EnRoute

Having an experience designer’s heart and soul, traveling is native to me. It’s a fantastic way to draw design inspirations, to think outside of the box, to embrace cultural shocks, and to understand people and become more open minded.

Coming to the US six years ago I barely had any cultural shocks: my mind was open enough that any culture differences were expected. But going to UK over the week of Thanksgiving, it was a total shock but sweet experience: men or women, are dressed up stylish and properly; it’s expected that you finish your appetizers before the waitresses bringing you the entree, or they offer to take them away from the table; they have almost no trash cans in the subway but seriously, their subways are pretty darn clean; I did not see any homeless people even in the hustle and bustle of the city center (in LA, NYC or Chicago even in extreme cold weather you can still see a handful of homeless guys camping outside), so on and so forth.

There were also some moments of lost in experience. For example, I was standing in front of a map for a few minutes titled “Northbound Underground” but all the destinations on the map are in the South, meaning they are below “you are here” on the map, and I was obviously trained to read the map in the way that anything above is North, below is South. Despite the occasional confusing maps, the subway system in London is by large visitor friendly but the on-the-ground trains are so hard to figure out, no easy-to-find time tables, no numbering of the lines whatsoever and you either need a geeky or lucky intuition or, have a local friend who may direct you out of the dark.

But in general, good food (surprisingly), nice people, laid back countryside and town cities, designer interior designs at most service places: it was a pleasant trip. And my major take away, besides they have surprisingly good food and pastry:) is that you really got to understand people, knowing their mindsets, stereotypes, expectations, to be able to design for the experience: because we are so different, even speaking the same language.

 

Can we design our life experience?

A few months back I made a trip to Big Sur and there was this old man sitting on the chair over a creek, having a beer, quietly enjoying his peaceful moment. We started to have a conversation while I took some photos of him. Briefly telling the story about his life, “life is about love” he said, “work is always there. treasure your love and enjoy the life.”

That was around the time I had a significant change in life. With the old man’s words of wisdom in mind, I started to really think about how to live a meaningful life to myself, to my family, my friends, people I love, and those who love me.

I don’t deny that I’m a workholic, sometimes. I love my job. I love designing for the experience. But when it comes to designing my own life experience, I was intimidated. There is no user research I can conduct, no contextual interviews I can poke around, no data I can back up my design. I read other people’s lives but those are not apple to apple comparisons.

My new roommate, a Brooks Visual Journalism student who was pursuing an acting/singing career since she was four, recently switched her life to be a student and producer at the back stage working behind the scenes. She shoots beautiful photographs and documentaries and in her own words, it’s “a new awareness”.

I admire those who has the guts to push for a life experience redesign. People hate changes. Every time Facebook launched something new, people hated it but after a while life goes on without you realizing it.

It’s a daunting task to design the life experience, or at least proactively, as one third of it is bed time, a quarter is to run around, commute, run errands, eat, and go to the bathroom, and after the deduction we only get less than half of the time to look for or define who we are, what we do, how to live our lives, meaningfully, and where we want to get at in the next 10 years. Often times we follow the mainstream, and sometimes disruption may not mean everything is bad.

Recently came across a video John Jay talking about creativity. The best part I like is that he advised to “put yourself in an unusual situation, put yourself with people you don’t hang out with, and put yourself out of the comfort zone. Our job is never let anyone define who we are in their terms.”

And to take a step back, before diving into self definition, collecting the experience might be an easier task. As Morris, Inc. puts it, “A designer must collect life experience from beyond the computer screen. They must observe culture, travel, watch movies, read books, and attend seminars and live life. This mindset creates well-rounded vision, adds solutions to your memory bank and builds connectedness between your ideas.” They also put together this short video on the wisdom they discovered in their explorations:

Writing to here, I don’t think I have a clear answer to my very first question: I wish I could:) But it helps to think aloud as I’ve been intrigued by it for quite a while. Maybe there is no better way but listening, observing, caring, learning, pushing, and always trying to pursue the true self, and follow my heart to wherever life brings me to.

Retention

At a company, an individual contributor may know best how the company goes with their staff retention.

I read in one blog post that promoting people to the manager level may not do retention that effective as giving out movie tickets to employees. You may totally argue with this statement but there are many people out there who just want to be on the professional track, design and build stuff, as opposed to going to the nitty gritty people managing pond. And I smiled when the founders of lynda.com announced we are all going to Disneyland with friends/family and stay for night in the grand resort. I am not a big fan of California Disneyland, but, yay, we are going to Disneyland!

We don’t have those 5-15% year-end bonuses as many companies do but we feel content to see the company takes care of their employees, and share its story with this big family.

I was overjoyed to see in today’s company quarterly meeting that the executives share their stories with lynda.com and the evolution of this company from baby steps back in Ojai.

It was quite a retrospection. Back 4 years ago we only had 36 employees, and in this past quarterly, only, we hired 25 more new people. We used to have one building in Ojai, where the company started. And now we got offices in Carpinteria, Ventura, Calabasas, London, expanding like crazy.

Some quotes from the Quarterly:

“You never know what you gonna get.”

“Scrum: empower people, allow them to make decisions, allow them to fail.”

“Build people who can see them building their career levels.”

And I truly love the “great people”, the “passion”, and the “persistence” around here. I am proud to work for a company that takes care of its employees and for a product that members love. There is nothing more rewarding than building a product that people love and are willing to spread the word.

Funny to see a twit shared at the meeting: “just got my lynda.com account, now my to-do list is infinite now.” Shame on me not really utilizing the complimentary content I got for free. And yes, my to-do list is infinite too!

Visuals Visuals Visuals

At a winery in Ensenada Mexico over a weekend getaway, I picked up a travel magazine over the counter and began reading. I flipped the pages for about five minutes, until my girlfriend who’s travelling with me reminded to go.

She asked me out of curiosity what this magazine was about and I looked at it one more time, and realized, oh wow, I wasn’t really “reading” the magazine, because it’s all in Spanish, the language I know nothing about (except a couple of words and broken sentences). So what I was reading, are solely those pretty pictures of wine, food, and scenery.

That’s funny.

But given it a second thought, it makes absolute sense. We are (well, at least I am) trained as fast food readers; we scan the information as opposed to perusing it. A cliche coming out of our usability testing later last year was “people don’t read.”

A study I read some years ago back in grad school showed that there was a significant statistical difference on human comprehension among the control group plain text; experiment group A icons only; and experiment group B text aided with icons.  And the winner, went to experiment group B.

It’s becoming more and more true if you look at some user interfaces on iPhone, or the Web.

I was constantly asked why do we need icons here and there, not that I am a big fan of icons, they do help:) And, keep in mind that, the visuals about food and human faces you put on your website or apps may draw better attention than others: 100 things you should know about people #11: Why you cannot resist paying attention to food, sex, and danger.

What are the properties that a good UX designer should have?

It’s been a while since I think about this question. Wireframing skills? Web dev understanding? Research background?

Almost a year after I decided and almost was forced to move on, changed the my title to an IA to UX Designer, working on a product people truly love, many exciting stuff, different platforms, learning and trying new things every day, besides all the technical background, I think more often times a UX designer needs to

• Be adaptive, different companies have different culture and their own way to treat the Product and User Experience;
• Keep learning, nobody knows all those cool stuff over the web and the apps, just keep a heart to learn at all times;
• Keep listening, from our users, from our stakeholders, from people who are the actual builders: our dev team;
• Be humble, 25% of designers’ design decision makings was wrong based on their personal opinions; and,
• Be grateful, we cannot accomplish anything w/o visual designers, developers, engineers, and most importantly the funding source to support us.

Like what Whitney Hess said in the closing keynotes in early this year’s IA Summit, we are a tribe, and we do what we love in the service of people who love what we do. This is not just a job, it’s what we care, and what we do.

Design Cues: A smartwater Bottle

Thirsty at the airport, I bought myself a bottle of smartwater. Till I got on the plane, I still couldn’t figure out how to open it.

Well, I know I can screw the whole cover, but I paid extra just for the small widget at the top that I can pop it open and drink water like a baby (forgive me if the industrial designers didn’t mean so but I always have this wired association every time I see bottled water covers like this.)

I read thoroughly on the bottle, no instructions. I looked closely at the top, no indications.

I have to say, this is the extreme minimalist design, w/o any cracks, hints to cue problem solving. (Sorry for the image quality it was a bumpy ride.)

The bottle sat at my lap for two hours and with my determination compounded by the fact that I had nothing to do bored on the plane but playing with this water bottle, I finally made my way through:

Back to home, a bottle of Arrowhead caught my attention. Crystal clear cues and detailed instructions, as easy as a piece of cake:

And oh, Happy September!

Emotional Design

I was asked for too many times why you want to go to lynda.com as opposed to the other offers from bigger and public companies. Yes, after staying at BNI for almost two years where the financials are not disclosed, I don’t feel secure working for private companies any more. But I am going to a private corporation again.

I explained to those who were curious: it’s a more challenging job and it made me nervous and excited. And I myself was convinced by this statement.

A month a half later today when I pretty much finished the transition at BNI and am about to come on board at lynda, I realized something that I don’t really want to admit which is a major trigger for where my heart went to: it’s kinda cool to work in their office environment.

I like their interior design, pretty and warm paint, well designed name plate, business card and stationary, espresso machine, coffee mug, big Mac monitors, etc., etc. All these little details touched me, and I am sure it will make me feel comforty and happy to stay in office, late.

Every second, an average human being receives 11 million sensory units. But only 40 of them are processed. Most decisions are made through unconscious mental processing (Weinschenk, 2009), so emotional design came into place.

Usability is about can your users go through the registration process and register as a member; while emotional design is about will your users do it.

While everything seems to be fairly equal and rational, it’s your emotion and unconsciousness that make the decision. Your users will follow their hearts.

Funny enough I’ve written papers and presented in conferences about design and emotion and I forgot about it.

Ciao BNI and my fellow colleagues! I enjoyed so much working with you.

@ Beachside & D'Argans

Conversion Series I – Persuasion

I recently had a chance to talk with a business development person about the conversion of a term life insurance website.

Problem Statement

The web has a conversion form, almost on every page; but how do you persuade your visitors to fill out the form, and what makes them convert?

Visitors type in the URL from an offline ad campaign they just heard, or stumble into the site by Googling or referrals, but do they really understand what Term Life Insurance is? How many varieties does Term Life Insurance include and what kind of customization you offer? How do you distinguish yourself from you major competitors?

Design Rationale

We had the consensus that the website might want to do a better job at convincing users why this is the service users want to go with, and we both thought the RELEVANCY to their users is a key part, i.e., how relevant the service is to them?

Solution

Persona.

image source: http://threeminds.organic.com/images/2008/01/persona_diagram.jpg

Persona is widely used in product design, helping UX designers and information architects understand the need of their users and construct the interaction accordingly – thinking in users hats.

From this discussion, I found personas have other potentials too, such as: persuasion.

Do your research and find the most representative types of users and create personas to put online. List out the age, gender, household income, education, marital status, life style, hobbies, any factors that may affect their Term Life Insurance; and answer those questions in the problem statement:

- What Term Life Insurance is?

- Varieties of your Term Life Insurance and what kind of customization you offer?

- How do you distinguish yourself from your major competitors?

I created a draft wireframe as an example: and you may list a synthesis of your personas on relevant pages (e.g., homepage), and dedicate one page further for each persona, and make sure that:

You tell the story in the first person.

People like stories. They may associates those attributes of personas to themselves. The more relevant, the better.

Success Measurement

Place the form on those persona pages and tag the form with event tracking so you can track the performance.

List a unique 800 # so you can also track offline sales from those persona stories.

Test and Learn

Design should be iterative. There is always probability that certain factors may skew the results, so tweak the format, information design if it doesn’t work that well; and if it works well, it doesn’t hurt to make enhancement.

Design Process

When I created this diagram for a presentation that I did for my company’s online team, I felt this is the path that I should follow for any product development, whether I am an information architect, ux designer, or whatever title I will be wearing down the line: research, design, measure, and iterate.

Design doesn’t come out of vacuum. Keep in mind that 75% of the designers who relied on their personal opinion were wrong, from a piece of research conducted by Nielsen Norman Group.

It’s my belief that Design should be based on the solid user experience research including audience analysis, usability testing, focus group, online research, competitive analysis, and data analysis gathered from sales reporting, web analytics, user feedback, etc. etc.

And the missing step, for many corporates and design agencies might be, the measurement. It’s natural to just finish the design and throw it off the fence, but how does your baby perform? Is the bounce rate high? Is the time on site too short? Is the conversion rate too low? How do your users comment in your feedback form? What can you do to make it easier to use, more engaging, stickier and at the same time, convert more and drive more revenue that will make your stakeholders happy?

All in all, to research, to design, to measure, and to iterate.

Hello UX World!

Welcome to the World of UX R and D at WordPress; I interpret it as research and design as opposed to research and development, because for information architects and user experience designers, it’s the development and engineering that they are supporting, in this beautiful world of user centered design.

As an Information Architect devoted to user experience research; a User Researcher dedicated to user-centered design; a Usability Engineer engaging in making the Web easier to use; a translator and interpreter who loves intercultural communication and bridging people together, I design for my users, making their life easier and hassle free.

This is my first blog post at WordPress and my goal was to collect my thoughts, auto parts, and loose diamonds as a knowledge management process: data, information, and ultimately knowledge.

My official site is at www.kejunxu.com if you want to know more about me, and bon appetit!