Flickr: N A I T Paula de Matos & Jenny Cham

A Survival Guide for Complex UX

My name is Paula de Matos I live in Cambridge I am an Independent

UX Analyst I tweet @Paula_deMatos I am South African & Portuguese I am an agile evangelist

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•  Part of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory

•  International, non-profit research institute

•  540 people work at EMBL-EBI, 48 nations represented

•  Average age: 37 yrs

EMBL-EBI EuroHub for Bioinformatics in Hinxton

2012

2013

Our recent papers: UX and Bioinformatics (open access)

Characteristics of a complex environment…

Flickr: Gigi C

•  highly inter-connected •  has depth (big picture and high level of granularity important) •  high volume, big scale •  unfamiliar since it is a ‘niche’/’expert’ field (niche vocab.) •  needing security/ privacy/ authentication •  real time-critical

Complex environments have data that is/ may be…

•  May have geographically separated team •  People (always complex but added complications may be…)

•  Not aware of UX (“fluffy stuff”)

•  Do not know who users are/ not interested in the user

•  Lack buy-in (“should we simplify stuff?”)

People in complex environments…

Rich client mapping e.g. Geographical software

Multi-screen terminals for stock brokers e.g. Thomson Reuters

Flickr: Travel Aficionado

Examples

Examples

Pharmaceutical Research and Development e.g. identifying and validating new drug targets

•  10 minutes •  Identify a facilitator •  Chat in your team •  Other characteristics of a complex

environment we missed? •  Facilitator present back summary

Are you working in a complex environment? What are the issues you face?

Bioinformatics research/services is a complex environment

•  At the heart of modern biology research •  Science of storing, retrieving and analysing

biological information •  An interdisciplinary science involving biologists,

biochemists, computer scientists and mathematicians

What is bioinformatics?

L-O-A-D-S of data

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‘Dry’ and ‘wet’ scientists use the same software

Sweet spot?

Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering 1993

We don’t sell stuff…

Flickr: Kristian Niemi

Finding the people can be difficult

Our survival guide…

UCD lifecycle for a complex environment

Knife image from www.sxc.hu/photo/816000

Flickr: atkinson000

Survival tip #1: Understand the data and “big picture”

•  Get interested •  Learn the basics yourself •  Make a new friend/s

Survival tip #2: Love thy stakeholders

•  Understand •  UCD stakeholder champions •  UX buy-in strategy •  Incentives?

e.g. •  Literature research •  Competitor analysis •  Due diligence

Survival tip #3: Understanding the context

Survival tip #4: teach your development team the basics

≠

Folks at UX London 2011

Survival tip #5: mitigate ‘self-as-user’ outlook (use refs)

Debra the in vivo pharma R&D scientist

Fact: we are not the users

Example: persona

•  Ask your buddy •  Find out a little about the expertise of the target user so you can get the

conversation flowing •  Ask when they don’t make any sense •  Record the interview

Survival tip #6: interview experts (pref. in their own lab)

Example: empathy mapping

Survival tip #7: Try gamestorming with geeks (aka experts)

Gray et al. (2010) Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators, Rulebreakers, and Changemakers

UX Cam 2011 talk: Coming Out of Your Shell: Using UX Workshops to Your Advantage in a Techie/Scientific Setting www.infoq.com/presentations/Coming-Out-of-Your-Shell

Example: speedboat game

Survival tip #8: Establish your Information Architecture

What happens if you ask...

What is important to you?

What do you want?

Engaging IA ‘head scratcher’ for target users (experts)

Stimulates discussion esp. dot vote to get consensus

Scenario •  You have been offered a great job (at an agency) in Cape Town, South Africa •  You are not sure whether to accept the position  

Your task (in teams) •   Find out if Cape Town is suitable for you/your family

Starting point •  You arrive at an information portal for Cape Town, what is the first thing you

need to see?

Tutorial: learn how to canvas sort

Flickr: Xevi V

Start activity"

The activity will end in -1:0

Synthesis and consolidation of artefacts

Canvas Sort Result #1: Relative priorities of data items and actions

Result #2: Model of the information architecture for the portal

Result #3: Ideas to take into sketching

Result #4: Visual specs & can start thinking about relevant technologies/ constraints

Created using Balsamiq Mockups (http://www.balsamiq.com/products/mockups)

Survival tip #9: quick & easy prototyping keeps ideas flowing & dev costs low

Survival tip #10: Things are more likely to go wrong in a complex environment

•  Data that does not exist •  Things going wrong on release day •  Stakeholder posturing

Our 10 UX tips for surviving in complex environments

Survival tip #1: Understand the data and “big picture” Survival tip #2: Love thy stakeholders Survival tip #3: Understanding the context Survival tip #4: Teach your development (or agile) team the basics Survival tip #5: Mitigate ‘self-as-user’ outlook (use refs) Survival tip #6: Interview experts (pref. in their own lab) Survival tip #7: Try gamestorming with geeks (aka experts) Survival tip #8: Establish your Information Architecture Survival tip #9: Quick prototyping keeps ideas flowing & dev costs low Survival tip #10: Things are more likely to go wrong

Mapping survival tips to our case study

Knife image from www.sxc.hu/photo/816000

#1-4 #5

#6

#7-8

#9

#10

Jenny Cham Email: jcham@ebi.ac.uk LinkedIn: jennifer-cham Twitter: @JenniferCham

Contact us

Paula de Matos Email: paula.dematos@gmail.com

LinkedIn: pauladematos Twitter: @Paula_deMatos

Useful references

Complex UX •  Chilana, P.K. et al (2010) Understanding usability practices in complex

domains. CHI 2010 Proceedings of the SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems 2337-2346

Personae •  Baron-Cohen, S. et al (2003) The systemizing quotient: an investigation of

adults with Asperger syndrome or high-functioning autism, and normal sex differences. Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London 358: 361-74

•  William Hudson (2009) Reduced Empathizing Skills Increase Challenges for User-Centered Design CHI 2009 April 3–9, Boston, MA, USA

Gamestorming •  Gray D, Brown S, Macanufo J (2010) Game storming: A Playbook for

Innovators, Rulebreakers and Changemakers. California: O’Reilly Media.

Coordinated by Francis Rowland http://ebiinterfaces.wordpress.com/

UX interest group: EMBL- EBI interfaces

www.ebi.ac.uk/enzymeportal #

Questions?