Posts about methods
Friday, March 10th, 2006
We’re trying to make this a regular thing so if you’re in the West Midlands area and interested in design, interfaces, websites, digital products and user experience in general then please join us for the UX Birmingham face-to-face. Last time the discussion encompassed train design, CSS layouts, documentary film-making and the new Post Office card payments system so it’s a pretty eclectic evening.
Where:
Bar Estilo
110-114 Wharfside Street
The Mailbox
Birmingham
B1 1RF
When:
From 6:30 PM on the 16th March.
The Mailbox is a 5 minute walk from New Street station and there’s plenty of parking there if you’re coming by car. Bar Estilo does tapas as well as a sit-down menu so there should be more than crisps and nuts this time (grin).
Look forward to seeing you there.
Posted in customer experience, design, methods, usability | No Comments »
Friday, February 24th, 2006
Hot on the heels of yesterday’s ‘How not to…’ post, Christina points to an interviewing masterclass on MetaFilter.
There’s only one thing I would clarify:
‘…when you follow-up on a question, resist the temptation to put it in good, quotable language. (”So you would say that was the moment you fell in love with writing?”) The response will often be, ‘Yeah,’ rather than a revealing, and very quotable sentence.’
If you’re doing user research rather than professional writing, I think it is acceptable to re-present or rephrase what you’ve learnt back to your informant. It helps guide the enquiry and acts as a prompt for more detail.
A phrase like, ‘So you’re saying that reading e-mail’s the main thing you do with your computer?’ will often lead your interviewee to re-examine what they’ve said and help uncover tacit behaviour. ‘Yes, that’s right … e-mail and shopping.’
Posted in methods | No Comments »
Thursday, February 23rd, 2006
BBC Radio sports presenter Steve May provides a perfect example of the dangers of asking closed and leading questions in this Real Media clip from the Today programme. He’s the architect of his own downfall when all his interviewee can answer is ‘yes’.
I remember listening to this cycling to work and laughing out loud. It shows that even the pros struggle sometimes. If you find yourself doing more of the talking than your interviewee, then it’s probably time to start asking some open questions: how do you do that? can you tell me about a time when this happened? or in Steve’s case, where can I find a refresher about open questions?
Posted in methods | No Comments »
Tuesday, February 7th, 2006
PM interviewed Smash Hits co-founder Sir David Arculus on Thursday as the magazine announced its closure. Regularly selling 500,000 copies a fortnight in the Eighties, Arculus’ reminiscences about the unlikely birth of the periodical demonstrate the power of just a little guerilla field work.
Working as a newspaper publisher in Peterborough he met Nick Logan of the NME, and over a drink they discussed a number of Logan’s ideas for new publications. Taken with Logan’s parting suggestion, a magazine that printed the words from pop songs, Arculus decided to do a little investigation of his own:
‘I went along to a couple of discos where I found these circles of girls mouthing the words of these songs and not knowing what the words were.’
Four weeks later Smash Hits had shifted all of it’s initial 10,000 print run and by the end of the year sales peaked at a million.
Posted in methods | No Comments »
Friday, February 3rd, 2006
If you’re in the West Midlands area and interested in design, interfaces, websites, digital products and user experience in general then why not join us for the UXBirmingham face-to-face.
Where:
St Pauls Gallery
94-108 Northwood Street
Birmingham
B3 1TH
When:
From 6:30 PM on the 16th February
Look forward to seeing you there.
Posted in customer experience, design, methods, usability | No Comments »
Thursday, January 26th, 2006
I find dot graph paper great for sketching interfaces. The dots give you something to hang your designs on without interfering in the overall presentation.
Muji used to sell perfect A4 pads of dot graph paper, but discontinued them a few years ago for no apparent reason. Since then I’ve switched to squared graph paper (beautifully bound in Moleskine notebooks) but it’s just not dot graph. Now, thanks to Incompetech.com’s Graph Paper PDF generator, I can print my own.The system’s in inches so I had to do a bit of converting, but you can use this link to produce A4 5mm dot graph paper and then get sketching.
Posted in design, methods | No Comments »
Sunday, October 9th, 2005
Watching Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares the other night I was struck by how he practices his own form of user-centred design. For anyone not familiar with the programme, top chef Gordon Ramsay has a week to try and turn around a failing restaurant whilst swearing … a lot.
On arrival the first thing Ramsay does is to evaluate the existing setup. He samples the food and the service and then goes behind the scenes to check the kitchen. Then it’s out into the field to investigate the competition and talk with people in the street and other restaurant goers. With customer data and a guerrilla competitor analysis Gordon produces a vision which unifies the customer experience and drives the transformation of the restaurant, all the time evaluating progress and making changes based on feedback.
Sound familiar? Gordon Ramsay is in the business of creating unique customer experiences and the best experiences need passion and just enough process to succeed (and maybe just the odd swear or two).
Posted in customer experience, design, media, methods, usability | 4 Comments »
Sunday, September 18th, 2005
When I first read about Gotomedia’s café testing I thought it sounded like a simple, fun guerilla method: get a sign to attract participants and a low-fidelity prototype; sit in a café or other public location and run evaluations with the people that approach you. Now I’ve had a chance to use it I can tell you it’s even better than that.
- Setup is minimal. There’s no recruitment phase – you screen in the café and it took less than 5 minutes to prepare the signs to stand on a table and to locate a suitable wireframe from our developments.
- Customers are happy to participate. Everyone that came into the canteen commented on the ‘free beer’ sign and at one point I had people queueing to take part.
- It’s cheap. I was paying £5 per participant (approximately 2 beers).
- It’s quick. The simple protocol and informal setting means you spend less time putting participants at ease and more time running evaluations – I managed 5 people in 2 hours.
And once you’ve finished, you’re in the right place to celebrate with a free beer of your own.
Posted in methods, usability | 1 Comment »
Monday, September 27th, 2004
Apparently, I’m a councillor according to the BBC’s ‘What am I like?’ personality test.
Well, I’m always up for free lunch and a meeting or two and there’s nothing wrong with a bit of backscratching …
Posted in me, methods | No Comments »
Monday, December 15th, 2003
37 Signals’ Jason Fried has just published this informative blogging for business presentation. Personally I think that wikis are better for some of the things Jason talks about, like transcripts, but there’s some great ideas in there about using blogs in your organisation. And to subtly emphasise his point Jason’s used a blog-style presentation rather than standard PowerPoint slides. Nice touch. Check it out.
Posted in ideas, methods | No Comments »
