music you’ll probably like but haven’t heard yet. Imagine being able to listen to your playlists from any computer where you log in. It would really be a perfect music experience.

Too bad that Apple and Real Networks will never go for it.

I observed an interesting pattern at the train stop this morning.

A message came up on the LED message board saying that the next inbound train to Boston would be arriving on the outbound track this morning. A few people noticed this and you could see the inner dialogs in their heads about whether they should trust the message and go over to the other side of the tracks. One person decided to tentatively trust it and went to the outbound track. Then a couple more people, myself included, went over as well. The gist of the small-talk overheard was “Sure, it says ‘outbound track’, but how often are these messages ever true?”

Now that there were a handful of people waiting on the outbound track, other brave souls started coming over too. Not long after, all the new people that arrived at the inbound track went directly to the outbound one without hesitating.

One can only conclude that seeing a large enough group of fellow passengers that decided to trust the message somehow gave it more validity. But the interesting thing is, the orginal few “leaders” had very strong doubts about going over. They didn’t know any better than the rest of the people, they just made a choice and went with it.

I think there are two lessons to be learned here:

1. If you want people to trust you, be consistently accurate in the messages you send out (unlike the MBTA).
2. Don’t blindly follow the crowd because, chances are, its leaders didn’t have any more of a clue than you do. Trust your own common sense.