My Best User Experiences in 2010

As a UX designer, I am hyperaware that my experience is not representative of everyone else's. The things that delight and annoy me are not the same for you. The following is a personal recap of the products and experiences that left an indelible impression on me.

Memorable classes and events I’ve attended:

F8 Conference

Creating a Mindset for Achievement presentation by Carol Dweck at BayCHI

“That resonates with me!” presentation by the amazing Nancy Duarte

The first Warm Gun, Designing Happiness Conference

Adaptive Path’s UX Intensive - Design Strategy with Brandon Schauer

“How to Think Like a Designer” Stanford class taught by Barry Katz, fellow at IDEO (read about classes 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5, 6)

Products/apps that delight me, educate me, help me discover things I like:

Boutiques.com is a Google product with a distinctly non-Google, fashion specific identity. It incorporates Like.com’s visual search technology to deliver a smart, stylish shopping experience. The power of Boutiques lies in (1) the effortless way I can provide feedback on what I like, don’t like, and why (2) the seemingly magical accuracy of product recommendations I receive based on just a few of my preferences (3) the high volume and consistent visual attractiveness of the product recommendations. If Boutiques catches on, Google plans to roll out similar products in different shopping verticals. Fashion and shopping competitors - watch out.

Facebook Login (Connect) on Etsy and Amazon are 2 of the best implementations I’ve used. Earlier this year I was the lead designer on Kaboodle.com’s Facebook Login experience. As part of our research, I fConected with dozens of sites to identify best practices. Personally, I found Etsy’s and Amazon’s experience superior because (1) they clearly communicated the benefits and addressed concerns upfront in their trusted brand voices (2) they delivered exactly what they described - relevant product suggestions based on friends and family’s Facebook likes. Both implementations helped me find holiday gifts that I had no idea even existed. Who knew there were cool LA Lakers and Depeche Mode handmade items on Etsy? My prediction for the future of shopping is that it will not be based on search, but will aggregate your location, likes/preferences, events and online activity to deliver a constant stream of relevant products that you validate to increase the volume and accuracy of the recommendations. Bring it on!

Quora is an A-List experience in UX/UI design, users, and the high caliber content they contribute. Some of my favorite questions of the moment include What’s the difference between UI design and UX Design? and Why is the such a stunningly short supply of designers in Silicon Valley right now?

Flipboard for iPad is my preferred way to consume Twitter. It elevates the content with beautiful typography and layout. It slows me down and lets me savor the words and ideas. It makes me want to sip a steaming cup of lemon ginger tea while reading. I just received a Kindle as a holiday gift. I haven’t had that kind of experience with it...yet.

Instagram for iPhone gives me 3 good reasons to look around and snap iamges (1) I can easily stylize my images to reflect my mood - edgy, nostalgic, playful (2) I receive almost instant validation from my Instagram addicted friends (3) it’s a stream of intimate visual storytelling from people I care about. No links. No articles. Minimal text. Just tiny, square, beautiful, shared moments.

Quotes that inspire me:

“To have an effect, you have to select.” – Jim Babbage quoting friend Kim Kavanaugh

“Anticipate the problems that your design solution creates and solve those too.” – Barry Katz 

“The barrier to change is not too little caring, it is too much complexity. To turn caring into action, we need to see a problem, see a solution, and see the impact. But complexity blocks all 3 steps.” – Bill Gates on the benefits of using pictures to aid problem solving

“I fight for the USER!” – Tron

Design Thinking with Barry Katz at Stanford: Class 6

In the sixth How to Think Like a Designer class, Barry lead a discussion of the user research exercise that we participated in last week. We broke into teams of 2 and took turns interviewing each other about our work environment. We then identified key issues and brainstorm solutions. Some of the insights that came from the discussion of the exercise:

Be attentive to something that doesn’t fit. There's a tendency is to ignore the anomaly. It’s often the incongruous bits of data that that yield the greatest insights.

Make the most of your constraints. In class, we weren’t able to observe our partner in their work environment and we had limited time to conduct the interview. This is similar to real world professional practice, which is always constrained by time, money, technology. How do you know when you’ve dug deep enough? When you run out of time, money and/or technology (because technology is not available or does not exist). User research/interviews are a scalable procedure which can be applied over and over again throughout the course of the project.

Reframe the problem statement to discover the true issues Designers want to to be asked “what is your point of view on a wall?”, not “here’s a pile of bricks, build us a wall”. The danger of just building a wall without questioning why is that the solution may really be a window, not a wall. Around 2006, the DOE (Department of Energy) came to IDEO with a problem/question: why don’t Americans care about energy efficiency? User interviews turned into an inquiry into values which lead to the discovery: it’s not that Americans don’t care about energy efficiency, they just care about other things more – aesthetics (appearance of house and the appliances in it) and the safety and comfort of themselves and their family. The real challenge facing the DOE was to create energy efficient solutions that align with American values. The starting question presumed a set of values that was not correct. Read more about IDEO's process and solution here.