In her The Dimensions of a Good Experience presentation at An Event Apart in Seattle, 2011, Andrzejewski shared ten principles from urban design that provide unique lenses for evaluating and thinking about mobile and Web user experience designs.

Luke Wroblewski provides a handy overview from the talk; my take on his overview is summarised below:

1. Sense of Meaning — Does the design tell a story? How is the form a reflection of its values? Can people read and understand the environment? Visual cues in the environment can communicate meaning. For example, there’s a lot of meaning in the way that Japanese signs are structured. This enables you to read the environment. What story are we trying to tell in our information architecture (IA) through its structural design?
2. Sense of Place — Does the design leave a lasting impression on the user’s senses? Is it memorable [in a good way]? Focus on those key moments. What should they remember? What story do you want to tell the user and how can you use the language of design to reinforce that story? Show a user a home page that’s unfamiliar to them and ask if they understand the value of the product or service. How well are you communicating?
3. Sense of Structure — Does the design afford the user a sense of structure? Can they understand that structure? Can the user create an accurate mental model of what they’re looking at? When things fit together, a user will feel comfortable and in control.
4. Sense of Unfolding — Does the design get better the more a user explores? Are they ‘delighted’ by the what’s unfolding before them? Is the first time experience tempered so as not to be overwhelming? How can you get the user to leave wanting more?
5. Sense of Transparency — Does the design give a glimmer of what’s inside? This is not absolute as different groups demand different levels of transparency.
6. Sense of Fit — Does the design anticipate and facilitate the desired needs of the user so that it makes them feel positive? Observe the user throughout the site. Find the drop-off points and fix them. Ask the users questions.
7. Sense of Adaptability — Does the design afford the user the ability to adapt their surroundings to reach a more comfortable fit? Again, observe your users and learn from their adaptations.
8. Sense of Access — Does the design provide a range of choices to the user? How much and what range of choices are presented to a user at any given time? Is it too many or too few? Carry out some A/B tests to find out.
9. Sense of Responsibility — Does the design engender a sense of community, ownership and responsibility with/to your users? Holding people accountable will encourage good behaviour. How can you increase your users’ sense of responsibility to the community or website you’re trying to build?
10. Sense of Certainty — Does the design promote trust? What are the systems of control? Do these reinforce trust? Does your website behave in predictable ways? This is particularly important if your users aren’t actually in control. Examine what makes your users anxious and mitigate against those anxieties. Make your users feel confident.

You need to examine the user experience you’re creating through each of the lenses above. By doing so you will improve the experience for all your users.

Details of the current seminar series can be found on Stanford HCI website, whilst the 2009 seminar series can be found on iTunes U. The topics of which are listed below:

Winter 2009

1. Pario: The Next Step Beyond Audio and Video
2. Sculpting Behaviour: Developing a Tangible Lnguage for Hands-on Play and Learning
3. Tap is the New Click
4. Social Annotation, Contextual Collaboration and Online Transparency
5. Enlightened Trial and Error – Gaining design Insight Through Prototyping Tools
6. Computer Graphics as a Telecommunication Medium
7. Not Invented Here: Online Mapping Revealed

Spring 2009

1. Firefox, Mozilla & Open Source: Software Design at Scale
2. Social Enterprise Software Design
3. The Interaction Design of APIs
4. Far Away Up Close
5. What Still Matters About Distance?
6. How We Use Data to Win the Presidential Election
7. Social Immersive Media
8. Launching Creative Communities: Lessons From the Spore Community
9. Designing Online Communities from Theory

Autumn/Fall 2009

1. Crowdsourcing Work
2. Backtracking Events as Indicators of Software Usability Problems
3. Programming by Sketching
4. Aesthetic Science of Colour: WAVEs of Colour, Culture, Music and Emotion

Previous talks are also available on iTunes U — with the notable speakers Bill Moggridge, Bill Buxton and Donald Norman featuring — or on YouTube: 2006-07, 2007-08, 2008-09

The following are free-to-read books on user experience, available online:

Human Computer Interaction

• Mental Models in Human-Computer Interaction: Research Issues About What the User of Software Knows by John M. Carroll and Judith Reitman Olson
• HCI Models, Theories and Frameworks: Toward a Multi-disciplinary Science by John M. Carroll

User Experience / Interaction Design

• Search User Interfaces by Marti A. Hearst
• Designing Interfaces – Patterns for Effective Interaction Design by Jenifer Tidwell
• Thoughts on Interaction Design by Jon Kolko. with contributions from Ellen Beldner, Uday Gajendar, Chris Connors and Justin Petro
• The Fable of the User-Centered Designer by David Travis

Web Accessibility

• Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design by Shawn Henry
• Building Accessible Websites by Joe Clarke
• Dive Into Accessibility: 30 Days to a More Accessible Website by Mark Pilgrim

If there are any more you think need or can be added to the list, please leave a comment.

A user persona is a representation of the goals and behaviour of a real group of users. In most cases, personas are synthesised from data collected from interviews with users. They are captured in 1–2 page descriptions that include behaviour patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment, with a few fictional personal details to make the persona a realistic character. For each product, more than one persona is usually created, but one persona should always be the primary focus for the design.

The use of personas as a technique was popularised by Alan Cooper in his 1999 book The Inmates are Running the Asylum. The book outlines the general characteristics, uses, and best practices for creating personas.

So, how do you actually go about creating a persona or a set of personas for your project? The following is based upon work carried out by Dr. Lene Nielsen in her 2004 thesis and published in HCI Vistas.

Finding the Users

The initial step is to get hold of as much knowledge of the users as possible.

Questions asked:

• Who are the users?
• How many are they?
• What do they do within the system?

Methods used:

• Contextual interviews
• Online surveys
• Observations
• Second-hand information
• Reports (e.g. from marketing)
• Cultural probes

Documents produced:

• Reports

Building an Hypothesis

Working with personas really means focusing on users in a certain context, which originates from the project that is being researched. Often companies have a certain way of talking about their users, or should we say customers, which does not take into account the different context in which the users use a website or a system.

Questions asked:

• What are the differences between the users?

Methods used:

• Looking at the material
• Labelling groups of people

Documents produced:

• A draft description of the target groups

Verifications

The focus here is on finding data that supports the initial patterns and at the same time supports the personas descriptions and the scenario writing.

Questions asked:

• Data for personas — What are the likes/dislikes, needs and values?
• Data for situations — What are the areas of work and work conditions?
• Data for scenarios — What are the work strategies and goals. What are the information strategies and goals?

Methods used:

• Quantitative data collection

Documents produced:

• Reports

Finding Patterns

Questions asked:

• Does the initial labelling hold true?
• Are there other groups to consider?
• Are all equally important?

Methods used:

• Categorisation
• Task analysis

Documents produced:

• Descriptions of categories

Constructing Personas

A crucial step is what to include in a persona’s description and how to avoid creating stereotypes if at all possible. The purpose of a persona is not to describe users as such, but to create solutions that use the needs of the persona as a starting point.

Questions asked:

• What are their basic attributes — name, age, gender?
• What is their psyche — introvert/extrovert?
• What is their background — occupation and interests?
• What are their emotions and attitude towards technology, the company or the information needed?
• What are their personal traits?

Methods used:

• Categorisation

Documents produced:

• Descriptions of categories

Defining Situations

The real purpose of the personas is to create scenarios from the descriptions. Each need or situation is the beginning for a scenario.

Questions asked:

• What is the need of this persona?
• What is the situation?

Methods used:

• Looking for situations and needs in the data

Documents produced:

• Catalogue of needs and situations

Validation and Buy-in

Personas are often viewed as a means for communicating users (read: customers) to developers and stakeholders, but it is as much about a process that ensures a user-centered development.

Questions asked:

• Do you know someone like this?

Methods used:

• People who know (of) the persona read and comment on the persona descriptions

Dissemination of Knowledge

Not only do personas need to be distributed to everybody on the project, but also the data behind the personas and how and for what you are to use the personas. Many projects forget to inform and teach developers and designers on how to use the personas, how to think in scenarios or how to use them in the use-cases.

Questions asked:

• How can we share the personas with the organisation?

Methods used:

• Posters
• Meetings
• Emails
• Events

Creating Scenarios

A scenario is like a story, it has a main character (the persona) a setting (somewhere the action takes place), it has a goal (what the persona wants to achieve), it has actions that lead to the goal (interactions with the system/website/device), and last but not least, it has obstacles that block the way to the goal. Scenarios should be both positive and negative.

Questions asked:

• In a given situation, with a given goal, what happens when the persona uses the technology?

Methods used:

• The narrative scenario, using personas, descriptions and situations to form scenarios

Documents produced:

• Sceanrios
• Use Cases
• Requirement Specifications

On-going Development

Finally, always update information on the personas, afterall you may find some interesting scenarios that weren’t originally considered, or new situations in which the system/website/device is used. Indeed you may discover new personas!

Questions asked:

• Does new information alter the personas?

Methods used:

• Usability tests
• Focus groups
• Surveys (online)

What we’ve got here is failure to communicate

Following a bizarre conversation at work, that I had with a Polish colleague and in which I completed the following quote based upon a comment he made, I had to find out where the quote came from… It transpires it is from Cool Hand Luke, but has featured in numerous films throughout the years since the original film.

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.

Some men, you just can’t reach.

So you get what we had here last week — which is the way he wants it.

Well, he gets it.

And I don’t like it anymore than you men.”