legend or fable?

Unicorns

Head of UX, Argos

• the Design Economy• who are the designers?• Unicorns – the stuff of legends or fables?• the value of design

The Design Economy

£71.7bn to the UK economy

Adding jobs at 3 times the national average

(Courtesy of David Gray)

there are conundrums...

who are they?

designers

USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*previously /also known as HF, UCD, CCD, HCD….

INFORMATION ARCHITECT

RESEARCH / INSIGHT

FRONTEND DEV

COPY WRITER

VISUAL DESIGNER

*completely and utterly my preference, you use whatever you like & clearly not exhaustive but purely for discussion purposes….

INFORMATION ARCHITECT

RESEARCH / INSIGHT

FRONTEND DEV

COPY WRITER

VISUAL DESIGNER

USER EXPERIENCE TEAM*

human factors engineer

usability tester

tech designer

author

graphic designer

ALSO KNOWN AS

user centred designer

interaction designer

UI dev designer

digital designer editoruser centred researcher

interaction designer

UX designer

UX designer

frontend coder

ethnographer

librarians

content writer

interaction coder

tech dev

XD (experience designer)

XD (experience designer)

they’re just labels…

confusion reigns

the right skills

The Seller1.

Step 1: Learn Everything You Can About a New SkillStep 2: Practice, Practice PracticeStep 3: Deconstruct What Others Have DoneStep 4: Solicit Feedback (And Listen To It)Step 5: Teach the Skill To Someone Else

Becoming a UX Unicorn in 5 Easy Steps

Where do you begin to develop these skills? Well, one resource is UIE’s All You Can Learn, a library of all things UX. Just create your account, and over 160 seminars will be at your fingertips.$23 a month……….

The Evangelist2.

Fred Beecher, UX apprenticeship

Learn psychology

The Theorist3.

Soft skills….

Hunting Unicorns - What makes an effective UX Professional Patrick Neeman, usabiitycounts.com

The Automator4.

“Design isn't hard to learn. That's because most of us are already building products and are familiar with what design means. What used to be complex and confusing is now simple and effective, thanks to Sketch, an app that is entirely focused on user interface design.”

where have they come from?

evolution

1960

1970

Xerox PARC

oNLine System (NLS)

Mouse driven cursor

Windows

Hypertext

Eye hand coordination

1973

Xerox Alto then Star

First PC

WIMP

Window, Icon,

Menu, Pointing

device

1600’sInfographics to

demonstrate the sun’s

rotation patterns.

Dieter Rams: ten

principles for good

designDocument centric

1943

Ikea founded

“Information is a source of learning. But

unless it is organized, processed, and

available to the right people in a format

for decision making, it is a burden, not a

benefit.”

– William Pollard

1800’s

1940

1980

AT&T release Unix

to outside parties

1980

Software Psychology & Human

Factors in Computing & IS

DOS

1983

GOMS Model

Visual Display of Quant Information

1983

The Lisa

1984

The Macintosh

1986

Designing the User Interface –

Object Action Interface model

1985 Windows

released

1980

TBL built ENQUIRE

Mobile (portable) phones

Sony Walkman

Program centric

Shell scripting

Macro procedures

1986

Challenger disaster

TUFTE: Powerpoint

persuades – it doesn’t

inform

1984

Apple ad during

superbowl. Computers

are personal

1980

IDEO(?) work on

Apple’s first mouse

“Interaction design” phrase coined

by Moggridge & Verplank

1979

GRiD Compass designed – first laptop

1990

1985

Free Software

Foundation (FSF)

1986

BBC GUI

Netscape is free

1998

‘Open source’ coined

Google founded

1991

‘LINUX released

1988

The Way Things Work

The Design of everyday things

ISO 9241

1994

W3C Founded

1995

Alertbox starts

1999

Designing Web Usability

1994

MS Award for inventing Visual basic

1988

Apple sues MS

1989

World Wide Web proposed

1990

WWW

1993

Mosaic

1995

Amazon

Founded

1996

Cascading style sheets

UGC begins with

Amazon book reviews

User profiling

= ‘personas’ 1998

The inmates are running the asylum

2000

2010

2006

Tufte invents sparklines

2000

Don’t make me think

ISO 9240 revised to ISO 13407,

Human-centred design for

interactive systems

2001

Dotcom bust

Smartphones

2001

iPod released

2003

iTunes launched

2007

iPhone

2005

Youtube founded

2004

Facebook founded

2008

AirBNB launched

2000

Ballot paper in Florida with

hanging Chad alignment

2009

Visual arts graduate

student Deborah Adler

redesigns Target’s RX

Drug bottle

2005

JJG coins AJAX to help non-

techs

2000

Google adwords

SOFTWARE

FLOWS, TASKS

& GOALS

GUI WWW1.0

WWW2.0

WIMP ADVERTISING….GLAMOUR…

SMALLER PROJECTS…

BANNERS….

REVENUE…

INTERNATIONAL

DISTRIBUTED

ASSETSENVIRONMENTS…

WIDGETS…

CHANNELS….

DEVICES…

MARKETING….DISRUPTION…

ITERATIVE

PRODUCTION

Is it any wonder

Left brain vs right brain

Qwerty keyboard….

25

26

“While we do spend literally billions of pounds on advertising our products, our best place to catch the attention of our … shopper or consumer is right at the initial stage, which is the bottle design and the label design.”

General Manager, Innovation, Diageo.

for differentiation

designing for experiences

context, mobility, social, channels…

the ‘norms’ constantly shift

influencing behaviours

digital tools are

IT, Telco, consumer electronics & entertainment

digital convergence -

distributed assets, tribes, simplicity, crowdsourcing, omni…

collaborative consumption

anything and everything is connected & saleable…

Internet of Things

design led thinking, the design economy, lean ux…

influencing traditions

Do we need unicorns?Q.

You get what you ask for…

Draw a vase….

36

“But solving problems isn’t enough. Understanding what’s possible in HTML, CSS, JS will help designers create practical web designs—products that developers can actually build, and that clients can maintain. Products that work well in the wild. Products that users use.”

– Interaction Design Best Practices: Mastering the Tangibles

Site map [sahyt map] noun

Epic [ep-ik] adjective

User Journey [yoo-zer jur-nee] adjective

Lofi proto, Hifi proto

[lo fi-del-i-tee, fahy proh-tuh-tahyp] noun

Information Architect

[in-fer-mey-shuh’n ahr-ki-tek-cher ] noun

Architecture diag

ERD

Fancy flow chart

Um. Prototype.

Chap who wireframes

(NOT who builds the

database schema)

speak the <ahem> user’s language

unite the left and right brainers

“A photographer went to a socialite party in New York.As he entered the front door, the host said ‘I love your pictures –they’re wonderful; you must have a fantastic camera.’He said nothing until dinner was finished, then: ‘That was a wonderful dinner; you must have a terrific stove.”

– Sam Haskins

experience is currency

the value of design

GuerrillaSilverback

Remote testing

Flight simulatorsBritish rail

Multi- touch testing

Commercial Labs -PCs

Menus & colours

Task flows/goals

Mouse

Windows

HTML single page loading

Sell/cross sell

Typography

Colours

BannersAdvertising

CSS

Parallax scrolling

Data visualisation

Hypertext

HTML

Accessibility

CSS

Parallax scrollingMulti interaction

page

AJAX

iOS, Android . . .

SO

FT

WA

RE

GU

IW

WW

1.0

WW

W2

.0Research IA VD Code

Jedi masters; jugglers; teams

we’ve been busy

Experience(Internet of [every]thing)

Wearables, watchesDesktopMobileTabletThermostatsPOSKiosksAnd, and, and. . .

A.R.

Attention to detailEvery consequenceWall layoutExceptional blue tacking skills

Science

MemoryAttention spanInstant gratificationLogicWhy people buyWhy people click

Context

PreviousScenariosConsequencesUnhappy paths

Join the dotsInternetCMSGatewaysBatteriesCameras/trackingRFIDNFCFeedback loops

areas to grow; knowledge to inhale; dots to join

become a living legend, not a fable

new generations, new psychology

& a bit of fortune telling…

“Design is everything, because without it we have no business. … There is intense competition, and anybody can design a decent product. They can’t all design outstanding products. So, design is the differentiator.”

CEO, Pentland Brands plc

Thanks for listening!

I’m sorry if I swore too much during this presentation – I try not to but then get sidetracked in the moment.

Caveat: all of this is very commercially focused - there’s a huge part of UX that goes unrecognised which is for the greater good of humankind. Audio for the blind; visuals for the deaf; tools for those with physical challenges. Secretly all UXers want to be part of that world. We want to contribute.