First up, thanks so much for your time today @jarango – we’re lucky to have you

Thanks @hawk! I’m excited to be here.

The formal intro: Jorge Arango is an information architect and strategic designer. He partners with product, design, and innovation leaders to create digital places that make people smarter. In addition to his consulting practice, Jorge also teaches, writes, and speaks at global design conferences.

Jorge is the author of Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places. You can find it on Rosenfeld Media or Amazon.

And that’s the basis of our talk for today.

@jarango over to you. Give us some context around the book and the topic.

Thanks

And thanks to everyone who’s sharing this space with us.

Let me start by introducing myself. My background is in architecture (as in the design of buildings.) But I’ve been in (what we now call) UX for almost 25 years.

Back in the mid-1990s a book came into my life that changed the course of my career. It was Richard Saul Wurman’s _Information Architects_. https://www.amazon.com/Information-Architects-Richard-Saul-Wurman/dp/1888001380/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1539900476&sr=8-2&keywords=information+architects

The cover of that book has a definition of what an information architect is that resonated with me.

However, the content of the book wasn’t exactly what I was into at the time.

The book highlighted people from various fields who were “making the complex clear.”

I was designing websites at the time. The connection between designing websites and making the complex clear was obvious, and there were some folks featured in the book who were doing that.

However, a couple of years later another book came out with a similar title which was much closer to what I was doing.

_Information Architecture for the World Wide Web_: https://www.amazon.com/Information-Architecture-World-Wide-Web/dp/1565922824/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1539900688&sr=8-2&keywords=information+architecture+for+the+world+wide+web

1998. Twenty years ago!

In any case, I identified much more closely with the focus of this book: it had some of the stuff Wurman was talking about, but applying it to the work I was doing.

Information architecture became the focus of my career.

(Sidebar: A few years ago I had the privilege of collaborating with Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville on producing the fourth edition of the polar bear book.)

In any case, I’ve done most of my work in Panama (where I’m originally from). A few years ago, my family and I decided to move to northern California. Before the move, a friend from the IA community said, “You know, IA isn’t talked about much here.”

I was flabbergasted.

How could this be? This is where the digital systems that are turning the world upside down are being built!

Fast forward a few years…

In the fall of 2016 I gave two keynote presentations in a three week period. The first was in Santiago, Chile, and the second was in Rome. The week between these two trips was when the U.S. Presidential election was decided.

It was a very interesting time.

That summer, the U.K. had voted to leave the European Union. A momentous decision!

Regardless of where you stand politically, it’s pretty clear that something disconcerting has happened to our ability to hold civic discourse.

Are you with me so far?

Here’s the thing.

I thought I left architecture 25 years ago. But over time it’s become clear to me that I never did.

Over the past couple of decades we’ve been moving many of our key social interactions from the places where our species has experienced them thus far — physical environments — to a new type of environment: one we enter through these small glass rectangles we carry about in our pockets.

We are having this conversation in such an environment.

It’s an interesting thing.

In any case, I’m not here to teach you marketable skills. :slightly_smiling_face: My aim is to get you to understand what you do a bit differently. To reframe the work.

Because software is eating the world, as Marc Andreessen has said. And those of us who design “user experiences” have greater responsibility — and greater agency — than designers who’ve come before.

So I want to share with you the question that drives my work (and my new book): _How might we design information environments that better support our needs as a society in the long term?_

It’s pretty clear that “move fast and break things” isn’t doing it.

:+1:

It becomes “break people” after a bit, doesn’t it?

It this was a presentation, I’d need a drink of water about now.

:slightly_smiling_face:

In any case, you won’t be surprised to learn that I think that information architecture holds good answers to this question.

Would you like us to throw some questions at you?

Happy to entertain questions at any time.

True dat

Great. you heard the man!

What are the 3 biggest things that information architecture has leverage on improving for society?

:sunglasses:

@treyroady that’s an excellent question

There are two areas of focus that information architects (and architects before them) are particularly adept at: structures and systems.

Thinking structurally and systemically is essential if you are to minimize the risk of having to face unintended consequences.

There’s a third area of focus which IAs haven’t paid as much attention to in the past — something I’m hoping to change. And that’s sustainability.

Structures and systems change over time. We want them to evolve in ways that help them serve our needs. That requires that we start thinking sustainably.

Can you give an example?

This is especially true twitch AI coming into the picture

I’ve heard it described as a move from taxonomies to ontologies regarding ia

Let me dive a bit deeper before giving examples.

Are you familiar with Stewart Brand’s concept of pace layers?

This is a fascinating — and important — idea: some things in the world are composed of things that change at different rates, some faster than others.

It’s true of buildings (as Brand pointed out in his book _How Buildings Learn_.)

IA has always felt divergent -> convergent and top down. Are there any tools for architects in recognizing patterns and guiding systems in machine learning?

It’s also true of civilizations (what the diagram above is about.)

I recognize this is probably too big a question :slightly_smiling_face:

@cboyer that’s an important observation. We’ll get to it.

For the person who expressed confusion at the diagram above, perhaps this one is easier to grok:

Well, *I’m* certainly interested.

That’s from Brand’s _How Buildings Learn_.

The idea is that buildings are composed of layers that change at different rates.

The site (the ground) the building is built on changes more slowly than services (like plumbing, for example.)

“Stuff” is things like furniture. Super easy and cheap to move around.

In any case, there are things in the world that change like this.

Understanding this is important, especially if we’re aiming to make things that support our needs in the long term.

In the first pace layer model I posted, the slowest changing layer is labeled “Nature.” Think our biological composition. It changes very slowly!

Whereas something like fashion or art change very quickly.

In the middle you have things like governance structures, infrastructure, and commerce.

All changing at different rates.

Brand offers a great insight here that can help us design things that support our needs better in the long term…

The civilizations that last are the ones that strike a good balance between the fast-changing layers at the top and the slow changing layers at the bottom. This is because _the fast changing layers are where civilizations learn new things, and the slow changing layers are where they remember the things that are worth while_. The ones that stand the test of time. (Literally.)

With me so far?

But what about the interaction between governance, infrastructure, and commerce? Could you say that our governance shift is due to a large shift in infrastructure and commerce as well?

They all interrelate with each other.

We’re living in a period when many of these layers are changing faster than before and going through tremendous disruptions.

I’d love to dive deeper into that, but I have another model to share with you.

This is a pace layer model for what we call “UX design.”

As with Brand’s model, the fastest changing layer is the one on top.

That’s what we usually work on. You can think of it as UI.

Buttons, screens, voice interactions, etc.

You will notice I’ve separated structure from form.

There’s a reason for that.

As with buildings, structure in our work tends to change more slowly that the surface design of UIs.

When I worked on the fourth polar bear book, I had to go through the entire book updating the examples. Some of those screenshots were a decade old. The UIs had changed a lot. But when you looked at the navigation bars, you could recognize that they were the same structure.

In any case, the real power resides in the lower — slower — layers.

As designers, we must be cognizant of the model, and understand what the role of our work is vis-a-vis the real power that drives it.

@jarango Before we run out of time can we jump back and revisit @cboyer’s question:
IA has always felt divergent -> convergent and top down. Are there any tools for architects in recognizing patterns and guiding systems in machine learning?

Yes.

For those of us who have have seen the cycles, this is very true.

Thanks for bringing it back

The reason I wanted to share the model was because we need to start thinking of things like machine learning in terms of structure and form, and what those structures and forms are in service to.

Architects (the building type) are not form designers primarily. They help clients _frame the problem_. The client may know they want to build a shopping mall, but often lack the tools for defining what the _program_ for a shopping mall should be. That’s part of what we need to take on.

Architecture has a long tradition of adapting forms and structure to contextual conditions and new technologies.

The top-down impression comes from the “starchitects” that are most famous. But much of our lives happens in buildings that are much more responsive to contextual conditions than that sort of work.

I agree. I’ve been fortunate to lead both product design and data product / machine learning initiatives. Design is rarely if ever at the table for machine learning initiatives, and we have much to offer in framing what we want to know and more importantly, what is discovered

Not sure I answered the question specifically — as Clyde said, it is somewhat broad.

In any case, I want us all to think more architecturally. But that doesn’t necessarily mean top-down.

I’ll post my comment in the main thread. And thanks for diving in on this. agree. I’ve been fortunate to lead both product design and data product / machine learning initiatives. Design is rarely if ever at the table for machine learning initiatives, and we have much to offer in framing what we want to know and more importantly, what is discovered

Design is making the possible tangible.

And the possible can now lead down unimaginable paths.

@cboyer: that experience might be worth a good read, if you write it up :slightly_smiling_face:

Our role is to help people envision what that could be.

We need to be at the table with the data scientists

And the consequences.

As much as I hate to do this, we’ve hit the top of the hour.

:disappointed:

If you want to keep talking @jarango there is no reason at all that you can’t…

I can hang out for a few more minutes.

I’m notoriously lazy about writing. I tend to do stuff and then jump to the next thing. But this is a topic that has been weighing on me quite a bit.

But you’re free to go if you need to!

Excellent.

It’d be great to hear from other folks.

Agreed. does anyone have something to throw into the ring?

Thanks so much. You’re book is fantastic by the way and I can’t recommend it enough.

Well, I can say that I’m working at a very AI / ML heavy company right now, and I could potentially benefit a lot from any major mistakes you made

Sounds like we are moving into issues of ethics. Especially in ML.

I’d be really interested to hear any examples of IA being used to shift those slower layers as I definitely agree that its where the power is

Random thought – designers/uxers (whatever we call ourselves now) could do with a better understanding of things like domain and content modelling. That structure layer is a better place to focus than on the form layer. Unfortunately I see lots of focus on the form and little on the deeper layers

@maadonna Bingo

Part of it is due to the fact that structure is abstract.

And sometimes hard :slightly_smiling_face: And not pretty

People don’t like abstraction. It makes them nervous.

(Especially stakeholders.)

They want to know what things are going to _look like_.

The other kind of related thing here – AI/ML is all about making models of the world. They are also in that structure layer

@holliedoar as you may imagine, it’s easier to point to change happening in the opposite direction.

And if AI/ML folks make the wrong model (because they used history as training data) they screw up everything, but it’s already embedded

I remember years ago seeing a presentation about a redesign for a publication’s website. I think it was a magazine.

The navigation structure had been completely changed to conform to what the ad sales team could sell, as opposed to what made the magazine special.

But remember: the fast layers are also where we can _experiment_ with things.

It’s easier to try out new forms (and structures) than new strategies.

Or the sales org. :slightly_smiling_face:

Choosing the wrong model is a problem. Developers find they like their one hammer and use it on everything. A lot of success seems to come from experience and intuition, similar traits as the most effective designers.

As designers, understanding this can mean that we can provide more value. Not just to our organizations, but to society more broadly.

Any more thoughts/observations? (I must jump off in a few minutes, alas.)

I must find my copy of How Buildings Work :slightly_smiling_face:

A great book!

Also check out Brand’s _The Clock of the Long Now_

Thanks, Jorge!

Governance is becoming critical for benefits to society with information environments and creating safe information environments

I want to say another huge thank you for your time and wisdom Jorge.

First on the agenda is a HUGE thanks to @justindavis for his time today

I literally solicited him by cold emailing and he was a legend. Took about 2 emails to lock this down. Quickest ever.

So thanks Justin, for being such a star

:boom:

Here’s the formal introduction:
Justin Davis is a senior user experience designer, and co-founder of First Chair Partners, a design and research collective working to help companies solve some of their most difficult design problems.

He is based in Tampa, FL, and has worked with companies like Google, Coca-Cola and Metlife to help deliver interesting and engaging experiences to their customers. With nearly 20 years experience in technology and design, Justin brings a wealth of experience from both the design and technical sides. He also loves boats and bourbon.

Read his blog at http://justindavis.co.

@justindavis What are your thoughts on conversational UI?

Yay, bourbon!

Woohoo! Thanks Hawk, appreciate the intro!

let me start with a little context, and we’ll dive into some questions here shortly

I found Justin when I stumbled on this talk he did: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn6ezjkEuWk

And now I’ll let him give you an intro to the topic

Impressive! Look forward to picking your brain Justin

:+1:

The floor is yours Justin!

thanks!

So, we’re going to have a conversation about…conversations. I’ll get that kicked off with a little context.

As web folks, you’re all probably somewhat familiar with the request/response model. A user makes a request to a server, the server responds. Pretty straightforward interaction.

The other place where that happens is when we talk to people in real life – when we have a conversation, it’s the same model. We say something, someone responds, then we respond, and so on.

The great thing about conversations in real life is that they’re usually super engaging, we can often get lost in conversation and time flies by. That’s a state called “flow” that ‎Mihaly Csikszentmihályi wrote about in a book by the same name.

Getting in a flow state is desirable, because it means we’re super focused on the task at hand, engrossed, and enjoyment of the activity tends to increase with that state.

Well, if that’s the case with person-to-person conversations, and we think that interactions online follow the same kind of model, then it stands that there are things we can learn from real life conversation that we can apply to how we design those moments in our products.

So, what are the things we can learn?

First, we know that good conversations have a great beginning. This beginning is the “engagement” piece, where we first start chatting with someone. First impressions count when chatting with people in real life (you know quickly if you don’t want to talk with someone long term), and they similarly count in our product experiences.

When you chat with someone in real life, they don’t ask you for your name, email address, password and agreement to the terms and conditions, do they? No!! You just jump into conversation.

If that’s true, then it stands that our online interactions should follow suit. Instead of the first moment of interaction being a formal authentication into the conversation, how about just starting to talk?

If you have a product where someone writes blog posts, why not just let them get started writing, then once they’re finished, ask them to provide a name and email address so you can notify them of replies? By doing something like that, you’ve let them start “talking” to you immediately, instead of forcing them through some arcane setup, just to see if they want to chat with you.

Also, other ways of helping people get into the conversation easier are by paying close attention to the “zero state”. When you start chatting with some friends, and you walk in mid-conversation, there’s often someone who’ll say “Hey, we’re chatting about X”. That gets you “onboarded” into the conversation so you can participate.

Similarly, we can acknowledge that when people come into our products for the first time, we need to get them up to speed on what we’ll be talking about. We usually have terminology and wayfinding that we need to establish, and building that into a zero state or initial walkthrough is a great way to get people up to speed.

One we’re chatting in real life, there’s a period of time where we’re engaged in the conversation. We’re engaged because the people chatting (usually) follow a set of social rules that keeps the conversation on track. They don’t interrupt (well, most people don’t), they pay attention, and they’re polite.

We can do the same thing as our products are talking to our users.

Remember, when people are using your product, they’re not interacting with an app or a site. They’re interacting with YOU, mediated by an app or a site. If you keep that in mind, you’ll think more carefully about how to handle certain interactions. A few examples:

But what if he’s a Nigerian prince?? :wink:

– Ensure you’re providing really quick and clear feedback. When someone performs an action, make sure you’re telling them what to expect next, or that you’re working on a response. In a real conversation, we don’t just stare blankly as we think about how to respond, we fill that space with “loading indicators” like ums, uhs and other verbal flotsam.

– Use natural language! If you asked someone for a password to a secret club in real life, and they said “Oreo”, you wouldn’t say “Sorry, passwords need to be 6 or more characters with two special characters, but not comma, asterisk or dollar sign. Try again”. You’d say “Oh, that’s a bit short and easy to guess. Try something harder perhaps”. Natural language is a huge step toward better conversations with your users.

has joined #ask-the-uxperts

– Keep on topic. When you’re in a real conversation, you don’t skip around topics recklessly. The same should go for online interactions. Remember where someone left off last time they were using your product, and start back there. Acknowledge the time that’s passed between then and now (“Great to see you again! There’s some stuff to catch up on!”). Remember that in a user’s mind, it’s a single narrative over a period of time. Do what you can to help preserve that from session to session.

Finally – and I’ll stop yammering on so we can get to questions – remember that conversations eventually end, and that’s a good thing. We can’t talk to a group of people forever, and people can’t spend all day on your product. Think carefully about how people reengage – what conversation starters can you deliver to them later, that gets them back in the conversation? These need to relevant and personalized, so that like talking to an old friend, it feels like picking up where you left off.

In short, we can learn a lot from how we talk to people in real life, and the dynamics of those conversations, that can help us think about how we design those moments into our products. For many people, talking to real life people is a far more enjoyable experience than using some dumb product. The closer we can make the conversations between our products and our users like those in real life, the closer we’ll get to bridging that gap.

nowwwwww, questions and …wait for it….conversation :slightly_smiling_face:

Haha – questions are GO!

I’m interested in what happens to trust where you put initial sign-up/auth at the back of an action, e.g. blogging. Do people exhibit trust issues with this kind of interaction IYE?

so, @alex.lee, re: conversational UI, I’m a big fan. Can you tell me more specifically what you’re curious about?

@justindavis I’ve been working on chatbots lately and trying to integrate it into user engagement flow in new visitors to a website to answer FAQs

i think they’re a great tool, but obviously they have to be executed on very well to work. It’s a fine line between a real conversation, and conversation-esque, right? :slightly_smiling_face:

I think you have to work carefully on how to handle responses and the conversation flow, to ensure things feel as natural as possible

If you’re shite at small talk, can you still be good at conversational interaction design? Asking for a friend. :grin:

Yes, I’m interested in UX at the intersection of AI and natural conversations, without coming across fake and insincere

interacting with bots is still a bit of the wild west, but I think it’s something that’s going to be a key part of product interactions moving forward

@alaa pinned a message to this channel.

I worry about setting false expectations and eroding trust

@jakkii on the issue of putting signup at the back of a process, in my experience, I haven’t seen many trust issues. I think the key there is setting expectations – if it comes across as a bait and switch (“Start now, no accounts needed”), and you hit them up randomly, it can definitely lead to that

but, I think that if you set up expectations correctly (“Get started, we’ll worry about accounts later”, etc) it works quite well

@alex.lee, yeah, I think like @jakkii’s question, it’s some about setting expectations

“I’m <name of bot>, I can help you with some basic questions, and if I don’t know the answer, I’ll get back with you”

dumping out those things to manual support queues

and @jakkii, the good news is, even introverts can do this well :slightly_smiling_face:

I was thinking about forms and surveys – most don’t follow a conversation format but there’s no reason why they can’t

forms are a PERFECT example where this goes wrong

we just jam a bunch of fields in front of a user, because the database is structured that way, and we don’t think about the bridge between human and computer

unfolding forms or surveys over time, with smart branching logic, can make arduous tasks feel much more conversational

Turbotax proved this really well

by getting people to go through hours of tax prep, without absolutely hating themselves

a small miracle, to say the least :stuck_out_tongue:

@justindavis are there any good / bad examples to show for conversational UI?

there are definitely a bunch of examples @amirasallam. I wish I had some screenshots here handy, I’ll try to dig some up. Turbotax is an example of it done well, and there are some support interfaces that are doing it pretty well. TBH, some phone trees with voice recognition also do it well.

Tho, some also do it terribly :stuck_out_tongue:

Any form services or tools you recommend for creating conversational forms?

I like typeform.

forms are a basic example – errors messages like “Invalid email format” are bad conversational devices, right? But saying something like “Oh, that doesn’t quite look like an email address” is a much better way of speaking

And outgrow’s survey tool

so much of this is in the microinteractions like that

typeform is certainly well done

i’m a big fan of it

It just feels like a conversation

ding ding ding!

Ha!

How do you strike a good balance between natural conversation (which obviously takes a lot of room and adds load) and CTAs

have you worked with global apps where “conversational” can vary?

Sometimes you just want to ‘get through the process’ rather than be walked through a process with a friend

@alex.lee, good question. I think you can have a succinct conversation, and keep away from too much chit chat. Good conversation isn’t always long – sometimes it’s short, friendly bursts

and it can be as simple as simply changing the existing copy to be more conversational, friendly

So be human. Don’t ramble

bingo, nailed it

That’s where I think Chatbots fail.

To chatty

hey now humans are great at being chatty too

@isha, also a good question. I haven’t had a chance to work on many things in cultures where social norms for conversation are very different, but like anything multicultural, it definitely bears paying attention to

that said

at our core, everyone is human

Cultural differences are hard

and speaking to people, and interacting with them like people – not machines – is a universally attractive thing

true…translation makes it a little harder to be conversational but I get what you are saying…

indeed, there are certainly some low-level challenges to deal with there

Yes, I’d imagine if you put too much colloquialism in front of someone for whom English is not their native language, it may be more challenging

one technique we use a lot is to sketch out “wireflows” of interactions, which lay out how the conversation will go, before we get into UI details

Do you have examples of apps that are conversational that aren’t very wizardy (like turbo tax AND typeform are super wizardy)

seeing the back and forth from a high level really helps to map that out

so, I actually think of Medium as quite conversational. It’s a different way of thinking about it – Medium is great at conversation, because when you go to write, it gets out of the way

So in the email password prompt, you might say “Hey, that password seems short. Can you think of something longer?” and have a tip box at the bottom with suggestions on uppercase, lowercase etc?

@justindavis have you had a time when product owners were resistant to using conversational UI? How do we get product owners to approve that :) ?

like a great conversationalist who listens, more than talks, Medium does the same thing

that’s another part of being good at conversation – is knowing when to let the other person speak

@alex.lee, you’ve got the right idea!

@amirasallam getting stakeholder buy-in can definitely be tough at times, ESPECIALLY in enterprise scenarios

because often, speaking more conversationally – at least in terms of tone and style – can come across as glib or overly informal

that said, good conversation can even happen with formal tone

Or of not getting past ‘legal’…

if you go to the hospital, they’ll still put you through a formal process to cover what they need, but they’ll do it in such a way (hopefully) that feels kind

so, you can strike that balance between being formal in language, but conversational in process

again, when you go to the hospital, instead of jamming a form in your face immediately, they’ll say “Hey Mr. Davis, we’re sorry you don’t feel well, we’ll take care of you. Please fill this out so we can get you on your way to a doctor”

so, formal – to a point – covering the legal issues that need to be covered, but still human

there are definitely “levels” to designing things with a more conversational interface. The low level, copy, and the higher level narrative that unfolds

We’re at the end of the queued questions, so if you’ve been sitting on one, now is the time!

When and how often might you go about iterating conversational flows for your UX when you’re designing such conversations?

Curious about your thoughts on text on buttons…

@alex.lee, do you mean in the design process itself?

@justindavis do you recommend books for this topic?

Yes

Me too!

so, in our design process, before we get to screen level details, we try to write out the narrative of the user, including the back and forth with the system

that’s in the initial design work

@justindavis, I get your point about being conversational, and heartily agree, and I think there needs to be a balance. We don’t want conversants guessing what the other one knows. In the case of the password rejection, isn’t it in the end more civil to state complexity requirements instead of saying the proposed password was simply and easily guessed?

@justindavis that’s a great suggestion. Like a storyboard but for conversational narratives only

only once we get those high level flows on paper feeling good, do we start to fill in the lower level details. So we work out the high level conversation details, and move into the lower level details

@alex.lee yup! It’s exactly a storyboard

Very interested in learning more and would appreciate it you elaborated on the initial design process where you write out the narrative of the user…and how you do it, and what you call it and who all are involved.

@isha, text on buttons – what are you curious about specifically?

As far as suggestions on conversational interactions that aren’t wizards, you can give Alexa a spin at https://echosim.io/. It’s entirely transactional; it seems hardly any context is maintained from question to question. Their API is here: https://developer.amazon.com/public/solutions/alexa/alexa-skills-kit/docs/alexa-skills-kit-voice-design-best-practices

@amirasallam re: books, I really like Designing the Obvious by Robert Hoekman, Jr for helping with this kind of thinking

@justindavis the PMs in my company tend to focus on “save” vs “ok” vs “apply”….but then we are also a very global company and these translate differently…

@uxcourt certainly. Having good conversations is about being clear too :slightly_smiling_face:

of course, it brings up another question as to whether those strict requirements are a good idea to begin with, but that’s a whole other conversation… :stuck_out_tongue:

Would like some tips.. conversational UI seems great! I am thinking to use this narrative to design an app for patients with low literacy.. the app will help them fill out some health forms.

@isha, we use a combination of a few things. One, we write out actual narratives – paragraphs that describe how a user completes a task. We then take that and make storyboards of the interaction, iterating on it until it feels as conversational as possible

SHAMELESS plug, I wrote a blog post today talking a bit about that: http://justindavis.co/2017/04/11/how-to-onboard-a-product-designer/

@alaa low literacy is a FANTASTIC place to use this technique

shameless :slightly_smiling_face:

for a couple reasons

1. you can unfold an interaction over time, instead of all at once, which is easier for folks to digest who might have a harder time with density

2. you can use language that blurs the interface, so to speak, so it doesn’t require that they have prerequisite knowledge about technology to interact with the product

it’s amazing how easy it is for us to assume people know what we mean when we use certain terms

like “special characters”

which ones are special?

the “J” because my name starts with it?

:stuck_out_tongue:

J is certainly special

How would you evaluate programmatically translated copy when your team and available testers are only english speakers?

and, as always, in UX, it’s about knowing your audience

@lmacneil the bad news is, if you’re evaluating copy in a language other than your own (or one you have deep experience in), you probably have to find that resource somehow. I’ve had success in reaching out to folks – friends, other colleagues, etc. – to have them look at things for me to gut check how it sounds

so, you might have to get creative on that, but no way to really substitute someone who really groks that culture

:slightly_smiling_face:

@lmacneil can you outsource to a localization company and develop a relationship with one of their native speakers? Can you go to a local community college and lurk in the ESL classes and maybe entice an instructor to help? Also know that dialects are important; a Portuguese speaker will sound kind of foreign in Brazil, and a person from Barcelona might have no idea what a person from Merida MX is saying.

yup, those are great ideas @uxcourt

guerrilla techniques for translation :stuck_out_tongue:

@uxcourt awesome :smile: & @justindavis TY both for the advice

We have about 10 mins left… last chance to get your questions in :slightly_smiling_face:

We’ve tried doing this in a form for reporting cyber security incidents. Many people will be stressed or won’t know what the thing is called that has happened so we made a narrative component to it (second screen). There’s still lots to tweak / improve but it’s a great start. https://www.cert.govt.nz/businesses-and-individuals/report-an-issue/

ah, excellent, I love that example!

there are so many places – like government services – where this kind of approach is sorely needed

and TBH, so many mistakes can be prevented by this level of clarity

and mistakes cost money, so clarity, and approaching things from a more conversational stance, isn’t just a branding move, it’s an actual cost-savings move as well

in general, what if we’re supremely successful designing conversational interfaces? There’s an episode of Black Mirror (Be Right Back, Season 2), or the film Her that comes to mind as a potential negative outcome. I guess there’s Star Trek as a potential positive outcome. What can we as designers do to ensure our tools build towards that positive outcome instead of the dystopic one? Feel free to pass, because this is really a philosophy question.

@uxcourt ha! Thanks for the tough one. I haven’t seen Black Mirror or Her, but I’d say that dystopian outcomes are borne from dystopian intent

haha! intent vs impact

I think designers have an ethical responsibility to guide the process and not just be tools of the trade

at the end of the day, we still control the machines (so far, let’s talk again in a decade), so we can guide those interactions towards positive means

Black Mirror the whole show is a bit jarring, but gets me all fired up to do better work

gonna put that on my list to watch!

in both of those scripts, the humans developed emotional bonds with the machines, and the machines were incapable of fulfilling the expectations, leading to greater depression and isolation.

@danielle loving the form on this site you shared, btw. Really clever work.

but that’s still fiction and we’re a long way off from anything that believable.

@uxcourt wow, yeah, it’s probably coming at _some_ point, but hopefully we’re a bit far off :stuck_out_tongue:

This session has been amazing!! Any last questions before I cut Justin free to enjoy his evening?

thank you!

Any conversational tips for different platforms?

Also, feel free to connect on Twitter (@jwd2a) and we can keep chatting there!

Yes, this has been super helpful!

Thank you!

@alex.lee I think at a high level, platform differences come down to technical execution issues. If you start with a high-level narrative, and work that out, the platform differences end up being technical accommodations more than anything else

Thanks so much everyone

Big thanks to @justindavis for some really interesting insights

And thanks to @hawk once again

really appreciate y’all for coming out, this has been a blast!

Thanks SO much for your time, your energy and your wisdom today @justindavis

absolutely, honored to be a part of it!

You totally nailed it!

has joined #ask-the-uxperts

Now go – enjoy a gin and tonic with your wife.

Thank you!

Thanks @justindavis

Ha! You read my blog :stuck_out_tongue:

I did. :slightly_smiling_face:

I shared that one too because I love it

thanks y’all, hope to see y’all around again real soon! I’ll try to bang around this Slack team more often as well!

First up, a huge thanks for @feather for his time today. He’s a crazily busy man and I’m honoured to have him join us.

He’s a man that needs little introduction, but here goes anyway:

Derek Featherstone has been working as a web professional since 1999 and is an internationally known speaker and authority on accessibility and web design. He leads the team at Simply Accessible, based in Ottawa, Canada.

Derek always puts the user first and strives to make the web a better place by designing experiences that are easy to use for everyone, including people with disabilities. Derek’s ideal accessible experience combines engaging and rich content with brilliant design and technical development excellence. That user-centred focus sets the course for Simply Accessible, and—more importantly—their clients.

I’ve been lucky enough to see Derek speak, and I’m looking forward to learning from him today

@feather The floor is yours

Fantastic, thank you @hawk :slightly_smiling_face: Very happy to be here, and very happy to use this medium, as it has a lot of advantages

One of the advantages is it allows us to engage in a very different way than we might at a live event.

We use Slack for pretty much everything at work, and one of the things that we’ve been doing a bit more of recently is inviting clients in as single channel guests to participate with us there.

AND one of the benefits of that? We have been able to have real time conversations with clients that are Deaf.

Awesome

It was one of those moments where we as a team smacked ourselves in the head and kind of said “Oh, of course!”

And it helped us ask a really important question — related to today’s topic

When we say we work with everyone, what does “everyone” actually mean?

One of the foundations of the work we do is inclusion, and we need to ask regularly, what are we doing that is exclusive?

For many many years, we’ve seen solutions to accessibility problems that are focused on “how things work in a screen reader”

That’s okay — its pretty natural to want to work on those types of accessibility issues

But we’ve seen situations before where a focus on “how this thing works with a screen reader” really turned into “lets make this work with JAWS 14″

and we’ve seen other situations where it turned into “Lets make this work with a screen reader, regardless of what happened with other assistive technolgies”

And these were VERY well-meaning people that had a tremendous history of inclusion and accessibility

They had created an interface that worked extremely well for a screen reader

BUT

when someone using voice recognition (Dragon Naturally Speaking, for example) tried to use the exact same interface, it didn’t work properly

Another forms based interface worked perfectly with a screenreader. It performed exceptionally well in the usability testing we did.

For people that used a screenreader.

When we tested the same interface with people that had low vision — they were using a magnifier — it didn’t perform well at all. And the client said “But… but… it’s accessible! It passes all the checkpoints!”

And yet, it couldn’t be used.

When we talk about “Designing for Everyone” we very often mean “We are designing for the people that we can envision right now”

or “We are designing for people that are just like us”

or “We are designing for a fictitious ideal user”

That’s not everyone, but we’ve tricked ourselves into believing it is.

So we have to open the net a little bit wider… when we talk about diversity and inclusion, what is that conversation about?

When we’re talking about making sites and apps accessible, we can cast a lot wider than we have been.

We had an intern that was working with us, and their comment after about 3 hours was “You don’t have anyone working here that is under 30, or over 50”

We were mad. Because they pointed out what had already been staring us in the face.

Diversity and inclusion means a lot of things

Age, gender, nationality, culture, ethnicity, philosophy, experience…

and ability

and… and… and… likely a lot more than any of us can easily consider in a single sentence.

But all of that is where the question comes from. Which everyone do you mean?

If we truly mean everyone, we *need* to go wider, deeper, farther.

So, from a practical perspective, we need to make sure that things “work” for people that use any type of assistive technology.

Ok – who has questions?

Screen readers, voice recognition, magnifier, braile displays, switches…. and more

What are the top 3 mistakes that are made when it comes to accessibility?

@jacqui_dow5 Great question :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m going to answer it in two ways… first philosophically:

Are you suggesting that we test our sites against EVERY assistive technology? That can prove to be cost prohibitive for the smaller developer.

1. Thinking that you’re done. You never are. You’re always iterating and always getting better. Or at least should be :slightly_smiling_face:

As a lover of data-grounded personas I’m wondering how design tensions between different assistive technologies are tackled?

And now practically…

2. Forms. Difficult designs that don’t get translated well to code.
3. Focus. Making things that can’t be focused naturally is a big issue.

Can you expand on 3 please? Not sure I understand?

2. Cont’d: 1:1 relationships between a label and form field are easy. But when you get one label that maps to 3 form fields it gets tricky.

If we work in a11y, how can we know about all abilities and assistive tech types, to know that we’ve made the most inclusive experience? User research is great, if you’ve got oodles of users and cash and time, but some clients just want a compliance audit.

2. Cont’d: think of a phone number with 3 fields, but only one label

3. Cont’d: I say focus often now, because focus is something that impacts both traditional desktop AND touch screen devices

Do you feel like reducing the goals to WCAG 2.0, level AA or AAA accomplishes the concept of “everyone” or do you feel like there is room for improvement there?

3. cont’d: instead of saying “Keyboard” — it’s really more than that

its about how things work on a touch devices as well… and those are both often problems of Focus. In other words, actionable things need to be Focusable

What do you mean by focusable?

@r_saviano:

> Are you suggesting that we test our sites against EVERY assistive technology? That can prove to be cost prohibitive for the smaller developer.

No, definitely not against EVERY assistive technology. But, widening the net is important. We often don’t recommend you test with a screenreader anyway and work towards the standards and best practices. As an example, you don’t need a screen reader to tell you about heading structure.

Thank you :slightly_smiling_face:

@r_saviano I DO however, recommend that at some point you try something else outside of a screen reader. You then catch principles that you need to understand quickly and incorporate that into your work

@r_saviano So NOT overkill on testing everything to the max. But thinking about other scenarios, yes.

I work on a web application, and want to do an accessibility review, but am unsure where to start. I’ve ran it through WAVE, but don’t really know what to do next. Do you have any tips for this?

Hold fire on your questions for a few minutes all. We have quite a queue building up.

@dean:

> When we talk about Accessibility, it is primarily developers that are talking about the technical challenges, automatic testing, ARIA, and inclusive code snippets… aside from the basics (eg. color contrast / font size / responsiveness), where do you see designers / UXers role fitting into this?

That’s a BIG question. To me the designers most import role is making sure that accessibility and inclusion is incorporated in the vision of the [thing that you’re creating] from the beginning, and then making sure that lives on through the process.

@dean: there’s a LOT that designers/UXers can do to ensure that accessibility lives in the process, not just in code.

A :question: for you @feather – we had a WCAG content audit recently and are working on the fixes. How might teams better go about inclusive design up-front (and throughout) project life-cycle rather than have the bigger job of repair work in hindsight?

Sorry, just saw this

@irith:

> As a lover of data-grounded personas I’m wondering how design tensions between different assistive technologies are tackled?

I’d love for you to tell me more about that… I’ll start with this though, on the assumption (perhaps faulty) that you mean designing something that is good for one group, but not another. We tend to ensure two things that help:

1. We include different accessibility needs in personas from the start so that the needs are expressed from the beginning.
2. We do usability testing with people that have different types of disabilities. That helps us provide the data we need to be able to make the best decisions. We let performance decide what our next iteration is, and which direction we ultimately take next.

@allyraven:

> If we work in a11y, how can we know about all abilities and assistive tech types, to know that we’ve made the most inclusive experience? User research is great, if you’ve got oodles of users and cash and time, but some clients just want a compliance audit.

Part of the solution, I think, is expectation setting up front — making it clear that the ultimate decision maker about whether or not something is accessible is whether or not people can use it, not if it is “compliant”

@allyraven: Another part of the solution is finding ways that don’t require oodles of users and cash and time :slightly_smiling_face:

True, but without much usability testing, are you expecting me to be an expert in screen reader, dragon, switch devices, eye tracking software, blow devices, etc?

@allyraven: Of course — oodles is a relative term, so we tend to try and find out what the resources are and then use that to include something more than we would have otherwise. There’s always a way to sneak in a little more that helps you grow such that you’ll have that better understanding

@allyraven: So what I’d expect is that you’re not an expert in all of them. But I’d expect you to challenge yourself a little, and incorporate just a little bit more. If you don’t know much about voice recognition, set a goal that in the next 3 months, you’re going to spend a bit of time using Dragon to get at least a little more familiar. Iterations FTW. Hope that makes sense?

Oodles – my favourite unit of measurement.

Potentially stupid question: where could I find a list of all these standards, and perhaps compare them?

No questions are stupid :slightly_smiling_face:

@feather: I guess I was thinking of how qual data can produce a number of personas, but we often only select a small number of ‘design personas’ to design for. I guess I was assuming there might be strong competing requirements between different assistive needs… and how you prioritise across those. (Just me guessing…)

@aleonardpalmer

> Do you feel like reducing the goals to WCAG 2.0, level AA or AAA accomplishes the concept of “everyone” or do you feel like there is room for improvement there?

It’s a great start – WCAG is built on years of other people’s experiences. They’re a fantastic starting point. But what I would love to happen is a bit more testing with real people. Even lightweight stuff with real people will help… its amazing the insights that you can get from a 1 hour session with someone using assistive technology, all for the cost of somewhere between “cup of coffee” and “a decent meal”

@jacqui_dow5:

> I work on a web application, and want to do an accessibility review, but am unsure where to start. I’ve ran it through WAVE, but don’t really know what to do next. Do you have any tips for this?

Web apps are potentially tricky… is it a single page app with lots of ajaxy things, or is it more traditional server-refreshy? Either way, one great way to start… run through with someone with a disability trying to complete typical tasks on that app. See how the results stack up to what you found through WAVE. Compare. Contrast. Then prioritize the things you found and start to address them.

It’s a huge web app!

@jacqui_dow5: it sounds like it might be more complex than that, but feel free to reach out if you want to talk more about “what next”

@feather I’m about to start a graduate program for HCI – Human Computer Interaction – I want to focus on accessibility- Do you feel there is a big market for accessibility experts? If not, how can we show people how important this is?

we have a few people lined up for usability testing as we have our own lab, they contacted us as they were struggling with some parts and were using assistive technologies

The other side to it is, we use Bootstrap and I wonder how much this is affecting the accessibility of the application?

@vernon:

> we had a WCAG content audit recently and are working on the fixes. How might teams better go about inclusive design up-front (and throughout) project life-cycle rather than have the bigger job of repair work in hindsight?

It’s all about early and often, right? We need to ensure inclusion from the start. That means a lot of things, but the biggest difference maker to me is getting designers to think differently. Getting them to understand what kinds of challenges people with disabilities might face is key. That is best accomplished by them working with people with disabilities from the beginning of their design process.

@vernon Even just talking with people with different disabilities will help. Remember – it’d be more than they were doing before :slightly_smiling_face:

@vernon: so the plan needs to be testing assumptions, building things, learning how they work, and then iterating.

@vernon: let me know if that helps and feel free to ping me… we have some resources that may help!

How/where do you recruit users for testing? Particularly those with less visible or obvious abilities?

@shuvy:

> Potentially stupid question: where could I find a list of all these standards, and perhaps compare them?

WCAG 2.0: https://www.w3.org/TR/WCAG20/

Start there :slightly_smiling_face:

its very dense, but if you’re looking for the standard, that’s where it is

@lizd:

> I’m about to start a graduate program for HCI – Human Computer Interaction – I want to focus on disability – Do you feel there is a big market for accessibility experts? If not, how can we show people how important this is?

YES I do feel there is a big market. Of course, that depends on how we both define big, but, yes, we see no sign of things going away, and there is a continuing growth interest. So I’d say yes, definitely a big market.

@lizd There are very few people that specialize in this area, so I think its a great idea!

Do you have any tips/tricks for implementing accessibility into Angular applications? (question from our dev team)

Great to know! I am physically disabled, and hope to bring a new perspective to it as well.

My question is about the balance between usability and compliance. So as a UX designer my goal is to design the most usable design I can but sometimes compliance means I have to sacrifice usability for our users with disabilities because of WCAG or 508. For example I was forced to add a skip nav but the page was simple enough that the skip nav added more steps than would have been there without it. I work for a government agency so compliance is not a choice. But I felt I could have given our disabled users a better experience than what compliance was forcing me to do.

Sorry that was long.

Thanks guys – no more qs now please. We have enough to fill the last 5 mins!

@allyraven:

> How/where do you recruit users for testing? Particularly those with less visible or obvious abilities?

We work with a lot of different organizations… international, national, and local advocacy groups. We’ve built up a panel of several hundred people that we get involved in our usability testing for client work. Many are recruited through twitter, but also our relationships with those advocacy groups. Local colleges and universities are also GREAT sources.

@jacqui_dow5:

> Do you have any tips/tricks for implementing accessibility into Angular applications? (question from our dev team)

Definitely. We’ve got a big writeup at http://sateach.es/spangular and have some more updates coming soon!

awesome, thanks, I’ll send that over to them!

@josh3cs:

> My question is about the balance between usability and compliance. So as a UX designer my goal is to design the most usable design I can but sometimes compliance means I have to sacrifice usability for our users with disabilities because of WCAG or 508. For example I was forced to add a skip nav but the page was simple enough that the skip nav added more steps than would have been there without it. I work for a government agency so compliance is not a choice. But I felt I could have given our disabled users a better experience than what compliance was forcing me to do.

Oh, that.

I’ll generally choose actual results with real people over “compliance” when it comes to conflict like that.

I don’t think I can do that

@josh3cs: it always depends on context, so there’s lots I can’t necessarily answer here without seeing the situation. However… things like conforming with WCAG and doing things the way the organization says it has to be are different

And I’m fairly sure you could argue the “no skip link” version of it is still compliant.

Feel free to ping me if you want to dig in a little more… you have to remember to ask though. If you’re going to get in a debate about accessibility, do you want to spend your political currency on that particular issue?

And on that note, it’s the end of the hour…!

Massive thanks again to Derek for both his time, and his knowledge.

Nice work on keeping up with the questions too!

And of course, thanks to the rest of you for joining us today

Welcome everyone – thanks for joining me and @andyvitale today.

And an even bigger thanks to Andy, for giving us your time

I’ll start by introducing @andyvitale.

Andy Vitale is a UX Design Principal at 3M, where he is focused on translating human insights into actionable experiences that improve the healthcare industry.

Andy is responsible for leading a team that creates immersive, emotional experiences for 3M Health Care’s enterprise solutions that seamlessly integrate digital and physical workflows for patients, payers and providers.

Aside from his primary role at 3M, Andy is an adjunct professor for Kent State University’s User Experience Design graduate degree program and often speaks at conferences and events.

Morning all :slightly_smiling_face:

I’m really pumped about today’s session because it fits in perfectly with our theme for the month, which is culture and stakeholders. So Andy, over to you for an intro to the topic today.

:wave: Hi everyone.

Thanks for joining us today

One of the most important things I have been seeing throughout design, is the importance on solving things that may not be traditional design problems with design

One of the biggest things that impact us as designers is culture. Particularly company culture.

I work for 3M’s Health Care Business Group

3M is a 100+ year old company with a historied tradition in innovation through science

When I started on the team I was UX designer #2

Now we’re at about 15

When we think about design culture within an organization, is it where we expect it to be?

Or are decisions still being made without design?

Is design being brought in at the last minute?

Do the majority of projects get buy-in from the organization when they are started in non-design functions?

Are outside vendors and agencies often championed as experts more than the internal team who is just as capable?

Does it seem like the UX team is the only advocate for the user, and the business thinks that they can still just put out a product and people will just use/buy it?

Do any of these sound familiar to you folks?

YES

This is all hitting close to home for me.

yeh 100%

Oh yes :slightly_smiling_face:
> Are outside vendors and agencies often championed as experts more than the internal team who is just as capable?

So for my team, how do we come into a company that is well regarded, well respected & stands on a century plus foundation of innovation?

How do we break into a matrix of established technical, scientific, mktg & business teams with robust agendas to make impact and money?

At 3M less than 1/100th of 1% of employees are UX designers

How can someone like us make a difference in enterprise, whether in house like me or for a client? Being the cool designer is not enough to influence people.

[You’re welcome to jump in with questions at any stage ]

My questions are the ones @andyvitale has already posed! …. eagerly awaiting the answers… :grimacing:

Good UX and candy!

I see a few people typing so I am going to give them a chance before I talk about some of the ways to solve this

Can you tell us how you addressed all of those wonderful questions posed in your intro?

@cystinosis Candy helps.

Good UX for us are pretty much table stakes. It is expected for us to do a great job.

‘Taking them on the journey ‘ …..

how do we show that we are here to help and not to take over their jobs – some stakeholders are territorial :stuck_out_tongue_closed_eyes:

So the best way to focus on design culture is to do what we do best, treat it like a design problem.

How do you transform your product team to being design-led rather than PM-led or marketing/sales-led?

We’re all familiar with the design process in one variation or another but to align on terminology. There are a few steps

^ that

How do you imbed a culture of UX in and organisation which arguably hasn’t jumped on board with UX being a ‘thing’?

I like to think of UX design as a team sport

How did you gain access to people in position to make the culture shift and how did you communicate the value of UX?

(yeah – in 2017 !!)

@andyvitale What kind of early wins can you get with UX without executive support? I’m curious how you got things going to the point where you could even show wins.

So the best way to tackle stakeholders who are territorial, and what answers all of the questions so far is to start with the discovery phase

What is the problem – in this case it’s culture

What are the goals of the organization? The customer? Each stakeholder has a different agenda. How do we align them?

How do you handle stakeholders who keep saying they will get you answers to questions like – who is the decision maker? And never do?

How do you convince key stakeholders that the research phase is important – important enough to get budget to bring designers to users, important enough to give it time, and important enough to require it before something goes from a “feature request” to the backlog?

Peter Merholz said “The experience IS the product, and
the only thing users care about.”

that is a good foundation to gain alignment on

I see the same problem in my organisation, the marketing, or steerco board take control and hear on their on feelings and not the facts, the tests, the designs. Its kinda hard to teach them, that there a “proofen” ways of optimisation…

So @laurelwn that is tricky

You have to start doing things without them, let them be the holdup

We can’t wait for people to email us information, we have to make our most informed guess and use that to bring to the table as a talking point

But doesn’t that mess up the design sprint process?

Sometimes you have to start somewhere before the design sprints kick off

So let’s get back on track with culture and evolving design culture and then I will get to some of the other individual questions, it’s a process to get there.

Still in the discover phase – Look to companies you admire. See who else has a firm grasp on design culture & maturity. How do they do things?

This is about treating culture like a design problem, this will help you get the seat at the table and will lead to everything else we are wanting to solve

Listen to people within your company. Understand their role & perspective on users. Identify their needs for design

Observe how users & design play a role in products, and where & when they are engaged. Are there opportunities to better involve both in the process?

@andyvitale One challenge we have with this is really understanding how other companies are doing these things – unless they have it publicized, we never know, and it’s hard to find that info. Do you have suggestions or resources for this?

Empathize with others who work with design. Although the business may not understand design decisions, designers don’t always take the time to understand the business constraints and strategies before starting to problem solve. Try to understand how design goals can better integrate with marketing, technical, lab, business goals.

Although UX design is key to both strategy and success, we have to realize that we are not the sole provider of either of those

Here’s something to really understand. UX is not the center of the corporate universe.

As we start to define our ideal state, share your strategies with other members of your organization to gain diverse perspectives from cross-functional colleagues. Embracing transparency and inclusion will strengthen your strategy and help deliver a stronger, more aligned vision.

Create a need that focuses more on solving user problems and improving outcomes rather than providing features.

UX isn’t done in a vacuum. You have to have access to people of all skill sets (developers, SME’s, marketers, scientists, etc.). You will spending a lot of time together solving problems and sharing insights. Build trust with your colleagues and inspire them to focus on providing the optimal experience for your users.

But at some point people are tired of hearing designers talk about design.

Leave the UX/design lingo behind – clearly communicate solutions to the rest of the team in words they understand. The business mgr is worried about profits, the marketing mgr about brand and experience – we can’t confuse them with design speak.

There is a trick to influencing those around you to think like you do.

It’s called DOING THE WORK.

You have to do the work. Getting a jump start on the work and showing progress can influence so many conversations as well as clearly communicate what is still unknown. By driving with design you are demonstrating accountability and this is a great example to set when trying to influence culture.

Things like improving ease of use and reducing errors should be a given. That’s what they hired us to do. When we do that, it’s nothing they didn’t expect.

So here’s where we start to move the needle

In the beginning you have to work on projects where you bring the most value. You can’t work on every project or create solutions that are everything to everyone. Understand where you can make an impact and start there.

Designers are natural storytellers, whether with words or designs. Offer to help stakeholders visualize some of their objectives – this is a great way to gain their trust and build a relationship with them. Before you know it they will be sharing your story, which you influenced, at all of their meetings. Word of mouth is a powerful thing.

You put in a lot of effort and the project was successful. Invite others to celebrate with you – everybody loves a winner. Share your case study with as many people as possible – your wins will work their way up the ladder. Let executives communicate your wins, people will line up to work with you.

But sometimes all of that may not even work

What do we do?

Anyone?

I’m totally guilty of beating everyone over the head with design speak without having much actual work to show for it.

We all are @jenniferlong but we have to be better

When all else fails and we need to figure out what to do next. Sometimes you have to bring your own seat to the table.

Often times we would just show up to meetings without an invite.

But you have to be careful

You have to make sure you add value to the meetings or not to push too hard before you’ve established you place otherwise you won’t be invited back. Don’t give off the impression that you want to tell them how to run their business but you don’t want to understand how the business runs.

Now this goes to some of the earlier questions you asked

How can we clearly demonstrate that this way of thinking is beneficial to the organization?

How can we measure the impact of UX to the user and the business?

It’s not that we want to justify our value, but more that as designers we are curious about our outcomes.

Before we do that, there is one thing we really need to understand.

STAKEHOLDERS UNDERSTAND DOLLARS

Outcomes that are clearly easy to measure are black and white.

Figures like sales, revenue and ROI are really easy to measure because they have a specific dollar amount tied to them. Compare that to a previous number and call it a day.

I remember a time when analytics weren’t readily available, now we can measure shit we never even knew existed.

Things you never even knew existed are being tracked & because of this, we can measure and tie a dollar amount to them.

@andyvitale What technique do you use to help them visualize their objectives?

What about productivity

There are a many factors that affect productivity. From time to complete a task, to reducing the steps in the workflow to complete a task, or just reducing the amount of errors users have.

We worked on a project where people were doing medical coding for billing.

Earlier @laurelwn posed a good question about no one really wanting to make the decisions which need to be made. Can you expand on that?
> How do you handle stakeholders who keep saying they will get you answers to questions like – who is the decision maker? And never do?

We increased their productivity by 15 cases per hour.

That’s 100 more a day.

Now I’m not great at math off the top of my head but I know that equates to a lot of money.

Sure @chels and @laurelwn

Meet with them indiviually, figure out what their goals and expected outcomes are

All of them

Then put something together – we’re designers – we are way better at telling stories than they are

Then share it with them all in the same room, and they will agree with what you are showing.

That will start to build alignment and allow you to influence the decisions for them

Someone has to take charge.

Why not us?

Here’s another question to you guys

for showing how to measure our impact

Are there training costs associated with your product?

Anyone?

Yup

Simple answer to that – If you make it easier to use, it will require less training.

What about development costs?

Think about Excel.

I’m a designer, if I am lucky I use 5% of Excel

That means 95% of the features aren’t important to me

Let’s eliminate these unnecessary or marginal features.

Find your 5%, or 25% – whatever that % is and focus on that. This will free up the time & money of resources and allow them to work on improving the core features and finding new features that add value.

Why do we constantly put in time to update areas of our site, or pieces of our software that nobody uses? It’s stupid.

But what about things that aren’t so black and white?

We may have to do a little designer math.

User feedback is a nice little gray area.

Surveys, SUS Scores, Loyalty & Customer Satisfaction are all extremely difficult to measure

but not impossible

If people love your product, they are likely to recommend it to colleagues.

This can lead to new customers which can be tracked & tied to a $ amount.

But getting new customers is easier than retaining existing ones. So figure out your customer retention rates and compare that with your cost per acquisition on new ones. If you need help, I imagine Eugene in accounting can tie a $ amount to these figures. Take him to lunch and he will help you with all of the numbers.

Has anyone here ever killed a project?

Nobody wants to see products die but sometimes when you can stop the bleeding you deserve to be rewarded.

Sometimes the market isn’t ready for your big idea.

Sometimes companies make the wrong decision.

Sometimes your idea wasn’t as good as you thought it was.

@andyvitale I think you intended it’s easier to keep existing customers than getting new ones.

Good catch @chadc

I’m trying to keep up with all of the questions I am getting directly

Sometimes your execution flat out sucked.

Not yours @chadc

haha

Knowing when to kill a project and having the guts to do so allows you to reallocate those resources working on that product to something else that has a chance of actually succeeding.

We all know this but…

Chances are, if you are involving users to validate your solutions before launching them, you have gotten used to modifying your solutions. The earlier you make these changes, the less expensive they are. Changing wireframes is less complex than changing designs, which is less expensive than changing code, which is still considerable less expensive than changing something in production and scrambling to fix it after launch.

it goes even a step deeper with healthcare where we have to try to avoid preventable readmissions, complications, etc – which all have financial impact

So, let’s say this all goes well and everyone loves you and wants to work with you. Let’s say this helps get a seat at the table. Now what???

Don’t celebrate.

Well maybe a few nights of drinking but after that…

You’ve been preaching about iterating and how things can always be made better. And your designer ego isn’t satisfied with just having a seat. We’re trying to change the culture, and in order to do this, you have to keep the seat and continue to provide value.

Now that everyone’s eyes are on you, you can’t become complacent or stagnant.

People talk a lot about failing fast and I hate that.

Never fail.

It’s OK to make mistakes and have setbacks

but you have to learn from them and improve

Inspire this continuous learning and knowledge sharing, not only as individuals but as an organization. Learn from your mistakes. Make each experience an opportunity to learn.

Someone asked earlier about research

Here’s a good question

How do you know how users feel about your product?

NPS scores, User testing ?

ASK THEM

How do we know what technical limitations you have on a product?

ASK THE TECHNICAL TEAM

They tell you.

Bring together users & stakeholders from all competencies to work towards a common goal. This isn’t going to happen by itself.

Exactly @cystinosis

Expose the disconnect in how the business and users interpret each other’s goals. Identify the gap between the two and build solutions together to bridge that gap.

But how do we really start to make the cultural shift?

It’s another little trick.

Your have your process and the business has theirs. While each process may work well independently, when you integrate your process into theirs, it becomes part of THE process.

Like I mentioned earlier, people get tired of hearing designers preaching about design. You need allies and advocates who aren’t designers.

When you’ve convinced stakeholders in mfg, eng, mktg & the lab about how integral you are to success and innovation, and you have executives sharing your work, you truly have influence.

When things like quality and function become expected results and the organizational lens focuses more on the emotional connections and social impact of your product you are redefining holistic values.

So what does it success look like?

Keep in mind, even for us, this is a process and we are making progress. We know what our end goal is, but we are still striving to get there.

For us, our team has grown.

When I get lunch now, I feel like I have a squad of people.

Our process is more defined, we have gained experience and have been asked to be on more projects.

What else does a cultural win look like?

Leadership advocates for UX design at the highest of levels, while everyone on the tactical level understands the importance of trying to provide the best possible experience for your customers and they all want to work with you.

I think being asked to be on more project is a great measure of success for a UX team.

There is no longer a need to translate design language or business acronyms for everyone.
 There is one common vocabulary within the organization. Everyone is on the same page, speaking the same language.

Sharing the same goals

Hell yeah it is @dan_naumann

Projects are being prioritized by the value they provide to the customers, with an emphasis on the overall experience. You are playing a part in that prioritization based upon the value you helped redefine.

At 3M our Chief Design Officer, Eric Quint, often tells us that sometimes you have to take a step back and look at the big picture to really see how far you have come.

So what really is a Culture of Experience?

You’ve help build a team of world-class talent. A team that is empowered. The best team you’ve ever been a part of.

You’ve got an environment that is conducive to being successful. A state of the art space that enables you to do your best work, and all of the tools you need to do so.

You are working on projects you’ve always dreamed of working on and you are making a difference. You are improving lives every day.

You’ve influenced the organization to focus on creating the best possible experience for all of your customers across all touchpoints.

But culture is funny.

You can’t force it or it won’t work. You have to cultivate it.

If you put in the work, build the relationships, foster collaboration

and fight together for the greater good

the culture piece will just come together organically

Lead by example. Strive to make the tough decisions. Have the uncomfortable conversations.

Influence others by your work ethic

and most importantly by being accountable

Accountability is contagious.

That’s the environment I want to work in.

Help the business solve their customers problems and bring value to those who we want to use our products

We’re almost out of time but I want to get to everyones questions

so if I haven’t answered anything please ask again

and if you want to ask more questions later, I’m happy to answer them in a blog post

It looks like we might have covered everything off for now!

Nice!

What an awesome session Andy

Thanks for sharing Andy

Thanks again for giving us your time and thoughts today – super valuable and much appreciated

Excellent insights, Andy. Thanks very much for sharing with the UX Mastery community. :slightly_smiling_face:

A reminder that if you have follow-ups you can post here and I’ll follow up with Andy http://community.uxmastery.com/t/designing-a-culture-of-experience/3025/1

OK, let’s get rolling

A quick overview for those of you that are new to these sessions

First up, I’ll introduce @amandastockwell who will in turn introduce the subject

Then I’ll throw it open to you for questions

If things get busy, I’ll queue questions in another channel for Amanda, so don’t worry – we’ll get to you

And I’ll post a full transcript up on http://uxmastery.com tomorrow

If you want to keep the conversation going afterwards (or need other support), join us at http://community.uxmastery.com

So… first up, a huge thanks to you for your time today Amanda – we’re fortunate to have you back for a second time!

Thanks so much for having me!

And thanks everyone who joined! Hello from the US

Hi from Vancouver

For the formal intro:
Amanda is President of Stockwell Strategy, a UX research practice focused on lean research methods and integrating user knowledge with business goals to create holistic product strategies for businesses large and small.

Hi from Melbourne :smile:

@hawk a picture frame, same pantry items and lost some water from the toilet cistern. Could’ve been worse!

She has spent most of the last decade focused on finding innovative ways to understand end users and embed that knowledge into overall process. She’s lead teams that provide research, design, and UX strategy services and frequently writes and speaks about her experience.

You can find her on Twitter at @MandaLaceyS or on our forums

I asked her to join us today to talk strategy, because it’s a topic that can be pretty confusing when it comes to UX

People often ask us how they should go about ‘putting together a UX strategy’ but I’m not convinced that such a thing exists

So Amanda is here to help us unpack that, and talk about how UX and product strategy inform each other

So @amandastockwell – over to you for a better intro to the topic than mine :wink:

Ha alright, thanks @hawk and all! To begin, I’d actually like to take a step WAY back and define what I mean when I say UX

Some people think that means wireframes or IA structures or visuals

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But when I say UX, I mean every experience that a person has interacting with a company/brand/service

From the first time they hear an ad about it to the first time they visit a website to interactions they have with staff if they return something

So in my mind, in order to help design for a great experience, you have to understand all varying goals the people you’re serving have at different points in time and how to best serve them

@hawk @bec7 it’s sunny in Canberra but that pollen is killing me! Haha

So would you consider UX and CX one in the same?

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yes and no. I think they are inextricably linked

So is UX only limited to Users of the product / service or even the internal stakeholders, employees of the organisation?

People traditionally think of CX as the portion of interactions that have to do with service interactions, like if someone helps you at a physical store, or if you need to call with an issue

and I think part of having a great overall experience means that those experiences need to be good

but I think CX is defined too narrowly to encompass all of what I mean by UX

Also to be fair – “user” is really open to interpretation. I’ve recently been joking that I’m going to say HX – human experience

any single person who interacts

“users” typically means the people who use your product or service but I think when I’m talking about creating a good experience, I don’t stop there

agree on the HX thing, that’s what I’ve been saying! I try to avoid this discussion around definitions of UX vs CX completely :slightly_smiling_face:

I also think about the people who will be providing service, setting things up, etc.

ha glad I’m not the only one @philsmithson!

So in that case, even a CEO or an auditor of the company is UX focused resource/designer? I would not want to call a term ‘UX Designer’ no one can design User’s Experience one can only measure it.

sorry, can you clarify the question?

I *think* what you mean is should every single person be focused on creating a good experience

You meant UX is about everything that one experiences while interacting with a Co/brand/service so in that case even a CEO or anyone in the company is a designer?

So I wouldn’t say everyone is a designer, but I would say that creating a good experience should be the focus of everyone at a company – devs need to make sure things load quickly, customer support reps need to answer questions quickly, competently, and in a friendly way, sales people need to make sure they are reaching out to people in a meangingful way

UX is everyone’s job to some degree!

I would say everyone who is focused at creating a ‘good exp’ is a designer

Think about something like this – have you ever lost a bag while traveling and then thought, “gah, I HATE airline x”? Maybe the bag got lost because a baggage loader slacked off, or maybe it got lost because the tracking software was broken

Designer is not just the one who uses tools, they encompass larger role, being a strategist

I think we’re all designers to some extent, whether we’re creating an interface, providing a service or sending a report to the boss. We have to empathise with the person on the receiving end and make sure what we deliver matches (or surpasses…) their expectations.

do you care? I don’t. All I know is that my experience was bad

@philsmithson: :+1::skin-tone-3:

How does UX, CX, HX work in with service design?

I guess you could say everyone is a designer but I think that has messy implications. The baggage handler could “design” how well they pay attention but they may not have much say in crafting how the system works

So, CX is usually focused on interactions between paying customers and service providers (i.e. you call an airline to rebook a flight)

UX is typically thought of as how well the interface works when you go on to a website to book a flight

If they improvise on their task, make sure they don’t loose any baggage and ensure they are effective, they are designers/ strategist

@amandastockwell : Question – my UX team is given a roadmap from product management with objectives over the next 6 months, 3 years, etc. There’s a struggle between UX and product management in determining when user research can start before features are “baked” enough to begin writing user stories and developing the prototype. It seems the UX leads are always “strategizing” about what can be built, when and how it intersects with other products – but it’s difficult to make decisions when management is passive about what should be included in a release. Is this what product strategy means?

There’s a piece of it that we haven’t discussed as much, which is the employee experience. Extending the airline example, this would be the interactions say a gate attendant has with the reservation system at their desk

Service design usually encompasses CX and employee experience – very similar to what I’ve dubbed Human experience

@desertcoder great question!

There you go… this is the most important. Let’s not forget employees are equally responsible in creating positive experiences ,:+1::skin-tone-3:

first I want to say I hear you on those struggles and there is not one easy answer. When I say product strategy, I don’t think there should/has to be a separate set of managers defining this

I know this doesn’t always happen, but I think product strategy is most successful when people who are closest to the people interacting (whether that’s ux researchers, ux designers, etc.) work closely with more business-minded folks to come up with the plans for how to best serve people

I think the most successful product strategies are often born out of UXers because we’re often the ones who get to actually talk to and observe people and we see problems to solve

Sorry Amanda, but there is no such thing called ‘UX Designer’

which I find is at the core of creating a successful product strategy – how do you solve a problem or fill a gap for someone

I love the concept of the employee experience – this is important and too often overlooked. But who is responsible for it? The company that produces the reservation system the gate attendant is using, or the airline?

that’s why I think you can’t separate product strategy from UX or CX or HX or really any of the experiences ha

ah that’s where it gets tricky

To be totally honest, a lot of times employee experiences get overlooked because of that exact problem and because some companies don’t see it as a worthy investment

I think it’s up to the airline to ensure that the employees have tools that they need to work efficiently

But unless they build it themselves, it becomes the responsibility of the software provider to make the reservation system a good experience

And they aren’t always in sync

But ultimately it falls back on the airline who hires the software provider. It’s their employees.

Yep, fair enough. also, hey melissa!

hey friend!

@amandastockwell : Question – do you follow a tried-and-true Strategic Plan when working with your clients?

That scenario I just described isn’t ideal, but often the overall company feels they can wash their hands of it if they hire an outside firm

On the strategic plan – it totally depends! A lot of my clients are interested in my experience with Agile and Lean

This airline talk is reminding me a lot of this http://bgr.com/2016/08/14/delta-finally-explained-how-one-power-outage-grounded-an-entire-airline/

which means that built into any and all plans are plans to iterate ha

I’m not dogmatic about plans though. I find that flexibility serves me and my clients better

When they wash hands of.., And that’s where the CEO or decision makers play the role of designer or strategist

@desertcoder did that answer your question?

@amandastockwell : I’m trying to understand what steps are used to help clients strategize on a new product.

Do you have any advice for breaking companies out of a cycle/thinking about engaging with their customers mainly through campaigns? (I work in a creative/advertising agency so getting people to look at a bigger picture can be a bit of a challenge)

ah ok. So, I do have a suggestion for that. I like to use a handful of tools that come from Lean Startup and Lean UX movements – I have a template that I use to help new product definition that includes doing proto-personas, assumption mapping, and hypthesis forming

But I still never make much of a long term plan because the whole think about lean startup thinking is that you define your biggest, riskiest assumption, figure out a way to test it, and then reassess

In terms of the the creative/advertising – that’s a tough nut to crack. Do you have ability to talk to the people working on the products/services you represent?

most of the time, yes we do

Ok, so in that case, I’d recommend doing regular check-ins or design jams to make sure that the work you’re doing is in sync. I used to do this with an internal team of marketers, UI minded people, product responsible people, and researchers – every week or so we’d review what we were all working on, what personas each effort was serving, how it mapped to our overall business goals, and what we could share with each other that may be helpful

Thanks, Amanda! That makes a lot of sense.

We are doing that with a client currently and it’s proving quite successful. I think looking at larger business goals is a good suggestion, as I think our scope is currently seen as limited to our immediate task.

sure thing! there’s tons more reading on Lean Startup thinking if you’re interested. David Bland, Melissa Peri, and Laura Klein are the awesome ones off the top of my head

@holliedoar Yah it can definitely be hard, but one thing you could try is tracking your specific tasks to overall goals and proving out ROI when you can

when someone realizes that what you do makes/saves lots of money they usually start to include you on more and more :slightly_smiling_face:

fingers crossed! thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

sure thing!

Now might be a good opening if someone else has a question!

Can you please specify some of the ‘strategies’ you have suggested in your real projects.

I’d be interested in hearing more about your strategic approach as well :slightly_smiling_face:

sure – so as I mentioned, I always begin with an intro that is based on learning what my client is trying to do, what they know about their people already, and what their biggest issues/assumptions are

I typically use the following conversations/tools in those discussions; Vision statements, Headline workshops, Proto-persona workshop, User outcome assumption and business outcome assumptions mapping

the sailboat exercise

the pre mortem

Depending on where my clients are, we may leave that conversation in vastly different states

If they aren’t sure who is or could use/be involved with their systems, then I start with user research

What are headline workshops and the sail boat exercise?

If they feel like they understand the people involved and their issues, we typically design an experiment to test those hypotheses

The headline workshop/exercise is an exercise to get all the stakeholders aligned on direction and overall impact – it’s super simple. You basically ask everyone to imagine that the product/service has launched and they need to write a newspaper headline for what they hope to accomplish

but sometimes it’s a bit easier for people to wrap their brain around rather than just “tell me your vision”

the sailboat exercise is similarly simple – you ask people to imagine that your product is a boat and you want to imagine the things that would help move you along in the right direction

that is the “wind in your sails”

So is strategy limited only to understanding business goals, objectives and understanding User personas, needs? As a strategist can we recommend technologies and suggest to simplify the function and not just experiement with the form?

and then you imagine the things that would slow you down, the currents

and the thing that would drown you – icebergs

It’s again, a way to visualize what success and failure look like

Good question – I think that strategy can definitely involve suggestions to function. Like maybe there doesn’t need to be an app for that. I think it can involve discussions on technology but in my mind, strategy is about defining the problems to solve and approaches to solve/figure it out, not necessarily about what the solution should look like

at least not at first

@jellybean i’m looking for a link with a good description of some of these tools – one sec

Thanks :slightly_smiling_face:

http://searchengineland.com/5-ways-to-make-your-client-kickoff-meeting-a-success-174383 has some good basic intros

sure!

Heads up that we have 5 mins left in this session everyone. If you have question, here is your chance…

Hi Amanda thanks for sharing with all of us today I’m a bit late to the party so I missed earlier posts but if this hasn’t come up yet can you share your top 5 reads for leading strategic innovation within an org/for our clients?

no worries! so I didn’t give specific reads but I’ll tell you some people I like to follow – Melissa Peri, Laura Klein, and David Bland – I also love “validating product ideas’ by Tomer Sharon

each of the people I mentioned has vast amounts of awesome resources

brilliant, thanks heaps

Piggy backing on @canuckinluck if you could pick one book on leading strategy workshops, which would it be?

hmm.. i don’t know that there are any books I love specifically on that topic, but Laura Klein’s UX for Lean Startups discusses a lot of the tactics I use and is a great read

it’s not specifically about strategy workshops though. If I think of any that are particularly good I”ll pass on!

Thanks Amanda. Perhaps if something comes to mind later you could post it in your follow up topic here http://community.uxmastery.com/t/why-ux-and-strategy-are-inseparable-with-amanda-stockwell/2365

Sure!

And on that note, I think we’ll call that a wrap!

Thanks, Hawk and Amanda!

Thanks so much for your time Amanda – and to those of you that joined us. :slightly_smiling_face:

Thanks everyone!

Thank you, Amanda!

Thank you!

Thanks Amanda and Hawk!

I’ll post a transcript up on our site tomorrow in case you want to check back over what went down

tahnks!

Cheers Amanda and thanks as always Hawk for organising

Feel free to follow up if more questions arise!

Ok all, let’s get this show on the road.

Hi @hawk looking forward to this

For those of you that are new to these sessions, here is how they roll

I’ll intro @ben then he will intro the topic.

Then I’ll throw it over to you guys to ask your questions.

It’s a casual, relaxed format.

When you have a question, ask away. I’ll queue them in a back channel for Ben to roll through.

I’ll publish the full transcript up on http://uxmastery.com tomorrow

And if you have follow up questions, you can ask them here http://community.uxmastery.com/t/dark-patterns-and-persuasive-design-with-ben-tollady/2350

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Ben is a long time friend of ours and he’s responsible for http://thirststudios.com/

He comes from an industrial design background and has worked in UX and interaction design for over a decade in both the UK and Australia.

He and a colleague presented on dark patterns at UXNZ last month and it was an enjoyable session

So I decided to lure him here to our Slack channel to take up the conversation

And here we are

So @ben – over to you for a quick intro to the topic before we jump to questions

And a huge thanks for your time today

I know you’re busy and it’s really appreciated

No problem Hawk. It’s a pleasure.

Hi all.

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So by way of a brief intro… I have been working in design for a long time (late 90’s) in both Industrial Design and Web/UX.

I saw your presentation at UX Australia this year

I’m confident in research and design and all that stuff, but recently I realised I felt as though I didn’t have enough inderstanding of the psychological site of what we do.

Humans and ergonomics – no problem. But what about cognitive science and the way our minds work, and how ux and design converges with that?

So I’ve been doing a bit of reading and researching on the subject, and put a little presentation together earlier in the year, exploring how an understanding of cognitive science can influence and persuade through design.

@mat Great! Hope you liked it!

The presentation can be seen here, in case anyone wants to have a look later.. http://www.uxnewzealand.com/speakers/ben-and-gareth/

It was written and presented in collaboration with my good friend and colleague Gareth Roberts (@groberts1212).

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So… Hit me up with any questions. I’ll do my best to answer usefully! :wink:

There was one bit of your preso @ UX Aus that I wasn’t convinced by. That was the cashback example. I cannot remember in granular detail but I thought it was more customer inertia rather than a true ‘dark pattern’

The talk focussed on Dark Patterns in particular (which are a clumsy way to trick users into doing something – usually to benefit the business behind the digital product). Our talk explored those, and then investigated that, if a business needed to ‘convince’ a user to do something (and it’s morally ethical), then could we use psychology to ‘persuade’ instead?

Interestingly someone else commented on our blog today along those lines – “Apple do this on purpose to get you to buy more” – which is kinda the point. Is that ok?

So @mat – Yes. That example was a laptop sale by an electronics retailer in Au. On their website they offer a cashback thing where you buy it for $1700 but can get $200 back, if you photocopy the receipt, download and fill out a form, then send it back (in the post I think).

yes, that’s the one.

The point we were making with that example wasn’t that it’s a dark pattern (it’s not – it’s not trickery), It was more around how you, as a designer, can manipulate people’s motivation through an understanding of cognitive science.

As that is a practice that has been around forever I was wondering if it was a pattern as it could be practiced in the ‘real world’? And therefore can Dark Patterns exist outside the digital realm?

In this example – many people can’t be bothered to go through the hassle involved for just $200. So the retailer benefits by gaining $200 on each sale. And this isn’t an accident – they designed it that way.

So you think any kind of manipulation could fall into the dark patterns category?

If it was $1000 cashback, then the designer would have ‘motivated’ the user more, so they’d likely get more users taking up the offer (and then there’d be less sneaky profit for the retailer).

In that example it’s a tried and tested method of making the customer jump through hoops to gain something

on the assumption that most people probably won’t bother

yes, so the customer has to balance the effort vs gain

@mat Interesting question. I’m not sure exactly how all folks define Dark Patterns, but for me it’s anything that ‘tricks’ users without their best interests in mind. Tricking a user to only benefit the business.

(It’s evil)

That’s my point. I don’t think that was a dark pattern because all the information was there before the deal was made

it is simply customer inertia

but it’s taking advantage of things we know people do or don’t do (biases)

A good example of a dark pattern in the real world is really hiding the “you can’t quit unless you prove you’ve moved >50 miles from a branch of this gym chain” in gym contracts, hidden in the fine print.

At least with the cashback thing it’s being exposed and explained (I think fairly fully – can’t remember) up front. So while it’s cheeky, it’s not trickery. The user has a choice about engaging in the practice or not.

taking advantage possibly, not sure that it’s tricking though…

At lot of companies make things difficult for users using some of the ways dark patterns work, though the companies may think it’s for the “good” of the user: https://medium.com/designer-hangout/shady-patterns-a55d0cc1bbc7#.eck5lq487

@ddt Small print is notoriously dodgy ground! Like contracts – rife with confusing legalese.

Does it matter if it’s tricking or taking advantage – are either morally ok?

(playing devil’s advocate)

Funny you should ask that! I was wondering something similar about ethics: http://alistapart.com/article/design-white-lies-ethics

I’m not sure. Because if all the details are laid out and the consumer still enters into the agreement…

@ben Would the habit of download sites to include multiple “download” buttons that are actually ads—while the real download is a link somewhere below the page—fit the dark pattern mold?

My example: I recently bought a camera with a cashback offer. And it was a pain in the arse to get the cashback but I did do it. BEcause I wanted it

Morals, Ethics and Responsibility are the key things here. We know, as designers, if what we’re making is right or wrong. It’s actually quite simple. So it’s about us taking a stand against this kind of thing. Saying no to our bosses, if what they’re asking us to make feels wrong.

Isn’t this how Groupon type sites work, unless the offer is scanned by the participating business then Groupon keeps the money. A percentage of people never use their offers

@sgiobair_og Sounds like you’re talking about those torrent-style sites? Ha! They’re renowned for this type of thing.

Those download things drive me crazy

My good mate Matt Magain did a Dark Patterns talk a while ago with those sites as examples of Dark Patterns.

Yeah torrent style sites, even some that I’d consider “legitimate” download sites. Not sure if really wel targeted ads or the site themselves. Pain in the arse though.

No only the ads – but if you download their clients, they often try to trick you into installing all manner of plugins, by tricking you into clicking the yes button.

What about when I go to tap/click on a button, then just as I do it content above loads so pushes the button down and I click something else. Dark pattern or shit design?

@jazsmith I’m inclined to agree with @mat when it comes to things like Groupon. I think the propensity for people to buy those deal and not follow through is a benefit to the Groupon model (or coupons in general) that allows them to do it. Not necessarily underhanded or tricky though.

Relying on users not reading text online, scanning, not looking at t&c’s and clever positioning of buttons are all ‘tricks’ that can be used to get users to do something they don’t really want to do. And again – it’s no accident. It’s designed with an understanding of how human’s brains work.

@jazsmith Yes.

A little off topic @ben, but where/what did you study around psychology when you started exploring this area? It’s an area of UX I’m very interest in..

@mat I think those are just shit design, usually a result of external content loading slower than the rest of the page maybe?

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@mat Not sure without looking closely at the specific example. That annoys me too! I guess that’s more bad design and internet lag, but who knows? Some businesses are unscrupulous!

Hey @bec7 – I’ve got a few recommendations. It’s an area I’m fascinated by at the moment.

@bec7 http://community.uxmastery.com/t/good-resources-for-learning-practical-psychology-for-design/1890

Here’s a few books:

Hooked by Nir Eyal

Thanks @hawk

@bec7 Also check our twitter feed from October. We had a psych theme and I tweeted a LOT of resources

Emotional Design by Don Norman

Check out BJ Fogg’s stuff too

Just going to say Fogg – you mentioned his book at your preso

Wonderful, thanks @ben – I’ll check them out

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Some of the ‘A book apart’ books too

Emotional design and real life, I think.

Another thing I found interesting was services that rely on our need to complete things

Like Fitbit & Linkedin

and Pokemon (?)

Yes – also check out BJ Fogg (thanks @hawk). He’s the founder of the Persuasive Tech Lab at Stamford Uni. He’s written a few books, posts and done a few talks on the subject.

@ben So getting to the nicer side of persuasive design, what are some of the cognitive biases that we can take advantage of as designers to be more persuasive in our work?

Google his ‘Fogg Behaviour Model’.

Guessing the completist thing falls into persuasive design?

So @hawk and @mat – this is where in our talk, we started to explore how we, as designers, might use these cognitive biases to be more ethical… And yes – there are a few things.

Has there been any pushback about Nir Eyal? I’ve seen his talks, and people go gaga, but his points are, basically, “you can manipulate people based on our visual and cognitive patterns, and here’s how and that’s great!” He almost gives a cookbook for dark patternining, but not ethical guidance that this might be a bad idea.

(Not to mention that one talk I attended, he misquoted some study I happened to have recently read.)

@ben: if your boss wants you to employ some of these tools, how can you best convince them that this is a bad idea?

In terms of persuasion, we found this list (not sure where) of ‘elements of ability’ that can be ‘used’ to help persuade users:

Time, Money, Effort, Cognitive load, Social acceptance, Routine.

Affect any of those, and you can start to persuade.

So yes – things like our human desire to complete things and have stuff put into order – helps LinkedIn and Fitbit keep us motivated to engage in their products more.

Which leads to @ddt’s point.

@ddt – I’ve seen some pretty severe criticism of Nir Eyal’s ideas on another forum I’m a member of.

I agree with you – Nir’s book is being praised – presumably by app startups – as a way to heep users ‘hooked’ on their products. So they can make more money.

But I find it fascinating from a psychological standpoint.

Ultimately it’s up to the designer – he’s exposing the cognitive biases, but it’s up to designers to use them for good or evil.

This translates to practical problems the ethical designer is going to have to face every day, especially here in the Bay Area startup culture. You’ll run into “we have to make money _somehow_” arguments all the time. But maybe how to combat that is another topic.

And it’s our job to try to stamp out unethical practices by not designing evil stuff.

I think the foundation fo what Nir talks about is ok – he’s exploring how habits are formed in the same way that BJ Fogg does. I heard him talk earlier this year and while I think it’s become a bit mainstream, it didn’t seem dodgy.

Though dark patterns ultimately drive people away from products, they are patterns because they are, at least initially, very very effective.

@ben Lynne asked “if your boss wants you to employ some of these tools, how can you best convince them that this is a bad idea?”

I know! I’m a slow typer! Thanks though @hawk :wink:

Perhaps I shoud to that question “without employing dark patterns of my own!”

Get a new boss?

Give your boss three options, where the one you don’t like is in very low contrast type?

@lynne It’s difficult, and it takes balls, but I’d suggest talking to the decision maker and form a case that explains why Dark Patterns are a bad idea. It varies from case to case, but generally Dark Patterns are employed as a short-term initiative. And while they might achieve the required result in the short term, they risk all manner of negative outcomes longer term. Brand erosion etc.

@lynne Is the assumption that the boss knows the practice is dodgy, or is this a case of requiring education?

We had a dark pattern in one of my products that kind of got there by accident

“kind of” :wink:

As soon as I saw it I whipped it out

But discussions like this require an alternative – so you need to come up with a better way to pitch.

@mat – that solves my problem, but probably won’t stop it happening anyway.

It was kind of a checkbox that asked a double negative

so quite mild but confusing at best, dark at worse…

@mat A common trick!

The compulsory field opt-in check box

so dodgy

(not yours Mat)

We had a client once that wanted one of those popups to appear when his site loaded, asking people to sign up for emails.

“Uncheck this box if you do not want to keep on receiving emails”…

He, in turn, had a KPI from his boss to increase signups.

Unfortunately I hear those things actually work even if they suck

Pop-ups? Or dodgy checkboxes?

Pop ups

Yup, they do. They’re not dodgy in themselves though, just annoying.

“Removing dark patterns from any site involves a leap of faith. A company has to shift from a short-term quantitative measurement mindset to one that values relatively slow, steady growth “ — http://alistapart.com/article/dark-patterns-deception-vs.-honesty-in-ui-design

So we explained – while this initiative might have given him a small bump in the short term – it’s likely it’ll just annoy users over time. We explained that actually having better, more compelling content and developing a smarter social media community would actually help increase signups over time (albeit probably a slower burn). But a growing set of happy, engaged subscribers is better.

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@hawk – in this case it is setting up a page which ads are linked to which requires the user to create an account to continue to the homepage. If you type in the homepage address directly then you can visit without needing to create an account. I’ve tried arguing that this is dodgy but it is being justified on the grounds that “we need to get more people to sign up so we can get funding for the next stage – then we will remove it”.

That’s a barrier to entry.

@lynne Oh, yeah, that sucks

Is the expectation that users are so engaged that they will jump that hoop to get to the page (high motivation) or is it likely that many will think “too hard” and go away?

In this situation, the close button is your friend…

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@lynne Yeah, that’s bad. It doesn’t trust the users, first of all. But there’s also the business case that you’re not getting valid metrics; you can’t tell if the user is willingly giving up something of value (the time and privacy involved in giving up an email address) in exchange for more info about your product.

Hey We have a couple of minutes left. If you’re sitting on a question, now is the time to ask it!

Why not let users straight in (higher volume of users through the front door), then provide a compelling, honest message saying “We’re looking to enhance this thing over time to give you a better service. Add your email address here to show your support..?”

:arrow_up: This

If I clicked an ad and got to a page asking me to create a membership, I’d bail.

Likewise

I usually close it without reading it but I still go to the page

@dust some don’t allow you to close

If I got the alternative, I might be more inclined to help out. Plus, now I’m an engaged user. Not just a random email address.

oh, you mean the page or the pop-up?

Personally, I think many users will think too hard and won’t even make it to the site, and even those that do sign up might not be our target users as they haven’t even made it to the site. But the thinking is that if we have their contact details we can get in touch to get feedback. I like the suggestion about an honest message – will give it a try (thanks!)

Ok all, I think we’ll call it and let Ben get on with his day.
Thanks so much for your time @ben . This was a really interesting discussion.
And thanks to the rest of you for your interesting questions and ideas.

Thanks, great discussion.

Good luck @lynne

Thanks @ben and everyone else too!

My pleasure folks!

Thanks!

Feel free to ping me on here if you have more questions. Or find me on Twitter – @tollady

Thanks it was great.

Thanks

Or on our forums here: http://community.uxmastery.com/t/dark-patterns-and-persuasive-design-with-ben-tollady/2350

Have a great day everyone :slightly_smiling_face:

Ok – let’s get this show on the road

I’ll start by introducing Jen, who will then intro the topic, and then it’s over to you

First though, thanks so much for your time today Jen. It’s appreciated.

Thanks for the invite – happy to be here!

Jen Marshall is CEO of Brainmates https://www.brainmates.com.au/
She has experience in eCommerce, telecommunications, commercial evaluation, portfolio management, business casing, senior stakeholder management, contract negotiation, and all aspects of the product lifecycle.

She’s also behind http://www.leadingtheproduct.com/ – if you’re in Australia you should seriously consider going :wink:

In her own words: Jen has deep expertise in news media and publishing, having worked at Fairfax, Optus Digital Media and Sky News. Jen’s early career saw her producing television news bulletins. From there she moved into newsroom leadership roles and began to specialise in digital media. This led to an opportunity to transition into Product Management, which achieved Jen’s goal of becoming more deeply involved in the business.

And she’s here today to talk us through the secrets of leading successful product teams

@jen – over to you to do a more eloquent job of introducing the topic than I have!

Thanks @hawk for the lovely intro

I’ve been leading Product Teams for eight years now – before that I was a leader in 24/7 TV newsrooms and before that I actually produced the news.

These days I’m CEO at Brainmates and I try to combine working on with business with working in the business.

Before this gig I held various Product Director roles at Fairfax, overseeing teams delivering publishing products.

I’ve left the title a little broad today and I’m happy to take this where the audience wants to go..

We can talk Product Teams…. leadership… stakeholder management

Over to you….

I have a question from someone that can’t make it, so I’ll ask on behalf of @desertcoder “How do I create harmony when product managers get requirements directly from the owner/stakeholder, which conflicts with market needs discovered by UX and the product owners?”

Thanks @desertcoder …. my first step would be to have a discussion about that

Approach the PM and outline your concerns in a factual manner and then ask them to explain their position

It’s important to make sure you frame the conversation in the right way – it shouldn’t seem like an attack

You could use the crucial conversations model to help you prepare for this (only if you feel you need it)

Once you understand all perspectives, you’re in a better place to have a discussion about why that’s happening and perhaps address it

Does anyone have a follow up to that – seemed like it might be a popular topic…

How hard would you push your position, given that it might jeopardise relationships? I know that many people in our audience struggle to keep emotion from getting in the way of professionalism.

It’s really hard to keep emotion out of things like this…

Because it can ultimately feel like your professional advice and research is being discarded

It’s worth taking the time to unpack what you’re thinking and feeling before going into the conversation

Also think about hat you really want for yourself and for the product and for the team

It’s ok to say, I’m feeling annoyed / frustrated because I feel as if my research/advice is being ignored

Explain what you see happening e.g. I noticed this requirement has been prioritised over this one…

That doesn’t make sense and I’d like to understand your perspective

Having said all that it’s your turn to listen… some people scenario plan for discussions like these… so they can be ready for the next phase of the conversation

Scenario plan?

In this conversation for example, the PM might say, yeah this is a silly situation but I’m doing it because I need to get this stakeholder on side

OR they might say, that’s none of your business, I’m the PM and I’m making the calls

OR something else…

Knowing the person you will be talking to, imaging how they might react and continue to plan your conversation for each of those scenarios

Does that make sense?

Absolutely.

I’m hogging the convo a bit here. @nw0ng @brennan @tyler @discodelphia – what challenges do you guys face?

do you have any suggestions on books or courses to better articulate design decisions? I am not the best at communicating these strategies and reasons.

Hi @brennan my philosophy on making recommendations is to do this

identify the issue / design element you are making the recommendation on

then explain two to three directions you might have considered

Do you feel that Project managers should be exclusively client facing or should the whole team be client facing?

then show how you evaluated each of these options

then you explain why you discarded two of the options and are recommending the other

@jen, can you outline a couple of the traits for a great Product Manager and where they might overlap with user experience?

In order to make the argument strong, you need to show that you have done your homework and considered a few options and that you can support your recommendation with evidence

Does that help @brennan …. I’ll put my thinking cap on for a good book and get back to you

and lots of practice doing so, thanks for your advice @jen

it does help!

hi @tyler are you talking Product Managers or Project Managers… just to be clear

lol what is the difference?

sorry

@tyler that’s an important one to unpack

here’s a blog on what Product Managers do

But the high level is that a Product Manager needs to understand what the customer wants or needs – then understand how a business can solve that problem while delivering value for both the customer and the business

A Project Manager needs to understand all the elements that need to be completed in a project, who is doing them, when the’ll be done and the costs

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Sometimes a Product Manager does Project Management as part of their role – so it can be confusing!

Anyway, back to your question …

I think teams need to clearly communicate about who’s doing what.

I see now issue with both UX and Product Management having access to the customer and the stakeholders

So long as the message is consistent and coordinated

And so long as there’s not too much doubling up

Brilliant – Product Management has lots of common ground with UX, plus it represents the business interests in the conversation?

As a Product Manager, I’ve often watched live feeds of interviews with customers, being conducted by a UXer

And I’ve often brought my UXer in to senior management meetings to present their findings

I like that :slightly_smiling_face:

@tyler am I answering your question… or is it something else you want to know?

@ashf Welcome Ash. Jump in with questions at any time. I’ll queue them for Jen

Hey @lukcha you asked about traits and skills that great UXers and Product Managers share

One that stands out to me is curiosity about the world

Wanting to know more about the customer

It’s really important for both roles and when Product Managers and UXers share that passion, it becomes a really powerful alliance

I also think they should both be able to talk to customers

Know how to frame research and questions

Of course UXers conduct a lot of research when building and iterating products

But Product Managers often meet clients in sales meetings and other scenarios

So they need to jump on every opportunity to keep gathering intel and feeding that back to the team

Thanks @hawk for your question about what would I like UXers to understand about Product Management

That’s helpful, thanks Jen

I think the thing that stands out for me is commercial reality

(Followup question to Hawk’s: How can UXers better get their heads around understanding Product Fit? Are there common or useful methods for really defining the sweet spot between business needs and customer needs? I’m thinking of tools like the Vlaue Proposition Canvas, etc.)

Sometimes we can’t invest money in every desirable feature…. sometimes things aren’t perfectly designed and we have to compromise, in order to be a commercial success

Of course that is an incredibly fine line to walk

Because poor UX and design can lead to Product failure

And at the end of the day, the PM has to make the decision on where to draw the line.

Sometimes that’s a tough decision to make, and the Product Manager might not be ecstatic about making it

Sometimes cutting off development is a fact of life

Another thing for UXers to understand is the tricky game of stakeholder management most Product Managers are playing

In some organisations things are very political

And that means the PM spends a lot of time communicating to stakholders

It can turn into a full time job!

@lukcha has asked about tools to help understand product fit