UX and Design Insights from Barcamp Tampa Bay 2011

Good UX Means Good Business

In a world where technology is rapidly advancing and user expectations are rising, it’s no longer enough to have an average user experience; to delight your users and surpass your competition you must strive for the exceptional.

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I attended Barcamp Tampa Bay 2011 this past Saturday. Among many excellent sessions, two on user experience and design generated great interest. Justin Davis presented “5 User Experience Basics Everyone Should Know” to an overflowing room:

1. People expect online interactions to follow social rules. Successful interactions provide appropriate feedback and engagement with a appropriately conversational tone.  (A fantastic resource for how to build a conversation with users is Ginny Redish’s Letting Go of the Words. It discusses websites, but the advice provided applies equally to application design.)
2. People care about goals, not tools. Justin asked the important question, “If we take this tool away, can someone still complete this task from their point of view?” If the answer is yes, the tool is probably not needed. Don’t force users to focus on the tools more than on their task goals.
3. People prefer fewer choices. While many choices may draw attention, fewer choices may result in greater success. Sheena Iyengar’s jam study demonstrated how too many choices resulted in fewer sales despite higher apparent interest when many choices are offered. Successful user experience comes from providing the right choices and features, not necessarily many of them.
4. Ten minutes of sketching will save you ten hours of development. Justin suggested that one of the most useful and productive things a team could do was shut off the computer and just brainstorm with paper and pencil. I agree. Sketching is an essential tool for creativity. Throw out the excuses and take advantage of this powerful tool. (Bill Buxton’s Sketching User Experiences is a fantastic resource. The Braindrawing technique I shared from UPA in a previous post is another good way to get started.)
5. User experience work makes your life easier, not harder. Justin asserted the UX help team members do the work they want to do better. In my own experience, developers have expressed how happy they were that someone else was handling the UI so they could focus on the code they really enjoyed. Justin likened UX professionals to project “counselors” who aim to facilitate project success as well as user success.

Another jam-packed session – both in content and attendees – was Nick Pettit’s Responsive Web Applications that discussed ways to design applications that can make a fluid transition between desktop and mobile platforms. One of Nick’s first tips was to start designing the mobile platform before the website or desktop. By tackling the smaller screen and often more constrained design, you make early design decisions that can better serve both platforms and support users transitioning between them.
He also recommended removing items altogether, reducing the UI down to serve fundamental task needs. Users are fast learning to expect content and services be available across diverse platforms providing a consistent user experience. Understanding and supporting users’ core goals and removing anything tangential to them becomes even more important.
After covering these and other general approaches, Nick then shared examples of responsive design patterns for some of the most common interactions, such as gallery pages, adjusting for orientation and element size, and tool tips, advocating the mobile first and minimalist ideas. What was even more valuable than the patterns themselves was the thought process that Nick went through. After each iteration, he continued to ask questions on how the pattern could be changed to best focus on user goals and platform design constraints. As the patterns evolved, this questioning moved the design patterns from pretty good adaptations to responsive patterns that could serve on any platform. (Nick’s related blog post on this topic is a useful staring point for the change of thinking needed to create responsive designs.)
Many of my fellow attendees and I watched these sessions sitting on the floor and listening from the doorways. I hope that, from a more comfortable seat, you find these highlights useful food for thought, too. Barcamp Tampa Bay sessions were recorded with presenters’ permission, so when videos are posted, I will share the link so you can watch the full presentations.