ux south africa 2014 - keynote
DESCRIPTION
My keynote from the UX South Africa 2014 conference in Cape Town, South Africa It's a look at the state of play including: - It's still easy to find poor website UX in South Africa - Informing digital strategy by making and launching things - Problems that executives of traditionally non-digital companies face as software slowly eats the word - and some solutions: Proactive research, digital product management, agile... - Some of the skills and talents that unicorn UX designers need to haveTRANSCRIPT
Phil Barrett • Flow Interactive • UX South Africa 2014
UX in SA: Any second now…
flickr.com/photos/djw
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UX design, research and strategy London & Cape Town !Since 1998 !
UX in South Africa 2014
That is fine with me. Nice job, guys.
You speak my language!
You speak my language!
I came here to pay my plumber.
Why indeed? Do you have the tent I want?
Cats love the multiple carousels.
Cats love the multiple carousels.
Move the mouse across the mega menu.
And your target item disappears.
I came came here to find the best price plan.
I came came here to find the best price plan.
You don’t ALWAYS win.
UXSA: The state of the union
Some pockets of excellence.
Lots of organisations who don’t know:
• What their target users want to do online
• How to help them do it
!
• How to handle their own size and complexity
!
“Companies that use design strategically grow faster and have higher margins than their competitors.
Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, Herman-Miller, IBM, Intuit, Newell-Rubbermaid, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Starwood, Steelcase, Target, Walt Disney, Whirlpool, and Nike…
Jeneanne Rae, Writing in HBR
UX design = growth
“Companies that use design strategically grow faster and have higher margins than their competitors.
Apple, Coca-Cola, Ford, Herman-Miller, IBM, Intuit, Newell-Rubbermaid, Procter & Gamble, Starbucks, Starwood, Steelcase, Target, Walt Disney, Whirlpool, and Nike…
Jeneanne Rae, Writing in HBR
UX design = growth
And we could do with some growth
“Software is eating the world.
Mark AndreessenFounder Netscape and Andreessen Horowitz
Many large companies are finding that they’re in the
software business. And they don’t know much about it.
We’re ever more surrounded by it. It had better be good.
684 people who care
How will the 648 people bring more positive change?
• Understanding what UX is, now and next
• Understanding what needs to change
• Becoming the people who change it
“UX” means…
UX is not UI, ok?
The craft
The craft
Hang out with people !Prototype and iterate to discover breakthroughs that work for people !Polish to perfection !Maximise reach and access
Front end Accessible, responsive, standards compliant, lightweight
Appearance Effective, affective
InteractionEasy to learn and use. Efficient, quick, powerful.
Structure Organised in a way that makes sense.
Information Conveys the information you need in a form you can take in.
Concept A compelling shape, style and vision.
PropositionSomething that lets me doing new things well, or old things better.
StrategyHow we will use our resources to reach the vision.
Vision The nature and value of your future digital product/service/experience
Shipped product
Strategic direction
Getting the design right
Getting the right Design
Shipped product
Strategic direction
Research, Measure, learn, REASSESS
Getting the design right
Getting the right Design
So pretty Must be true.
Front end
Appearance
Interaction
Structure
Information
Concept
Proposition
Strategy Vision
David Perel CEO of OBox
“You are not a user experience designer. Unless…
There is such a massive difference between creating interfaces which look beautiful, and creating interfaces which your target market can/will actually use.
Until you have observed someone (in silence) using the product you’ve created, you could not possibly understand how mind altering it is to see your work torn apart.
The impact on traditional product offerings
Just take our existing business online. Nope.
The impact on behaviour
Photo: Kalamita: flickr.com
/photos/kalamita/
All this amazing digital technology will make us happier. Nope.
The impact on brand
Make the logo shinier? Nope. Brand experience trumps brand promise.
The impact on society
Wonderful, easy, cheap devices loaded with great materials can bring education to all.
The impact on society
Wonderful, easy, cheap devices loaded with great materials can bring education to all.
The impact on society
Wonderful, easy, cheap devices loaded with great materials can bring education to all.
The impact on business models
It’s ok. Our business is far too big to be disrupted. Nope.
The organisation behind the experience
Most CEOs have heard that UX, design and customer centricity are important
Sophisticated digital organisations are perfecting how it’s done
Steve Blank’s Investment readiness level
Not so many large organisations are demonstrating mastery yet
What’s stopping them?
Near Asterix’s village, the Romans have been digging up trees in the forest
Most managers from non-software businesses have never seen an oak tree grow.
software being made.
Most managers from non-software businesses have never seen an oak tree grow.
software being made.
Which means they have unrealistic expectations about how its done, or how much time and money it takes.
20 iterations, just on the home screen
“The team spent 20 iterations or more on the home view, trying to figure out how to fit everything in without cluttering it. !
venturebeat.com
A designer was invited into the boardroom. You’ll never guess what they found…
!
ConfusionSmart people trying to wrangle too many counter-intuitive truths.
Handle
Head
Bristles
Giu
sepp
e Co
laru
sso
We‘ve ticked all the boxes. Why isn’t it working?
Questions like…
• How did my competitors get so far ahead so fast?
• Why can’t we organise and focus our business on doing the right thing in digital?
• Why is my digital presence so stale, and permanently in need of a re-design?
• Why do we keep shipping things that our customers ignore or dislike?
How did my competitors get so far ahead so fast?
Because they started work two years ago.
So our team needs to work with customers to start discovering now what will matter in two years time. Then build enough belief to ship it.
Why can’t we organise and focus our business on doing the right thing in digital?
Your website and apps are key to the customer experience. The whole organisation is riding on them. Manage them as carefully as your core product.
!
Get a digital product manager.
!
UX + product management
• Understanding user needs + market opportunities and strategy
• Envisioning how the software could be + building consensus
• Working with developers to create deliverable + planning how
• Evaluating outcomes + and choosing next steps
Why is my website permanently in need of a re-design?
Because you view digital in terms of projects. They ship and then you leave them to go stale.
!Understand that software projects never have an end. Your product manager needs a continuous budget.
Digital products are soap operas not movies
• Keep releasing new versions, listen to audience feedback and enhance. • The first episode is the beginning of the project, not the end.
Why do we keep shipping things that have no impact?
No-one (especially managers) can really predict whether a digital design will be successful.
!
Accelerate trial and error with prototypes and rapid software releases.
Managers should define desired outcomes, not list of features.
“Prototyping is a cheaper way to learn
Instead of using one prototyper for a few weeks, almost every company uses the full engineering team to build the software that is then deployed.
That is why it takes so many companies one to two years to get something usable and useful. They are using the engineering organisation to build a very, very expensive prototype, and they use their live customers as unwitting test subjects.
Marty Cagan, Partner SVPG and author of “Inspired”
Seek out opportunities to observe
No opinion Tentative opinion Strong opinion
Not using
Trying out
Casual user
Evangelist/Beta group
User
Seek out opportunities to observe
Feedback
Silence
No opinion Tentative opinion Strong opinion
Not using
Trying out
Casual user
Evangelist/Beta group
User
Traditional UCD: Innovate before launch
CONCEPT
DESIGN ANDDELIVERRESEARCH
MEASURE
TEST CUSTOMER RESPONSES USING PROTOYPES
Would you use this?The most important thing you can’t find out in a usability test
CONCEPT
DESIGN ANDDELIVERRESEARCH
MEASURE
TEST CUSTOMER RESPONSES USING PROTOYPES
OBSERVE AND MEAUSRECUSTOMERS IN THE MARKET
Agile: Innovate in the market
Change requirements into assumptions and hypotheses
We believe that building this feature for these people will achieve this outcome.
!We will know this is true when we see this quantitative measure AND this qualitative response.
Control risk with small experiments
Risk
Control risk with small experiments
Risk
Control risk with small experiments
Risk
A unified product management model
Optimise and extend
Design
Learn
Build
Plan
Discover Ship first releaseEstablish product market fit Release a small but valuable product Build and learn towards a great product
• Establish product market fit with research and iterative testing.
• Get into the market with a small, but useful feature set.
• Re-prioritise the backlog as the business and the product moves and learns.
• Keep the releases coming.
You
Enormous organisation
One little designer
“And will you succeed? Yes! You will, indeed! (Ninety eight and three quarters percent guaranteed).
Dr Seuss Oh! the places you’ll go!
Time to master this lot, then?
Become a design unicorn
T S H P E
E
O
A D
P
L
E
To become a design unicorn
Step one: Train yourself
Step two: Practice your new skills
Step three: Deconstruct as many designs as you can
Step four: Seek out feedback (and listen to it)
Step five: Teach others
Jared Spool Founder, UIE
5 things good UX designers do
• Storytelling
• Sketching
• Presenting
• Critique
• Facilitating
Jared Spool Founder, UIE
“A prototype is worth a thousand meetings.
Todd Wilkens Design Principal at IBM Design
Knowledge Navigator (1987) Apple Computer
Tell stories
“Ask “stupid” questions
What is a stupid question? It is one which questions the obvious to redefine existing solutions, approaches, and beliefs.
This is where breakthroughs come from.
Donald Norman Donald Norman
What the organisation thought users should do.
What users wanted to do.
“Any idiot can simplify by ignoring the complications.
But it takes real genius to simplify by including the complications.
Work your way to the far side of complexity
Ride the curve past complexity
Time
Complexity
Release here “before it gets any worse?” Not a good idea.
Keep going and find a new way to reach simplicity
“There is a direct correlation between the number of hours each team member is exposed directly to real users and the improvements we see in the designs. !It's the closest thing we've found to a silver bullet.
Jared Spool UIE
And it all comes from working with users
CEOs want design thinking. UX designers have got heaps of experience.
• Empathy: Hang out with target users and see the world through their eyes
• Creativity: Synthesise new ideas from what you learn and the ideas you see and hear around you
• Rationality: Measure your results, and use that to drive the changes your organisation needs
Tim Brown CEO of IDEO
“You're off to Great Places! Today is your day! Your mountain is waiting, So... get on your way!”
Thanks!Phil Barrett • [email protected] • @philbuktoo
Flickr: Lars ploughmanflickr.com
/photos/lestaylorphoto