But what Rachel does best in the book is to clearly put together 8 principles of Natural User Interfaces:

1. Performance Aesthetics: the joy of doing
2. Direct Manipulation: directly interaction with information objects
3. Scaffolding: indications of how the interaction will unfold
4. Contextual environments: interfaces locate themselves in space and time
5. Super Real: we perceive this interfaces as super real
6. Social Interaction: interfaces enable users to engage with other users
7. Spatial Representation: objects are intelligent and have auras
8. Seamlessness: fewer barriers between the user and information

I found that having these principles in mind at the moment of creating a new design comes very handy.

I don’t want to duplicate even more content, you can find the full explanation to each point on Quora.

Which character best personifies your users?

I was thinking that this recommendation is a great one and this technique could really help people in the product and design team to brainstorm new interfaces, features and services for users.

Imagine you were designing for a female audience, once you have done your research about your users’ personality and motivations, wouldn’t be helpful to picture their behavior with character archetypes?

Do your customers behave like wonder women or princesses?

I think looking for character archetypes and representing them with images is a technique worth trying.

I totally recommend Jon’s book, it is full of interesting tips: Game On: Energize Your Business with Social Media Games.

Picture sources: Yourlamode, Eden Glenn Blog

The Lean Startup is putting together (not inventing) well-known UX design practices like:

• User observation,
• More ethnography,
• User tests,
• User Interviews,
• Rapid iteration and
• Prototyping

Eric Ries put all those concepts into a book full of business buzz words to bring the UX practice to managers. You will find “eliminate uncertainty”, “work smarter”, “validate” and “minimum viable product.” This is what managers need to read, not mystic words like “ethnography.”

Some designers have been complaining on Twitter, saying that Mr. Ries is “stealing” our concepts to sell them as a new movement. Well, let me tell you, he is actually doing us a favor.

The wording doesn’t matter, just go buy the book and give it to top managers. Eric explains in a very appealing way why every company, an specially startups, should use all those techniques user experience designers have being taking into practice for years.

The Lean Startup will help you spread the UX message.

User tests can provide insights on the website you want to improve or about a new product prototype. Surveys, on the other side, usually focus on knowing more about the demographics, usage behaviors, and opinions while analytics will give you numbers.

Great illustration by ocularinvasion

Candy in real life

My grandfather used to be famous in our neighborhood. Why? Was he rich or handsome, or a music star? No, he carried candy in his pockets and he gave candy to every kid he could find; soon he became the girls and boys local super hero.

Actually, in some countries, it’s common that old men give candy to children. The uncommon behavior was that my grandfather would also give candy to adults. Hence, he became the local super hero of children and adults as he surprised neighbors and got many smiles in return. I’m sure many adults thought that it was ridiculous to get candy from an old man and be treated like a child, but they did, in any case, smile.

Why chocolate?

Chocolate, the food produced from cacao (as described on Wikipedia,) is one of the top gifts, worldwide. It’s also one of the most popular ways of saying thank you, I love you, I appreciate you, and make someone smile. Most of us love chocolate.

Chocolate for users

I always take two small chocolates with me when I go to user tests. I give the first one to the user at the beginning of the meeting and I leave the second chocolate on the table next to me. I say that the first one is a small present for joining the test; users usually smile and know that there is more to come.

The goal is to create a funny situation, a reason to smile and relax. It is also a way to thank the user, just one more detail (aside from the monetary incentive). I am convinced that tests run better when we use chocolate because it makes users happier and more open to talk and share information.

Chocolate in meetings

Use chocolate in brainstorming sessions as a reward every time a colleague adds something interesting to the discussed topic. Rewards provide initiative, and could result in a courageous colleague who shares something crazy that paves the path to a cutting edge solution.

Again, the goal is to create a playful environment, to brake the ice, make people smile and, above everything, to reward participation.

I use small pieces of chocolates that are easy to throw in the air and that people can eat immediately. My favorite brand is Ritter Sport: Small colorful pieces of delicious chocolate.

Communicate the benefits

We don’t want people to think that they are being rewarded the same way dolphins at SeaWorld are. So, make sure that everybody gets the idea that it is a game and make it clear that this technique is used to make the test or brainstorming session a success. With chocolate it will probably be!

Chocolate pictures from Ritter Sport

When I was in college, I used to work at my mother’s cafeteria, serving sweets, coffees, and drinks. The cafeteria used to be a very busy place, with many different faces passing by every day.

Based on my mother’s advice, I started to try to remember what regular clients buy. Was it always cafe con leche? Was that man always drinking white wine?

Remembering customer choices was making them happy. But even more effective was to anticipate and start serving that glass of wine as they were entering the cafeteria. I was always amazed to see clients smiling just because they did not even have to order.


I care about you

Anticipating wishes was rewarding, and it was creating expectation, excitement, and engagement on the part of our regular customers. These feelings and behaviors are not magic; researchers link such behaviors to dopamine, a neurotransmitter produced by our brain’s reward system.

Therefore, as these feelings are so natural to humans, they also apply to the design of websites.


Anticipation on the web

Anticipation can be applied to the design of websites not only to prevent problems, but also to deliver a message of trust by sending a message stating, “I care about you”.

Virb.com automatically suggests a URL for the new website based on the previously filled “website name” field.





Gmail anticipates the addressees that the user might want to include based on the first addressee typed (Notice: “Consider including…”).






To return items bought at Amazon, users have to print a form, cut it, and attach it to the box. Frontlineshop.com, a popular German shop, sends stickers with their return address to their customers so they do not have to print any form. They anticipate to the possibility of returning items.



Conclusion

Engage in anticipation not only to prevent problems, but also to make users’ lives easier, to get their smiles, excitement, expectation, and engagement, and to improve, little by little, the entire user experience.

Recommended reads

Reward, emotion and consumer choice: from neuroeconomics to neurophilosophy, Gordon Foxall

Can I Trust You? How Anticipating Problems Can Help Your Brand, Jared M. Spool.

Reward anticipation – A powerful tool for game design, Lennart Nacke.

Coffee picture by Sachmanns.dk

We all know about user testing, research and all that stuff. Those methods work good if the right questions are asked and the interviewees are carefully listened.

A deeper approach

Latetly, I have been looking for ways to improve my method to get more information from users. What it seems to be working good is to pretend that “I don’t know”.

Sorry, I don’t understand. Could you repeat that? I’ve never heard about it, I’m not from here (works good for me, being a foreigner). I don’t know…

Inside the company

Of course you don’t want to look silly at work but an “I don’t know” approach could also make collegueas share their ideas during design workshops.

Just say: I didn’t know that, could you explaing further?

A different approach to consulting

Many user experience consultants prepare themselves fantastically before meeting their new clients for the first time. They read about their industry, their website, their business. They also prepare extensive documents and they pretend to know everything about them.

I think the best approach is to say “I don’t know, please explain”… what you want, what you think you need, tell me about your business, your industry…

Encourage talk and discussion saying “I don’t know”.

Picture by Kalavinka

Christian’s book Designing Social Interfaces is a collection of design principles and patterns.

• Prepare the meeting choosing 1 or 2 of the concepts proposed in the book.

For example, you could use the Pave the Cowpaths and Use Game Mechanics principles. Read carefully about them.

• Prepare a few slides to explain the principles to your colleagues.

Participants

Depending on the principles you want to discuss about, you might like to invite colleagues from your own design team, product managers, programmers or marketing people. Do not underestimate your colleagues, different ideas encourage discussion.

• Invite people from different groups.

The Meeting

• Explain the principles, give examples.
• Make sure you leave on the screen a slide with the principles (so the participants can read them during the exercise.)

You have to ask participants to imagine how to apply those principles on the current website. For example, you could ask to look for those “cowpaths” from current user behavior that could be “paved” to improve the user experience.

• Ask participants to write short ideas on post-its.
• After a few minutes, ask them to tell out loud what they wrote down, to explain a little bit and to paste the post-its on the whiteboard.

You will find that some ideas are similar.

• Group ideas and ask participants to help you name those groups.

Round Up

This kind of meeting might not give you a definite answer to your design problems, but for sure it could help you start playing with new ideas, based on stablished principles.

Even more, these meetings are a lot of fun and trigger discussion and conversation through different departments.

Give it a try!

Pictures from vancouverfilmschool and VFS

At a first glance, it doesn’t seem to be a bad thing, specially on interfaces designed for tablets targeted to the mass market. But the following is what is ringing a bell:

It seems that the new Address Book for Mac OS X Lion will look like a real address book. This could bring several problems with it, but the most important one is the brake of the user interface standards put in practice by Apple itself. Aside from that, Address Book is a very important productivity tool and this design seems, with several distractions, to require a lot of attention from the user.

The last time I used a non-electronic address book was 11 years ago, then why would I like to go back to a paper-like interface? Even worse, this old style interface might not be understood by the younger generations, many have never seen a paper address book.

Kindle for iPhone and iBooks

Above, you can see the default home screen for the Kindle (left) and iBooks (right) apps. The later mimics the real world with an inefficient way to present titles in the library.

Stanza for iPhone and iBooks

Above, the Stanza (left) and iBooks (right) apps. Stanza focuses on the content and does not try to mimic the real world: flipping pages is really fast and no visual decorations are added.

So why?

It’s a fact that applications that look good are perceived by users as easier to use. From the marketing point of view, applications mimicking the real world might also get much more attention from the general public.

So what’s the problem?

In many cases these applications are not efficient and not follow the rules. It is hard for me, as an Apple fan, to accept the fact that the wind of change might be blowing through Apple: they are braking their own rules.

Although these cases might only be bad examples, the worrying part is that Apple is usually a trend setter and many developers and designers might be tempted to follow. All-right, if users don’t complain at the beginning; most user interface designers know that this path is a dangerous one.

This post is a recap of a vivid discussion I had with my friend and usability expert, Martin Schultz. The topic was also recently mentioned in the episode 17 of the Build and Analyze podcast.

2001: Space Odyssey (1968)

Nothing like a face

Psychologists believe that our feelings are represented in big part through faces; with more than 40 muscles, faces can deliver more than 3000 different messages that our brains decode during a conversation. So no wonder we love faces.

A moving image, in real time, of a person makes us feel closer and confident.

In business, talking to a real person makes us feel comfortable and safer. Several studies showed that attractive shop assistants sell more because we usually trust good looking people. It’s the most primitive part of our brain who is giving us these directions and it’s difficult to fight against it. We enjoy to hear and to see real people.

Terrific user experience and implementation of video calls.

Shaping the next tools

We might be facing a new area in computer-based human communications. In the same way little children are growing up with touch interfaces and expect all interfaces to behave in this way, the general public might get used to video interfaces and might expect to get this dimension embedded in everything they use.

Specially smart phones, the new iPad 2 and Internet-enabled TVs will push for the use of video calls: no need for additional devices and setups, they are always on, always with you. No need to sit in front of the PC.

An Internet-enabled Samsung TV with Skype and an iPhone.

A little revolution

A project management software that makes video calls easy could improve communication, a warmer and video-capable Facebook, a video-based online shop or a video customer support. The list could get long if the medium, interfaces and user experiences are all properly designed; they have to be easily accessible avoiding to be intrusive.

We will be closer to friends and family, safer and more confident doing business. This is a new little revolution.

Sources:

S.F psychologist has made a science of reading facial expressions

Do facial expressions reflect inner feelings? Or are they social devices for influencing others?

Videophone entry on Wikipedia

Neuro Web Design, Susan Weinschenk. New Riders Press.