paper & pencil

3 sets of user needs

in a discussion on Six Sigma methodology and Kano Analysis as applied to IxD, Mike Baxter summarized Dr. Noriaki Kano's principles on the 3 sets of users needs:

Basic needs are unspoken (latent) needs. Users don't tell you about them when asked. They are the underlying expectations about what the product/system will offer and hence are taken for granted. When you buy a car, you expect it to have wheels. Ask any buyer what they are looking for in a new car, however, and they are unlikely to mention that it needs to have wheels! This may seem obvious but a friend of mine was caught out on this a couple of months ago - they bought an budget all-in-one TV and VCR only to find when they got it home that it couldn't record on one channel whilst playing a different channel. For him, this had been a latent, basic need. The dynamics of basic needs are that they lead to dissatisfaction when not met but don't lead to any positive sense of satisfaction when met.

Performance needs are spoken (manifest) needs. These relate to the range of
features that are recognised as current differentiators in the marketplace -
the more of these features that any one product offers the higher
'performance' it is seen to have. In mobile phones at present, the
performance factors include downloadable games/ringtones, built-in camera,
email/web access, tri-band etc. The dynamics of performance needs is that
they are additive and move perception of quality from dissatisfaction (this
product/system has a below-average set of features) to satisfaction.

Excitement needs are unspoken (latent) needs. They are what the user doesn't
know they need but are excited by when they see it. They are the 'spark' or
the 'factor X' that good design can add to a new product/service. The
classic example was the Sony Walkman - the market research found nothing to
suggest that customers wanted such a product - but when customers saw it
they fell in love with it. The dynamics of excitement needs is that failure
to meet these needs causes no dissatisfaction but meeting an excitement need
causes ... well excitement - and often higher levels of satisfaction that
any number of accumulated performance needs.

One final thing to note is the dynamic nature of users' perception of needs.
An excitement factor is only exciting once. Once it is out there in the
marketplace, it becomes a performance need and is balanced against all the
other performance needs. After a while, performance needs can become basic
needs - in the 1950s one of the great excitement factors in televisions was
the introduction of colour screens. Now, colour TV is a basic need.

(via ID Discuss)

css hack management

Integrated Web Design: Strategies for Long-Term CSS Hack Management, By Molly Holzschlag.

Using CSS in a contemporary browser? You'll probably need to use a variety of CSS hacks to accomplish the best possible cross-browser compatibility. Molly Holzschlag helps you determine if you need hacks, how to manage them effectively if so, and which hacks you can employ to solve a range of common compatibility problems.

(via css-d)

XForms

2 good overall articles on XForms, a new XML Standard from the W3C. Enterprise Development Journal: Introduction to XForms 1.0 And this one from the Rockley Bulletin: Understanding XForms: An Introduction

Both articles provide clear descriptions of XForms and how they will overcome the limitations of HTML when it comes to creating forms. The first article shows code examples of a basic form in HTML and as an XForm.

From the Rockley Bulletin:

The major benefits provided by XForms can be grouped into several categories:

• Abstract application design; allows applications to be translated and rendered on multiple device types
• Separation of data, business logic (the rules associated with the data in a database that help enforce business policies), and presentation format (the look and feel of a document)
• Client-side processing without the use of scripting; allows form data to be validated, events to be triggered, and other actions designed to mimic real-world form data workflow
• XML-based WYSIWYG user interface development environment

The Rockley Bulletin article also lists the benefits to the user (ex. save and retrieve), the organization (ex. code once for multiple devices), and the developer (ex. reduces development and maintenance time).

XForms 1.0 is a W3C Recommendation as of October 2003.

XForms is an XML application that represents the next generation of forms for the Web. By splitting traditional XHTML forms into three parts—XForms model, instance data, and user interface—it separates presentation from content, allows reuse, gives strong typing—reducing the number of round-trips to the server, as well as offering device independence and a reduced need for scripting.

XForms is not a free-standing document type, but is intended to be integrated into other markup languages, such as XHTML or SVG.

customer loyalty

karl long has turned his Heirarchy of an Online Customer Relationship into an article for DMI:
Customer loyalty and experience design in e-business (PDF)

Gaining customers’ loyalty is the Holy Grail of business—a way to reach eternal life or, in business terms, long-term sustainability. The value of customer loyalty is far greater for a business than the value of repeat transactions; loyal customers are less price-sensitive, require less marketing outlay, and are more open to providing feedback and more likely to refer friends.

for e-businesses loyalty is more difficult to get and more critical for survival. karl's theory is that Experience Design will help acheive the heirarchy of customer needs: Trust > Competence > Autonomy > Creativity/Relatedness.

from the conclusion:

Experience design provides very appropriate methods and techniques that can be used to
help move a customer through the hierarchy of customer experience. Clearly, the disciplines of
contextual research, graphic design, information architecture, and interaction design can all help
to create trustworthy, competent interfaces that encourage autonomy and creativity. At a more
holistic level, however, they are the tools, techniques, and attitudes that allow an e-business to
become a sort of socio-technical ecosystem that creates significant value for all stakeholders.

see previous posts on karl's theories:
Heirarchy of an Online Customer Relationship
2 Factor Theory

user experience honeycomb

peter morville, building on the 3-circle diagram of Content-Context-Users, created the 7-hexagon User Experience Honeycomb.

each hexagon represents a facet/quality/attribute of user experience and can be used as filters for looking at your web site and for determining priorities.

Paul Graham on Web Apps

paul graham's very long essay The Road Ahead goes into great length of the benefits of developing apps for the web rather than the desktop. written in Sept 2001, most of the article is based on the author's experience building an online storefront app that is now Yahoo stores.

one of the few cons isn't that strong a deterrent:

Web pages weren't designed to be a UI for applications, but they're just good enough. And for a significant number of users, software that you can use from any browser will be enough of a win in itself to outweigh any awkwardness in the UI.

How will it all play out? I don't know. And you don't have to know if you bet on Web-based applications. No one can break that without breaking browsing. The Web may not be the only way to deliver software, but it's one that works now and will continue to work for a long time. Web-based applications are cheap to develop, and easy for even the smallest startup to deliver. They're a lot of work, and of a particularly stressful kind, but that only makes the odds better for startups.

You don't have to ask anyone's permission to develop Web-based applications. You don't have to do licensing deals, or get shelf space in retail stores, or grovel to have your application bundled with the OS. You can deliver software right to the browser, and no one can get between you and potential users without preventing them from browsing the Web.

joel on micro$oft

lengthy article from joel spolsky on How Microsoft Lost the API War. lots of detail about window app development that soars over my head but lots of general info on app development, languages and .NET.

So you've got the Windows API, you've got VB, and now you've got .NET, in several language flavors, and don't get too attached to any of that, because we're making Avalon, you see, which will only run on the newest Microsoft operating system, which nobody will have for a loooong time.

The new API is HTML, and the new winners in the application development marketplace will be the people who can make HTML sing.

another Joel article talks about how it's the developers turn to get the features they need out of HTML. there's a random list of things he wants as well as a list of things he doesn't want to hear about.

design is about use

zeldman's column - Production For Use - is the latest in a string of articles and discussions about design and usbaility, and in some articles, design vs. usability.

Sometimes, stumbling blindly with half a plan, you create Beauty. As the parent of that child, you feel love for what you have made. But that rare exceptionally new and unique design isn’t necessarily the best design for the job.

Design, whether it’s automotive design or web design, is about use. The car that handles the turns and gets the best mileage may be better designed than the chartreuse job with the big fins, even if they are the finest fins ever shaped out of metal.

Design and usability are not enemies. They are really two parts of the same art and science. We separate them because we are a specialist culture, and in so doing, we promote limited thinking, deep misunderstandings, and pointless antagonism between people who should be allies. On the web, graphic design, site architecture, and usability should be understood as component parts of a single thing — I call it web design, you may call it user experience or who knows what.

usability testing is not useful

well, according Lane Becker of Adaptive Path it's: 90% of All Usability Testing is Useless.

quantitative testing conducted at the tail end of a product design lifecycle by a separate team from the designers is what is useless. testing should be qualitative and conducted early and often throught the process and with the design team. Lane is specifically referring to the web but this applies to anything being designed.

Focusing on numbers to the exclusion of other data leaves researchers with nothing more than noticeably dubious statements like, “Design A is 5% more usable than design B” (or “90% of all usability testing is useless”). Instead, user research for the Web should delve into the qualitative aspects of design to understand how and why people respond to what has been created, and, more importantly, how to apply that insight to future work.

Finally, this approach to usability testing also helps you become a better designer. Designers sometimes worry that having to alter their work in response to user feedback will limit creativity, but when done as part of the design process, user research allows you to form new ideas and improve your design based on what people actually need. User research becomes a platform for inspirational, usable innovation. As a designer committed to improving your users’ experience, nothing could be more satisfying.

from discussions on sigia-l:

ziya on what's new about the web that makes things different than designing for any other medium:

I think what's new with the web is the enormous degree to which content
space and the application/presentation/workflow space can be so tightly
intertwined. Sometimes it's hard to tell for the user that he's navigating
an actual application (with a complex backend infrastructure)...and that's
exactly the point. The app recedes into the background and the functionality
flows through in many disguises. That's generally new, exciting and
powerful.

and ziya's summary - I love this!:

Usability testing is like saying thank you to someone for doing their job.
We should assume usability, as part of Design (cap "D") and move on.

clay shirky on freedom & nyc

gothamist interview with Clay Shirky is a great read. one of the best anecdotes about nyc living i've every heard. makes me want to live there . . . but only a little bit.

some tech talk too:

The thing that will change the future in the future is the same thing that changed the future in the past --- freedom, in both its grand and narrow senses.

The narrow sense of freedom, in tech terms, is a freedom to tinker, to prod and poke and break and fix things. Good technologies -- the PC, the internet, HTML -- enable this. Bad technologies -- cellphones, set-top boxes -- forbid it, in hardware or contract. A lot of the fights in the next 5 years are going to be between people who want this kind of freedom in their technologies vs. business people who think freedom is a shitty business model compared with control.

And none of this would matter, really, except that in a technologically mediated age, our grand freedoms -- freedom of speech, of association, of the press -- are based on the narrow ones. Wave after wave of world-changing technology like email and the Web and instant messaging and Napster and Kazaa have been made possible because the technological freedoms we enjoy, especially the ones instantiated in the internet.

The internet means you don't have to convince anyone that something is a good idea before trying it, and that in turn means that you don't need to be a huge company to change the world. Microsoft gears up the global publicity machine its launch of Windows 98, and at the same time a 19 year old kid procrastinating on his CS homework invents a way to trade MP3 files. Guess which software spread faster, and changed people's lives more?

So while things like FCC regulation of the internet have that MEGO quality (My Eyes Glaze Over), they matter, a lot, because the only way for 19 year olds to change the world in this medium is to give them the freedom to ignore all previous work to date, and come up with something new.

(via sporter)