Joseph Dickerson's stray dogs

How would a hotel designed by a UX professional differ from the traditional experience?

As a UX professional who travels a lot, I love this question. It’s like playing a video game in God Mode: you are in complete control, for better or worse. Let’s try for the better, shall we?

A key principle I would bring to this design is personalization. If you stay at a hotel that’s part of a chain, they should know your preferences. Ordered smoked salmon the last two times you stayed in on of the hotels? Then your next stay the hotel should provide a complimentary serving as a courtesy. Requested a high floor near the elevator? Then the hotel chain should ALWAYS put you in a high floor next to an elevator unless you request otherwise. King size bed, feather pillows? Ditto.

The hotel staff should also be smart as well as helpful. Just traveled in on an international trip? They should provide you with a humidifier and fresh fruit and juices to help you acclimate, as well as a hints and tips sheet on recovering from jet-lag. Traveling with young children? Provide complimentary pool toys along with a note giving the hours the pool is open. And guests should always have a NAME of a person to talk to… Look to service on cruise ships for some good examples of how travelers have “personal stewards.”

You may be thinking “Well, all these freebies will cut into the hotel’s profit margin!” Yes, but let’s look at it from the customer’s perspective. Every one of these extra touches are “grace notes” that will make the customer’s experience better, and will make them far more likely to stay at the hotel (or one of the hotels in the chain) again. And it’s a lot cheaper to keep a customer than to get a new one…

Other thoughts:

Those signs that say “we can offer you toiletries if you forgot them” require the hotel guest to up the phone and ask for these things…. Which is stupid. Just keep a set of toiletries in every room all the time.

Take out all the little signs in the room that say “if you steal X we will charge you for it.” treat guests like guests, not potential criminals.

Put all power plugs at waist height when appropriate (like near desks).

Don’t put catalogs in rooms to try and sell the bedding and furnishings to guests via mail order. Does anyone ever go, “Wow, I love that comforter in our room, let’s buy one just like it!” It’s tacky and a waste of time.

Have extra toilet paper and towels in the room, based on the number of guests staying there - again, guests shouldn’t have to ask for things like that, it should just “be there”.

Provide a REAL coffee maker with FRESHLY GROUND coffee, thank you very much.

Provide a universal set of chargers in the room for the most common devices (iPhone, Blackberry, etc.).

Provide suggested workout sheets in the exercise room, with simple instructions organized around goals.

Give Internet access away for free, for everyone. In the 21st Century Internet access should be like plumbing and electricity… It’s included in the cost of the room.

If the hotel has a concierge floor, then offer REAL concierge service, not just lip service. Free drinks, free snacks, advice on local attractions, restaurant bookings… The works.

Optimize the checking and checkout process, and staff the front desk with extra staff to handle peak times based on historic analytical data.

In summary, you probably notice that I have described only minimal changes to the actual “structure” of the hotel room proper, but have focused on the experience that the hotel should provide. That’s because there’s not much you need to change in a hotel room - it’s utilitarian and appropriately so. The key to a better hotel experience is exactly that: the experience that is provided to the guest. Experience matters.

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What technique(s) would you use to evaluate and [re]define fields in a lengthy and complex form?

One of the first things I would do is get a better understanding of is usage. What is the information that is being entered going to be used for? A good sense of what is important and what is not will quickly come from that. This will help you take your first cut with all the data fields. When in doubt, leave the questionable fields in.

Then, take your new short list and group like elements through an affinity exercise, using sticky notes. Have two or three different groups do it. Any fields that don’t naturally “fit” become candidates for removal.

Next, mock up a restructured data entry page in a way that you can test it, using the affinity data to group “like” fields, using the affinity take it tote people doing their work together their reaction. Having them actually USE a new version of a form will prompt a much different and frequently more specific feedback than looking at the information in an abstract way.

Finally, be clear about what the goal of the redesign is. Is it to increase efficiency for the person doing the data entry? Is it to ensure that the right information is being captured? Clarity around what you are trying to do can guide you when it comes to keeping or leaving some fields.

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Want your own arcade machine? Rec Room Masters can set you up!

One of the things that I have always wanted to own was a full-sized arcade cabinet. It’s driven by nostalgia, of course: I spent countless hours of my youth shoving quarters into Defender, Pac Man, Frogger or Star Wars… and I’m pretty sure if I had dedicated that time to more productive activities like, say, studying, I would now be that doctor or lawyer my mom always wanted.

Before now I’ve looked at many differnet options: buying plans to build my own, used cabinets I could gut and refurbish… I’ve even looked at buying one of those “new” cabinets that comes pre-loaded with dozens of games. Finally, last month, I found a solution. A local Georgia company (actually less than a ten-minute drive from my house) called Rec Room Masters has started manufacturing arcade cabinet “kits” that work with any computer and the high-end X-Arcade joystick. Just load your favorite MAME (multi arcade machine emulator) files onto the computer, setup the joystick, put it and a 22” montor in the cabinet and you’re ready to go!

Since I was so close to where they were located, the owner Wayne called and asked if I wanted to pick it up after work. “Of course!” I replied, and Wayne also gave me a tour of his showroom and warehouse. Pretty cool. Not only do they sell different versions of the arcade kit they even will print custom artwork for the cabinet for you (which is what I’ll be doing next).

Three hours of construction and configuration, and I had my fully-working arcade machine. And three hours after that, I had severe carpal tunnel on my joystick hand… along with a smile on my face. If you want a boss setup like mine, drop by their website and order today. Tell them Joe sent ya!

(Oh, and if you attend DragonCon in Atlanta over Labor Day weekend, drop by their booth in the dealer room to say hi and play a few free games…)

The President’s Analyst is crazy good

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Wow, James Coburn was SO good.

He’s stars as Sydney Schaefer, the title character in The President’s Analyst, a wild 1967 pastiche of comedy, drama, thriller and spy film… a movie that is as absurd as it is entertaining.

A fantastic scene early in the film sets up the premise. We see a black secret agent named Don Masters - one of Sydney Schaefer’s patients - tell a story of his childhood, when he found out what the n-word means… it is a great moment from actor Godfrey Cambridge (though it feels like it should be in a different movie). Shortly after this Masters reveals that the President needs someone to talk to, and Masters has chosen Sydney as the man for the job. Once Sydney accepts, he is “on call” at all hours… and has a lot to talk about. And as the world’s espionage agencies find out about him, his life becomes… interesting.

There’s lots to like here. The score, by Lalo Schifrin, is fantastic… Not a surprise, seeing as he created fantastic scores his entire career (he’s best known for his work on Mission: Impossible, and there’s more than a hint of that work here). The pacing and directing is first rate, with some fantastic location shots that highlight late-sixties New York and Washington. One scene, where rival spy agents kill each other in rapid succession, is a wry bit of filmmaking that is very dark and very funny.

This movie is a great example of eccentric studio films that came out in the late 1960s, when the studios were desperately trying to be “hip.” More often than not these attempts at appealing to young audiences failed completely (look at any Bob Hope or Jerry Lewis film made back then, or the infamous debacle Skidoo). Unlike those films, The President’s Analyst delivers…. and, yes, of course, there’s hippies in the movie.

Looking back at this film, made 45 years ago (!), I can’t help but smile at some of the dated details in it… but I’m impressed that whole thing works as well as it does. The key is, of course, Coburn. He grounds the film and is completely charming throughout. I remember talking to an acting coach many years ago, who told me there are two types of people you see on the big screen: Actors, and Movie Stars. James Coburn was a Movie Star, through and through, and is just fantastic here. It’s worth watching just for his performance and his star power, which is on full display here.

Finally, Star Trek fans should pay attention to the sound effects used in several scenes, and fans of classic TV will enjoy seeing Arte Johnson, Pat Harrington and William Daniels in major roles. Arte Johnson plays an “FBE” assassin, Daniels plays a gun-toting liberal and Harrington plays… well, that would spoil things if I told you.

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What are general good practices for improving a design’s usability?

Here’s three tips on usability from my interview on the subject with TechJournal: http://www.techjournal.org:

First, create the simplest version of user interface required to accomplish the task you are designing. Take out everything that isn’t necessary to accomplish the task. Simplify.

Second, streamline any process toward an obvious end point for the user (enter this data and submit a form, sign up for a newsletter, like a Facebook page, buy something). Make everything modal and “chunk” steps in a process in obvious ways.

Third, don’t rely on “help” text. Customers do not read, especially when filling out web forms. Form labels are the only text you can rely on. We tried an experiment during a usability test many months ago. In bold letters on a form we tested, we added the text, ‘If you bring up that you saw this message you’ll get an extra $100 gift card.’ No one did. If you need to use copy to explain anything, boil what you have to say down to 3 bullet points. That’s how people read on the web and mobile devices. Don’t be verbose - use terms people understand.

To add to those recommendations, a general best practice is to do at least one round of usability tests with any design, either formally or informally. A good usability test run well will “shake out” any usability issues in the design.

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The rise of the enablers

I travel quite a bit for work, and as I recently sat in a hotel room I started thinking about all the steps that brought me to that room. I booked the flight and the room online, I flew from Atlanta to Boston and I took a cab to the hotel… A typical business trip, with no problems or delays. Breaking things down, I started counting off all the technological innovations that supported me in that journey… “enablers” that made things happen and made things easy. Here’s just a few of them:

• I was able to compare flights online, both times and flights
• I was able to compare hotels online, both price and location
• I checked traffic before I drove to the airport on my GPS.
• I used to GPS to get directions to the airport (that routed me around traffic)
• I checked in to my flight through the Delta app on my iPhone
• I changed my seat using that same app
• I was able to track my checked bag using the app
• I was able to use an electronic boarding pass to go through security
• I read news articles and watched videos on my iPad in the airport, using free Internet access
• I was able to write a status report for work on my iPad that automatically synced to my laptop via the cloud
• I confirmed the address of my hotel through the Marriott app
• I paid for my taxi ride with a credit card using a card reader that was mounted in the taxi

And if I spent more time pondering I’m sure I could easily double this list.

Because we use them every day, we tend to forget is just how amazing these advances are. If you are old enough, think back to a time when you may have taken a similar trip, maybe ten or twenty years ago. You had none of the above to help you on your way, everything took longer and things were more complicated. You had to spend time with a travel agent, you had to have sufficient cash to pay the taxi, you would have gotten stuck in traffic because you had no way of knowing there was a wreck backing up cars for miles… It was, well, kinda hard.

To make a direct point, what is happening throughout society is that technology is streamlining processes and helping people do things faster and easier than ever before. These enablers are becoming omnipresent and ubiquitous. They are also impacting society in negative ways… For example, the aforementioned travel agent is becoming an endangered species, and that isn’t the only job category that has been impacted by these enablers.

What is even more exciting to me than seeing how far technology has helped us every day is that companies are still actively coming up with new enablers. One of the big stories in technology this week is a computer peripheral called the Leap, a small box the size of a pack of chewing gum that offers gesture recognition far superior to the (previously groundbreaking) Kinnect XBox controller. The promise of gesture-based computing, as predicted in Minority Report, is one step closer to reality, and as a designer the possibilities that brings excites me.

We often think of the “old days,” and whimsically say to ourselves “things were simpler then.” I’d like to counter that statement, as in many ways things are simpler NOW. We just have so many enablers to choose from, things look more complicated than they actually are. Ask the typical man on the street if they would like to go back to getting their food they way people used to in “the good old days”… by growing it themselves… and see if you’ll see them pining for that nostalgic past after that.

What are the benefits of User Experience design?

There are several benefits to user experience design, and I’ll list some of them. Before I begin, a quick note: user experience design to me encompasses EVERYTHING, from UI design to customer support processes to retail store design and packaging. So when I speak of “user experience” I’m thinking about any touch point a user can have with a company.

Increased customer satisfaction. The better experience you create for your customers, the happier they will. And the opposite is also true: the worse experience you provide to your customers they will become more and more frustrated with what you are providing them… And they will be far less likely to recommend your offering to friends and families. And dissatisfied customers call to complain, which means when you provide a good experience you also have…

Reduced cost of ownership and support. If you produce a product (hardware or software) that has an easy-to-learn (and easy-to-use) design, you will have to support that product less. Good design also reduces your total “cost of ownership”, in that you will need less documentation, a smaller support staff, and less salespeople. Which brings us to…

Increased sales. Happy users share their happiness with their circle of friends and family. They also review your offering online. Providing a good experience helps build positive word of mouth, and increases sales. It also often results in increased customer loyalty and therefore repeat business.

Good karma. OK, this one is not really a measurable benefit, but I think that if you create something that helps people do something well and makes thier lives better then you will benefit from that effort. Case in point: One of my first major successes in user experience design was the creation of a streamlined process to sign up for electronic bills. This process resulted in a huge “hockey stick” uplift in adoption, which in turn meant a lot less trees were destroyed to print paper bills. My company did well, it had a positive environmental impact, and the success helped my career. Win, win, and win.

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Now available: Reflections of Sydney

I’ve compiled another book of my photography, this one focused on some of the favorite shots I took when I lived for over two years in the beautiful city of Sydney, Australia. Called Reflections of Sydney, it’s now in the iBookstore exclusively for the iPad. Like my other photo collection, it is available at the low low price of free.

You can get it by clicking the link here.

How hard is to communicate to developers the UX point of view?

The best response I have to this question is “it depends.” Depends on the organizational culture, the amount of design rationale you have to back up your design decisions, the personalities at play in both sides of the conversation, and the roles and responsibilities of the team members.

If you are working in an organization that doesn’t respect UX then you may end up struggling with everyone, not just developers.  You’ll need to expend extra effort convincing stakeholders and decision-makers that your designs and/or ideas have merit and should be listened to. This can be very frustrating, and it may take several design “wins” to get enough “street cred” to help you in your pitches.

If you come into a situation with designs and not a lot of background reach and design rationale you may experience some challenges. Many people are critical by nature and will approach any design with skepticism. Having research, usability test results, and a solid design rationale will help explain why the work you have produced Is the right direction.

If the developers, or whoever receives the output of your design activities, are hyper-critical and/or disrespectful, then you have a personality issue to overcome. You need to approach such a challenge with professionalism and try your best. If it’s a systemic disrespect shown towards UX design and designers, you may need to find another place to work.

If you are in a large group and many of them are critical or expect you to rationalize your work, you may need to look at the roles and responsibilities of the members of the group. Everyone has an opinion… You need to look at the “deciders” and focus on them. One way to approach it is to get that approval and ignore everyone else, and let the stakeholders you have convinced make your arguments for you.

One final thought: should you justify every choice you make? No, you need to present your work with confidence and push back against an attempts to rationalize everything. If you fall into that trap, you may be focusing on trivia instead of the core aspects of what’s important.

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Lessons in UX and Analytics: Users aren’t data

I recently went to a conference where several sessions focused on analytics, and what analytics could provide to businesses of any size. Having some background in analytics myself, I definitely agreed with several sentiments these speakers expressed.. but I also think that too much of a focus on analytics can be a big mistake.

Analytics is great, in that it gives you lots of data telling you what people do and where they go in a system. It can also give you very useful results when you use it in processes like multivariate testing, comparing different versions of the same design. It adds value… but it can be misread and misused.

I remind you of an obvious fact: Users aren’t data, they’re people… and they are not easily broken into trend maps and analytical patterns. Knowing what people do is useful - knowing WHY they tend to do certain things is vital. As a UX Architect, I focus on creating designs that align with their mental models and their needs, and analytics can’t provide that. I’d rather know what drives users a lot more than what a huge homogonized group of them tends to do. The former provides insight and understanding, the latter is sometimes no better than an access log of page hits. Anayltics are reactive - user research is proactive and (in my experience) generates ideas a lot better than a spreadsheet fileld with data does.

Analytics, aligned and combined with user research and user center design processes, are a fantastic way to implement a great designs for customers. The user-centered design allows you to gain the insights that produce effective designs, and the analytics can help you refine and tune the design after the work goes “life.” And that’s another important point, because analytics only provide results after a design is launched it can’t help you in the early days of creating a concept or fleshing out ideas.

We should also be mindful that analytics should be used to reinforce decisions, not to replace decision making. The designers and the product owners should be the one making the calls, not ceding the decision making to the “wisdom of crowds.” Use the data as an input, not the “tie-breaker” that provides a thumbs-up or thumbs-down.

Designers should use all the inputs they can to make decisions, but should also never lose fact of the one input that provides exceptional value - our gut. We should always follow that instinct far more than data, as the creative ideas that often come from our “guts” are the ones that make a real difference in the world.