Jared Spool – Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm

UIE Web App Master’s Tour – Seattle, Washington – May 23, 2011

 

h2. Mobile & UX: Inside the Eye of the Perfect Storm

Session 1 – Jared Spool

The UX aspect of mobile has really exploded recently.

Examples:

My Coke Rewards – mobile site had to have Flash. Excluded all iPhone users.

Fox Weather “Alternate content should be placed here.”

MikePanetta.com – QR code on sign, but no mobile site.

Mariott Hotel – connect to wifi via mobile

h3. Sturgeon’s Law

Theodore Sturgeon “90% of everything is crap!”

United airlines email link to 404 page

Coke has fixed the flash problem, but shows the entire site when user is trying to input a code.

You would think by now that we now how to show sites on mobile now, but companies still have issues: verizon wireless, att, apple, air canada

This is the 90%

The 10% – boston.com, new york times

Which side of Sturgeon’s law do you fall on? It’s easy to produce crap.

Standard Progression – Technology comes out, focus on features, then focus on experience. Same thing occurs on the Web. AltaVista, Accuweather, Umbrella Today

Good examples of designing for experience first – amazon.com, best buy

h3. Market Maturity

The customers tell us when we’re ready to move from one stage to the next

h3. Activity vs. Experience

Six Flags vs. Disney

Six Flags = Activites
Disney = Experience (designing for the gap between activities)

UberCab – cab finds you, fare is taken care of. Two-way rating. Makes entire experience better.

GroupOn – forget your coupon? App has bar code to scan

QR Codes – Live Here, Apartment building being built. Crosswords in Denver Airport.

Mobile often lives within the gaps

h2. The Kano Model

When is it worth the investment to make the customer happy?

• User Satisfaction
• Investment

Performance Payoff – Keep adding features, customer keeps getting happier

Basic Expectations – can never get above neutral (are you satisfied or are you delighted?)

Excitement Generators – odd little things we can do that often don’t take a lot of investment, but produce delight (Shazam)

Google docs – can’t share from the phone, missed basic expectations

Coke Rewards – sign up process – rigorous – people aren’t going to go through all that – compare to groupon

Excitement Generators become basic expectations over time. Things that were once delightful become frustrating.

Mobile happens in the space between the four items.

h3. Experience Design

Skills needed

• Interaction design
• copy writing
• information architecture (how to organize things)
• Design process management
• User Research practices
• information design
• Visual design
• Editing & curating (someone has to be able to say “no”)

Additional skills

• ethnography
• domain knowledge (industry knowledge)
• business knowledge (how do we make money)
• analytics
• marketing
• technology
• ROI
• social networks
• Use cases
• agile methods

Soft Skills

• storytelling
• critiquing
• sketching (express ideas to the team)
• presenting
• facilitating

The Three Questions (three things you can ask a team to tell if they are going to be successful)

• Vision: “Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using your design five years from now?”
  (A flag in the sand that everyone marches towards. Start making baby steps towards that flag. It is easily moved when things change and everyone continue to march toward it, using baby steps.)
• Feedback: “In the last six weeks, have you spent more than two hours watching someone use your or a competitor’s design?”
  • Usability Testing
    • Five second tests
    • trade show/cafe testing
    • remote usability tests
  • Field Studies
  • Customer Support
    • User Forums
  • Using it yourself (for self-designers)
• Culture: “In the last six weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure?”
  (It’s a great learning opportunity.)

h3. The Eye of the Perfect Storm

• Invest to avoid Sturgeon’s Law
• Focus on experience over technology and features
• Fill in the gaps between the activities
• ensure you meet basic needs while you search for delighters
• Build in a feedback process
• Create your experience vision
• Celebrate learning from taking risks