This inaugural installment of “Atta-Thing!” celebrates the user experience of a coffee mug – in particular, my Life is good. coffee mug – because it reminds me that incorporating optimism into experiences I create for people can make them feel better about themselves and their lives.

Dear Life is good.,

On any given morning, I have fourteen coffee mugs from which to choose and I nearly always choose yours. The reason why is because your mug makes me feel active and optimistic and down-to-earth.  It reminds me to appreciate the morning, and my coffee, and my life.  And I often take an extra moment to do just that.

I have learned from this experience that even a mundane, repetitive action completed by an often groggy, distracted me has the potential to define my perspective, my day, myself.  Putting that messaging on a coffee mug, where I have the opportunity to experience that everyday was a great idea.

Thank you may I have another?
Beck 

Last week, a friend told me about the Blue Ridge Run, a 200 mile relay race through the Blue Ridge Parkway. As he recounted the turn of events that landed him an open spot on a local team, he said that he’d spent an hour “playing around” on the website before deciding to sign up.

My ears perked as I imagined a) what the analytics might look like for a site that had enough content and interaction to spend upwards of an hour consuming; or more likely, b) what a webmaster might assume after seeing an out of range visit of 00:59:42 on a site that probably averaged visits of 00:01:37.

“What exactly did you do for an hour on this website, Don?”

After giving me a puzzled look, he confessed that he didn’t spend the entire hour on the website. He’d spent an hour on the topic, which was the Blue Ridge Run… oh, and also long distance relay races… and local runners that might be potential teammates… aaaand the history of the Parkway… and Google maps of Virginia and North Carolina… and running shoes… and travel accommodations.

And then I thought of something I hadn’t really thought of before.

Often, we are just one stop in a person’s larger quest for information… or tennis shoes… or whathaveyou. Speaking for myself, I sometimes look at my site(s) as a be-all-end-all sort of destination, instead of diversion or quick stop.  How might our websites change if we designed them to serve as spring boards to and landing strips from other (potentially completely unrelated) websites?  How much could our users’ experiences improve if we anticipated their offsite needs and acknowledged them onsite, even if that meant sending them away?  What are the potential rewards for this sort of UX approach? 

As a homeowner in the midst of several home-improvement projects I’m THE CLIENT an awful lot lately.  Seeing how it feels to trust someone to do things I can’t (or don’t want to) do has been an enlightening experience – especially given that my role as a practitioner puts me in the position of selling and delivering on exactly that… for someone else.

“Well, it just so happens that I’d love to organize your 40,000 pages of content! Rock on!”

“How many gigs of log files do need parsed? Half a terabyte?  Perfect!”

To some, the problems I help solve are as overwhelming as building a new deck or laying a new garden path is for me.  

Take, for example, the landscaper I’ve hired for our garden.  Her positive attitude has completely changed the way I view the space that she’s creating.  A space, it should be mentioned, that I’ve never been happy about or proud of because it’s represented something insurmountable and problematic since I purchased the home.  She’s redesigning my yard for all intents and purposes.  I redesign things all the time! How can I generate that sort of positivity with my creations?  How can I convey my excitement and positive attitude to my client during the redesign process?  Most especially, how can I transfer that excitement and positivity so that my client feels it about what I’ve created?

In the last two years I’ve had a deck built from scratch; a broken water heater replaced; trees that were too close to the house trimmed back; and a 70-foot-tall oak tree that fell in a spring storm triaged.  In my own recent experience I’ve been THE CLIENT from a host of perspectives and that reality extends itself into web-related work.

Clients are coming to us for new ideas, improvements on old ideas, fixes for broken systems, maintenance needs and disaster relief. We practitioners need to recognize why our clients need us beyond the fact that they can’t (or don’t want to) do it themselves.  Someone with a idea for a new website is of a very different mindset from a client with an outdated one.  Someone whose website is broken is going to approach fixing it in a very different manner from someone whose site has just been hacked. From a practitioner’s perspective, the garden (or website) might end up looking the same no matter where the starting point, but from a client-relationship viewpoint we’ve got an opportunity on our hands. If we can understand where the client is emotionally and why they need us, we can approach the solution with an unexpected sensitivity and deliver a truly fulfilling experience.

Yesterday while visiting my alma mater, I decided to enter a building that was basically my least favorite place on earth during the fall of my freshman year.  Motivated partly by nostalgia and partly by nature’s call, I wandered the now renovated halls in search of a bathroom.  

Upon finding one and, er, utilizing it, I noticed a sign at eye-level on the back of the stall door.  The sign read: “Water-Saving Dual-Function Handle.  Pull up to flush #1 (liquid waste) and down to flush #2 (solid waste).”  

I instantly appreciated the environmental consideration, the clever form factor and the subtle humor. And being the designer I am, I also asked myself, “Would I have placed this sign here on the stall door or above the toilet on the wall opposite?”  I turned around to flush and, there the sign was, again… on the wall opposite.

Bravo!  I thought and then proceeded to appreciate the handle and adjacent “cheat sheet.”  I appreciated it so much that I got out my iPhone and took a picture.  

Then, finally, I flushed. (and inadvertently pressed down on the bright green handle.) 

One, I felt like an idiot.  After spending all that time thinking about flushing, which is an atypical thought process during an activity I experience several times a day, I failed at doing it right.  

Two, I wanted to flush the toilet again, which is in direct opposition to the design’s intent.  I wanted to experience an “up flush.”   I didn’t, of course, and therefore left the stall (experience-wise) unsatisfied.

Had I the opportunity to visit this bathroom on a regular basis, I’m sure I would adjust my flushing tendencies.  I presume, though, that if this were the case, my re-learned behavior would result in unsatisfactory flushes in lesser advanced toilets, which are the majority of toilets I use.

This begs further research, but for now I’ll say this:  As interaction/industrial designers, we are often asking our users to re-learn something so that it can be done “smarter” or “better” or “more easily.”  Expectation and habit are powerful forces  and they need to be reckoned with. 

Inspire your client.

For all there is to know about carpentry, I don’t know much. I have ideas about what’s important: “measure twice, cut once” for example. I am familiar with the tools involved: wood, nails, hammers, saws. I’ve even had a little experience myself building a Blue Bird house for my dad last Christmas. But building a deck, even knowing where to start, is beyond me.

When Howard encouraged me to create sketches, I didn’t know enough about decks or carpentry to even know what was possible. I went to Google to search for pictures of decks and I stumbled across an article that said the most beautiful decks are the ones that are an organic extension of a house. For me, that’s when inspiration struck. My house is the treehaus, my deck needs to be the deck of a treehouse.

From a client stand point, I need to provide my clients with information that inspires them. They don’t need to bury themselves in material that explains IA or UX and why it’s important, they need stories of what success is on the web (caveat: for sites like their own)… and when and why websites aren’t successful.

Give your client the freedom to create.

So what does the deck of a treehouse look like? In my mind there are trees, and rope, and ladders and bridges. I started to sketch these things on graph paper and when Howard came to discuss them, I was full of ideas.

Considering a scenario where a client comes to me inspired with their own IA and layouts seems like the recipe for a nightmare project. My first thought is that I’ll have to talk them down off the cliff of ill-informed organization and design. But Howard sat confidently at my kitchen table and listened to all my ideas. He had me explain things that he didn’t understand and he contributed ideas as he thought of them.

As a client, I didn’t expect him to build exactly what I sketched. I wanted him to take my ideas and use his expertise to improve and build upon them.

Escape flatland, somehow.

My favorite thing about the new deck is a 15′ rope suspension bridge that extends from the deck to a fire pit in the woods. The fire pit end of the bridge is secured by two cedar trees that have been cut and concreted into the ground.

Coming home after the first day of construction, those posts were already up because the concrete holding them needed to set before anything else could be done. As a client, seeing the transformation of an inspired idea evolve from sketch to reality (in the form of cedar tree and concrete) was beautifully cathartic and fulfilling.

For my clients, I should aim to give life to the site or application in a way that let’s them experience the maturity of their idea.

Establish trust.

This whole process has been exceptional because I trust Howard to do the job well. I trusted him before he rebuilt my deck because the work I’ve seen of his is remarkable and his company has an excellent reputation. But I trust him even more now because he handled my project with respect and confidence and wisdom.

With my own clients, my reputation and portfolio will precede me, but my composure and attitude during the project will be what follows me. I should make it a priority to instill trust into my clients by listening to their ideas and when appropriate, contributing wisdom in a gentle, but confident way.

1. Breathe. 

There are two parts of your brain that compete for response in a stressful situation: one part is cave (wo)manly, the other is the thoughtful and intelligent you.  Cave (wo)manly brain is there for a reason and can get you flown or fought out of very bad situations.  Problem is, though, clients and/or co-workers don’t respond kindly to fleeing or fighting in a board room… usually.  So, do yourself a favor and make it a point to breathe in stressful presentation situations. Oxygen is great.

2. Reserve the comedic routine. 

The first thing you should do in a presentation, unless you are a comedian and/or you know your audience exceptionally well, is prove that you aren’t an idiot.  Reserve your jokes until after an audience has a reason to respect and listen to you, then if it feels right, deliver the joke.  

3. Be honest. 

Sometimes you will be asked questions that you don’t know how to answer.  Instead of making something up, just respond honestly.  ”I don’t know, but I can tell that’s important to you and I’ll find out and send you the answer,” is measurably better than fumbling through or dancing around an answer you aren’t prepared to defend when you aren’t in the hot seat.  

User Stages in Recruitment Process (click for larger Flickr sizes)

Stage One: The Newbie

The Newbie has likely heard about your program or research area from someone (like an academic adviser) or something (like a push advertisement), but she is not exactly sure what it is. Questions like ”Should I go back to school?” and ”…or should I get a job in industry?” need to be answered. From a power perspective, The Newbie has very little. She is asking “What is this program and is it right for me?”

Stage Two: The Powerless Prospective

The Powerless Prospective is powerless because he doesn’t know if he’ll be admitted. He’s solidly in information seeking mode to find out what makes each program different. If he experienced stage one at a different university, this is the first time he’s heard of you. He’s searching Google for increasingly accurate and knowledgeable terminology and SEO is now very important. He’s weighing the reputation of your university and the cost and determining ROI. He might be considering other research/study areas and it’s quite possible that he’s still considering industry options.

Stage Three: The Applicant

The Applicant is sold on the research area and your university and she’s revisiting your site with application logistics and deadlines in mind. She’ll want to get a real sense of the environment, either in person or virtually. And if she’s an international student, she’s concern about assimilation. She’s looking to see how your program collaborates across the university and is focused on the curriculum. It’s possible that she’s doing the same for three to five other academic institutions.

Stage Four: The Powerful Prospective

The Powerful Prospective is desirable. He’s been accepted to your program and possibly others and has to decide where to matriculate. He’s revisiting questions he had when was The Newbie, except he’s seen it all before. What makes your school different, again? What’s my ROI? If you have new content for him – possibly firewalled – this could be an edge.

Stage Five: The Enrolled Newbie

The Enrolled Newbie is familiar with your website, but a newbie all over again. She’s looking for advice on moving and life in your city. She’s considering social and professional networking opportunities. Important to note and realize, she is already a potential recruiter for your program.

Yesterday was World Usability Day, and the TriUPA held an event and an interactionary at GSK.

First up was the keynote by Dr. Anthony D. Hall from IBM. He talked about collecting and visualizing user data for web design, in particular ibm.com. It’s too bad we couldn’t sign NDAs before entering the room because he got into some real interesting stuff that he couldn’t really elaborate on. (Specifically his work with swarm theory and dive patterns of seals.) I also really liked what he had to say about amusement park and airport layouts as analogs to high traffic websites. I love that kind of stuff and it was gratifying to see someone looking at nature and external industries for design inspiration.

Following Dr. Hall’s talk, the interactionary began. Three teams, assigned randomly, were given a design problem to solve in 10 minutes… in front of an audience. The design problem for this year’s competition was to design a voting system for the 2008 election that allowed users to research candidates and also allowed them to recast their vote if the candidate they voted for wasn’t in the lead.

I’m not sure what the other teams designed (we were sequestered), but my team’s approach was to spend a couple minutes brainstorming requirements and then to poll the audience on critical function/design decisions. Some of the questions we came up with were: Do users want to vote at home or onsite? Do they want to research candidates before or during voting? Do they want electronic or paper ballots?

Two members of the team polled the audience and reported their findings to the other two (of which I was one), who stayed up at the white board brainstorming more questions and designs. About two-thirds the way through we regrouped to discuss the actual design and started sketching out the prototype.

Our design allowed users to research candidates at home and choose their top three candidates for any given office. This selection resulted in a bar-coded printout with their top three picks. They can then bring that printout to the voting facility to be scanned in. If their top pick isn’t in the lead, they can recast their vote by scanning in their second or third choice.

So what did I learn? I’ve been struggling with this since last night after the competition. The experience was great for stressing me out beforehand and excellent at pumping adrenaline through my body during, but I’m still sort of waiting for the benefits of a 10 minute team-based design competition to dawn on me. One thing’s for sure, the folks I teamed up with have graduated from the mingle-shake-hands-see-you-next-time sort to something more intimate and genuine. That alone made the experience worthwhile.

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This presentation is archived on the Presentations page of Another HCI Blog.

The Read/Write Web

Today began with a keynote talk from Apple, Inc.’s George Cook. George is a National Consulting Engineer for the K-20 customers in Apple’s Edu Division. His talk was a mix of showcasing Apple offerings alongside some pretty basic information about rich media and social interactivity on the web these days.

George divided content on a site into four web trends and four corresponding outcomes. Websites these days foster sharing, offer rich media, are interactive and produce live content (pretty basic stuff). What this means for the user is that they are social (sharing), they have context (rich media), they’re engaging (interactivity) and they keep you connected (live content). Again, these connections aren’t hard to make.

However, there’s a nice takeaway here that you can leverage for some eye candy and possible case-making. If you assign a number (one through ten) to the site’s trendiness (sharing, media, interactivity, live) and do the same for the personal outcome (There’s user stuff here, I like.), you can get a nice graph that will show gestalt in certain areas, sometimes. That difference (you’re wanting a higher score for personal outcome than trendiness, obviously) can indicate a successful and useful site.

There’s a lot of room for bias here, but it could be a nice metric and I plan to try it out.

These Kids Today

Lori Packer, a Web Editor for University of Rochester, gave a nice overview of usability (in the context of observance of the user trying to use something, anything) and then spent the majority of her presentation talking about things she learned when studying parents and brand new freshman as they tried to navigate U of R’s websites to find information.

Lori and I have a similar approach to usability and I found myself nodding my head a lot during her talk. She’s got the right ideas and it was nice to see a higher ed execution of that. The two things that I’ll definitely take home with me are as follows:

1. Lori had a very consistent (she might call this a “duh” moment) observation with what she phrased “Yada Yada Yada” text on websites. She said that both parents and students recognize it and skip it. Her focus on this made me realize, for the first time, that this fluffy content can impede the usability of my websites. It’s not only something that’s ineffectual in and of itself, it’s perhaps detrimental to the user experience as a whole. This was an very important lesson to learn for me.
2. Lori also described her method for snagging users and I thought it was a great one. She attends tabling events (like orientation week or alumni week) and asks people to schedule some time while they’ll be on campus to stop by to test the site. She also offers a free gift. This was a “duh” moment for me. I haven’t ever even thought of that. Another nice place to find prospectives: the admissions tour. Good stuff.

Universal Design, the Web and You

Daniel Frommelt from the University of Wisconsin - Platteville was one of my “takeaways” from last year’s conference. In fact, his presentation was the inspiration for how I do (and now preach about) web-surveys. So when I heard he was presenting again this year, I made it a point to attend.

His presentation touched on a lot of material, from definitions of UD to the inception of the web to demos of products that are likely to innovate the way people with disabilities interact and thrive in the world. It was eye-opening to read text as if I had a disability and to watch a video of a boy with Spinal Muscular Atrophy use a host of assistive devices to browse the web. We watched demos of products like Photosynth and Microsoft’s Surface, neither of which I’d seen before and both of which were absolutely revolutionary (especially the former).

His talk was educational and inspirational and a good intro into some things we should be considering when designing anything from door handles to social web interactions. As my interests veer in and out of non-screen-based information spaces, this is a particularly interesting focus to consider.

Time for more networking.

As the day wraps up, we’ll be going out for more “nightly networking” and vendor-hosted parties on various high floors of the Hyatt. I’m glad to hear the rumor that there were no parties this year was only such. However, that won’t stop me from more conference griping, I mean feedback: Instead of two parties on the same night, how about one on each? And pastries for breakfast is so not cool. Let’s get some protein up in that ball room!