10 Nov 08 Facebook Pizza

Pizza Hut will soon launch a Facebook application that allowing hungry users to place orders without leaving their profiles. They’re also launching text-ordering and online e-gift card  capabilitie.

For the three months ending in August, food marketers sent nearly 1.4 million text-message ads (up 37% from the same period last year). Restaurants had the highest response rates, with 15.5% of consumers responding to the ads.

Subway spokesman Les Winograd said some of the chain’s franchisees have begun to offer ordering via text and iPhone apps. The chain has an unusually open policy that lets individual franchisees experiment on their own.

Tags: User Experience

07 Jun 08 Experience Hierarchy of Needs

Use this model to guide your thinking, processes, and approaches when making things for people on behalf of your clients. Its an hierarchy. Each level of need is only meaningful if the previous levels have been met. If you solve for the top of the pyramid your clients will be successful and their customers will be happy.

Thanks Maslow!

Tags: User Experience

06 Mar 08 Personas and the Role of Design Documentation

Andrew Hinton wrote a great piece over on Boxes and Arrows about Personas and the Role of Design Documentation. I responded over there but thought it was also worth sharing here.

Andrew:

Thanks for taking the time to share your perspective. Obviously a lot of thought went into this piece. Couple of comments to add.

1) Cooper’s approach to personas works well for Cooper however it doesn’t necessarily transfer to the rest of us working in our varied environments with myriad different partners and stakeholders.

2) The 37signals thoughts on designing for oneself are noted. I am familiar with this line of thinking and believe it works for some. I refer to this approach as Designer-Centered Design. My personal preference is to practice User-Centered Design. Here’s the continuum as I see it.

Design for Myself (hit or miss)
I am the user (good)
I asked the User (better)
I Observed the User (best)

Like many folks who’ve been in the this field for a while I started in product design and software before the Internet blossomed. I have always been a staunch believer in User-Centered Design even before I knew what it was. Designing software using a UCD methodology meant designing for the required user groups and involving them in the process from beginning to end. The end result was a designed product guided and approved by the people who would use it. Personas were not really necessary.

That all changed when individual software products were adopted and used by masses of people. Suddenly it became impossible to design for and involve all the user groups in the process. It was personas that allowed us to construct archetypal users from these masses. These personified users were developed in a way that allowed us to design for their needs and simultaneously meet the needs of the broader user groups.

In the beginning the personas were one off creations for a specific problem at hand. They were used by the internal team for a current project. IMO we began to run into all kinds of problems when our clients, partners and stakeholders took a liking to the personas we were creating. One the one hand this was a wonderful thing because it brought everyone together in the process. On the other hand there were several negative effects…a few include:

1) The personas were interpreted more deeply than the data behind them allowed.
2) The personas were used outside the scope of their intended use.
3) We began to make the personas more and more general to allow for mixed use which meant they were less useful for specific tasks at hand.

To this day I’m still a fan of a more rigorous approach to designing personas. I do think they can be extremely valuable tools for broader audiences and as such I have moved a bit more in the direction of generalizing them for multiple uses. I think it’s also worth noting that personas are not the end-all-be-all tool. There are times when alternative outputs from research are better suited to guide design.

Tags: User Experience

03 Aug 07 Lord of the Flies Meets Reality TV

In a clever move the folks over at CBS apparently leveraged a loophole in the New Mexico labor law to film a reality TV show with 40 kids during the school year. They basically declared the production a summer camp.

Premieres Wednesday September 19th at 8PM on CBS
40 children, 40 days, no adults—eager to prove they can build a better world for tomorrow in the new reality series KID NATION. Settling in Bonanza City, New Mexico, once a thriving mining town but now deserted, these kids, ages 8 to 15 and from all walks of life, will build their own new world, pioneer-style. They will confront grown-up issues while coping with the classic childhood emotions of homesickness, peer pressure and the urge to break every rule. Episodes end with a town meeting in which the kids award one child a gold star worth $20,000, all leading to the grand finale, with an unimaginable test, the biggest awards and a special surprise for every child.

All kind of potential learning for these kids and all kind of potential damage. I would anticipate they’ve mitigated most of the physical risk. That leaves room for the psychological damage. Since many of these children will go on to be famous, this will be just the beginning of the psychological stress so many child stars experience. We as a society have some strange boundaries and social norms with respect to entertainment

Tags: User Experience

26 Apr 07 Leave it to IBM

User Sciences and Experience Research. Get it! USER

Looks like an interesting position.

Position Announcement: Senior Manager, User Sciences and Experience Research, IBM Almaden Research Center

The department of Computer Science (www.almaden.ibm.com/cs) at the IBM Almaden Research Center (www.almaden.ibm.com) seeks candidates for Senior Manager of the User Sciences and Experience Research (USER) group. Almaden’s USER group consists of 30 scientists and engineers. Current areas of research include activity-centric computing and collaborative work, new forms of interfaces and healthcare IT interaction, social and relationship-oriented systems, user interface development for large and complex data management systems, intelligent and social scripting interfaces, next-generation email systems, new content protection technologies, and new personal computer system security, backup, and restore techniques.

The Senior Manager must have the passion and leadership skills essential for maximum impact in industrial research. We aim to advance both IBM’s
future capabilities and markets as well as the scientific fields. Responsibilities include enhancing the department’s reputation, finding routes to market for research ideas and results, representing the department to the IBM company and its customers, advancing the department members’ careers, and motivating them to excel in their work. The successful candidate should have demonstrated success or potential in these areas. The ideal candidate would possess a deep understanding of the human-computer interaction research area.

Please contact search committee member Tom Moran and Shumin Zhai or other members of IBM Almaden at CHI 2007 or send an email to (tpmoran@us.ibm.com, zhai@us.ibm.com) if you are interested or would like to make a recommendation.

All qualified applicants will receive consideration for employment without regard to race, color, religion, gender, gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, national origin, genetics, disability, age, or veteran status.

The IBM Research Division conducts scientific research and develops technologies and processes for use with IBM Products and customer applications. IBM Research has produced leading contributions to the technology underlying IBM’s product portfolio, as well as to the world of science and the entire IT industry. For more information go to www.ibm.com/research

Tags: User Experience