disambiguity

Drupal.org – Help Overhaul the Information Architecture – participate in our online card sort!

Continuing in the community led approach to the experience design, let’s get started taking a look at the information architecture.

A really useful exercise to help understand how people organise, understand and label/name information is to do a card sort. (Ref: A definitive guide to card sorting)

As we’re scattered all over the globe, we’ll have to settle for an online version. I’ve actually set up two versions of the card sort because I particularly want to understand differences between the way that ‘insiders’ and ‘outsiders’ deal with drupal.org information.

If you identify as an ‘insider‘ (which might reflect either your expertise and/or closeness to the drupal community) and you want to participate, please go to this link and participate in the cardsorting exercise.

If you identify as an ‘outsider’ (particularly if you’re new to Drupal, but also if you don’t feel close to the community) and you’d like to paticipate, then your cardsorting exercise can be found here.

It should take you about 15-20 minutes to complete the exercise, so be sure to get yourself a nice cup of tea before you get started!

This is just an information gathering exercise – it’s not going to define the Information Architecture, just help give us the understanding we need to help shape it correctly. Don’t worry too much if there is information missing (we’re just using a sample of the entire site(s)) and don’t worry if you don’t understand what a card means, and feel free to leave copious comments as you go through the exercise – there is a space for you to do so.

As ever, I’ll let you know what interesting things we learn as they come to hand.

(Remember, you can also participate by submitting some wireframes!)

Try Google Docs for survey or recruitment forms

Just a quick note to recommended using Google Docs ‘forms’ as a free tool to manage surveys and recruitment. (Choose New, then Form).

We recently wanted to invite people to participate in user research for the drupal.org redesign project – as a part of this we had a short screener we wanted to run people through so that we can target research appropriately in the coming months (and also get some interesting stats – more on that soon!).

Initially I was planning to use Ethnio, as it is purpose built for this, looks pretty and has a kind of nice DHTML ‘not-popup’. I couldn’t get it working though, so then turned to the ever trusty Survey Monkey, but… eh, so ugly! At the last minute I thought of Google Docs and that’s where we stayed.

Super easy to set up, and a nice clean looking interface out of the box, plus no worries being charged for having too many responses. Easy peasy.

We have since almost 900 responses in a just few days and it seems to have held up nicely.

So, if you are looking for a nice tool to use as a screener or a questionnaire and you’re not too fussed about customising the look and feel, I’d heartily recommend Google Docs.

Disclaimer, disclaimer etc. I’m sure Ethnio works beautifully for lots of people. I tried to get it working for several days without luck and by the time support got back to me, we had hundreds of survey responses to the Google version. I’m also sure you can make Survey Monkey look grand, but I don’t know how and didn’t want to spend the time finding out.

DIY User Research :: My BarCamp Presentation

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This weekend I went to BarCamp and it was great. Always good to catch up with fellow campers and hear what’s on their minds.

What was on my mind this weekend was DIY User Research – you can see my slides above. This took me a little out of my comfort zone as I resolved not to say ‘it depends’ but to make some overall recommendations as to how almost anyone can afford the time and budget to do a little research, and the best ways to spend that time or budget.

This has been based on the experiences I’ve had recently doing User Research for start up companies who have very small amounts of time and money, but who desperately need the kind of research that I’ve recommended. The techniques I’ve suggested here have worked very well so far, although I hasten to add that I’ve undertaken the research work myself.

This is not to say that you can’t *really* do it yourself… if you use the right techniques you will get a LOT of value from DIY research… but an experienced researcher is, of course, worth their weight in gold

Guerrilla Techniques – Does inexpensive research have to be ‘quick & dirty’?

I’m really interested to hear what guerrilla style techniques you’re using to do User Research when there’s not a lot of budget or if you don’t have the traditional research facilities or infrastructure?

I imagine there’s some pretty interesting stuff going on out there, what with all the new and often free web based tools that we have available that should make observational research more and more accessible to all of us.

More and more of us are using a combination of camera phones and sites like Flickr in place of traditional ‘diary studies’, and some of us have investigated using tools like Twitter for this purpose as well (has anyone actually done a contextual research study using Twitter yet? I’d love to hear about it).

I also hear great stories of more and more people getting out into Starbucks and other public places (although, for some reason, it often seems to be Starbucks – wifi I guess) and doing some usability testing with unsuspecting members of the public.

Do you have strategies for inexpensive and rapid recruitment techniques that actually allow you to recruit to a profile? (Or multiple profiles). Could social networking tools like FaceBook or Twitter (again) play a role here perhaps? (Insert concerns re: bias in audience sample)

Has anyone come up with a video set up that allows for both screen capture and a video of the user without needing two computers? (I have a webcam built into my MacBook… surely it’s feasible!)

What other wild and wacky – but most of all inexpensive and accessible – techniques and tools are you using to find out more about the people who use (or might use) whatever it is you’re designing?

Are we getting to the point where, perhaps, we can do better research outside of the lab than inside it?

That’s a whole lotta questions. What say you?

Design Consequences: A fun workshop technique for brainstorming & consensus building

For my recent BarCamp session I shared a design technique that a colleague and I developed quite recently that we’ve found to be quite successful in both generating great design ideas and developing consensus about the design approach for projects within a multi-disciplinary team.

We call this technique Design Consequences, due to the similarity it has with the similarly named childrens games. We tend to use it in the earlier stages of the design process, although it can be used for more detailed interface design problems.

So, how does it work? It’s pretty simple really.

What you need:

1. a clearly articulated design problem and design goal(s) - for the BarCamp exercise our design problem was to design an electronic version of the BarCamp session wall where people could add their own session and choose which sessions they were going to attend. 
2. some design ideas or components – when I do this in a client context, we do this by spending time beforehand looking at our specific challenges and seeing how other people have approached them, and trying to understand design techniques or principles that work (as well as those that don’t). This gives people access to a much greater repoirtore of ideas to draw in the Design Consequences exercise.
3. a multi-disciplinary team - try to get the entire team if you can. The exercise works best with no more than 8 people involved, but it can be done with more if required. Get management to the table, bring all kinds of designers, bring the product managers and marketers, bring your developers. Bring everyone you can, as long as they’re familiar with the project and the design problem.
4. lots of paper and markers and post its – make them as colourful and fun as possible. Make it look like a crafting session. A sense of play and enjoyment is key to this exercise.
5. some examples of the type of output you’re expecting – anything that starts with the word ‘design’ can be very intimidating and scary. Lots of people ahve been told throughout their lives that they can’t draw, or that they aren’t creative. I have some *very* scratchy samples that have been created by people who design for a living. I show these before we get started so that people realise quickly that pretty drawings are not part of the equation.
6. A bundle of energy – you need to be just a little bit hyper to run this exercise

What you do:

1. Round One – everyone has seven minutes to design, individually, the the first page that users would see when confronting the ‘design problem’. So, a typical example would be a website homepage, but it could be any part of an application or website or even, say, an email. The faciliator(s) should participate, but keep an eye on the clock and give some warnings with a few minutes to go, and again at about 30 seconds.
2. Round Two – here’s the consequences twist. Everyone picks up the page they’ve designed, then passes it on to the person on their right (or left, it doesn’t really matter). Everyone then has to review the page they’ve received (ask for clarification from the original designer if it’s a little sketchy in places), then decide – if you were the user, what would *you* interact with, and what would happen next. You have seven minutes to draw ‘what happens next’. (Don’t tell people about Round Two before Round One, it’s much more fun when it’s a bit of a surprise).
3. Show and Tell – we then go around in a circle and each person describes the page they received, what aspect they chose to interact with and why, and then describes what they designed next. Discussion is encouraged.

What do you get? Lots of great data, and lots of great conversation fodder.

It’s a good idea to capture as much of this as possible as you go around the group. Of course, the best way to do this is to write up ideas onto post it notes as you go and stick them on the wall. There should be an ‘in’ section of the wall and an ‘out’ section of the wall. (‘In’ means that the idea has legs for this particular design problem). Affinity sorting on the run also helps to draw out the key themes or ideas that have emerged from the exercise. You should be leading the group discussion, helping the group to gain consesus and make decisions as to the design approach to be taken in solving the design problem, and trying to document these decisions as you go.

This process can be quite time consuming and intense, but more often than not there will be a few key ideas that the group is particularly enthusiastic about and that really propels the decision making.

By the end of the session you should be in a position where everyone is in agreement about *what* will be included in the wireframes that comprise the next phase of the design process.

Why would you use this approach?

• It makes a great change from the talk-fest of meetings
• It generates lots of ideas – and often some really great ones 
• It stops people getting to attached to their design ideas and makes evaluation and critiquing more effective
• It helps get all the team feedback and ideas into the pot (in particular, it’s great to get management and technical input at this stage)
• It drives buy-in, involvement and consensus
• It pulls in cross-discipline scills (for example, developers are often really great at quickly identifying great ID approaches for Rich Internet Applications)
• You’d be amazed what you learn earlier rather than later by involving the entire team at this early stage
• Getting lots of brains involved in the design process can uncover some really creative gems
• It makes the design process faster
• It’s fun!

So, there you have it. Some quick notes on a technique that’s been quite useful for me lately. I’d be interested to hear what you think of it and if you try it, to see if you too find it useful.

open office

in the last few days, Microsoft Office has been playing up on me. I go to load Windows, and it just doesn’t. I don’t know what’s wrong and I’ve tried all the technical tricks I know to get it working (which is a pretty limited bag of tricks I have to admit). So, I’ve decided to ditch it.

At CeBIT when I was talking to the Open Source people, they gave me a copy of the Unbuntu CD which has Open Office included on it. I’ve used Writer and Calc so far… and so far they’re proving just as good as Word and Excel.
At this rate, I’m going to be quite happy to ditch Office for ever and switch to Open Office. Do you know of any reason why I shouldn’t?

Gmail inbox and productivity (or Archive? my a$$)

Does your gmail inbox look like this one? Mine does.

Does having a never-ending, never-empty inbox stress you out? Yeah, me too.

Did you know *you* can have a beautifully clean, empty gmail inbox with all your emails beautifully filed away, out of sight where they’re not going to make you feel anxious? No, me either.

In fact, I just got half way through a ranting post about how unproductive the Gmail inbox was and how it made me feel stressed that I was forgetting or losing something and then I discovered…

…the ‘Archive‘ button doesn’t mean *really* mean archive. It actually means ‘don’t show in the inbox anymore‘.

I had to do a Google search, then read a whitepaper on using Gmail for GTD (Getting Things Done), then test it out in Gmail myself, before I actually discovered this. But, the good news is – it’s true. So now I have a few thousand emails to label and archive and a stress free, productivity enhancing inbox will once again be mine. Hoorah.

ok. Now for the vent…

Who was the crazy person who thought that ‘Archive’ was the right word for that button? And then who approved it? Did this get tested with users? How many? Who are they?

When you think of Archive, what associations does it carry for you?

For me, when I think of archive, I’m thinking of documents that have gone to a ‘special place’ often in a special format (where else do we still use tape, i ask you), that have gone there because we either don’t think we’ll need them anymore OR because we might need them in the future so we have a backup.

They’re typically hard to find, hard to access, hard to restore. They’re for the future… preferably future generations. They’re not intended for next week.

You sure as hell don’t get to my idea of archive using a simple keyword search!

What is the right word for this button?

Like I said before, what it actually means is ‘don’t show in my inbox anymore’. I’m thinking ‘File’ might be an alternative, but it’s got all those ‘file, edit, view’ assocations, so probably not a good option. Maybe ‘File Away’?
The folder metaphor doesn’t exist in Gmail, so we can’t use something like Outlook’s ‘Move to Folder’. Maybe it is something like ‘Remove from Inbox’ or ‘Don’t Show’ – maybe not… it would be preferable to have a positive label rather than negative here. This is nice functionality!

Hrm… so off the top of my head, I’m not sure. Anyone feel like workshopping it here and we’ll email Google and ask them to change it.

I’m not sure if I’m more relieved to have found it, or angry at how it’s been labelled… but one thing is obvious. Labels matter. Let’s spend some time making sure we’ve got them right and that our audience understands it.

OK. So tell me:

- Am I the only one who didn’t get the archive thing?

- How would you label that button?

Image credit: Ario @ Flickr (who is also interested in Information Anxiety)

Using Google Calendar to replace MS Project

The more I use Google Calendar, the more I love it.

Yesteday I realised that I could pretty much use it to replace Microsoft Project (if only I could create dependencies between items and spit out a gant chart…. perhaps I’ll just have to train clients to not like gant charts quite so much. What’s with that, hey?)

Google Calendar is SOOOO much better at managing multiple projects + life that MS Project will ever be. (Ever experienced a Project Central implementation? You’ll know what I’m talking about).

When I take on a new project, I create a new Google Calendar and name it after the project. I can then assign tasks to that calendar that appear, beautifully colour coded, in amongst all my other projects and personal activities on one calendar. At a glance I can see when I’m going to be super busy and when I’ll be able to go have lunch out of the office.

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Finally! Creating a Table of Contents in Visio (how did I not find this until now?!)

Call me crazy, but I feel as though I’ve just uncovered the holy grail of Visio.

I don’t know how many people I’ve asked about ways that you can create a Table of Contents in Visio. It seems like it should be sooooo easy, but no one has ever been able to help me out.

So I had a bit of ‘R&D time’ this afternoon and was playing with the Annotation Hiding Macro that Donna posted yesterday, then poked around a few of her other Visio pages, and there, in amongst some comments, I found it! A Macro that creates a Table of Contents in Visio for you.

Hoorah! Celebrations all round!

(Or did you all already know how to do this and I’ve been living under a Visio rock?!)

Now… it’s not all that pretty. But, for now, it does the trick.

Without any further ado, here it is (with many thanks to Bram!):

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Hooray! Google Calendar! (you made my day)

I’m in love. And, I hope to never use Outlook ever again.