UX of Being a Manager

There are ways to handle the manager-employee relationship.

One important concept is delegation.  As well as the inverse, micro-managing.

One allows you to give the employee freedom to make themselves strong.  The other requires extra attention to detail and worry from both you and the employee.  You both have to make sure you are super clear about everything, deliverables and expectations and make sure not to switch things midstream.

The UX of working with people is a constantly shifting set of interpersonal relationships, as well as suitability for the role and work itself.

The most important thing is to leave room for honesty.  And the ability to back out of a bad corner.  Leave everyone enough room to breathe & to laugh and you can find yourself in a very good working relationship.

Facebook Locator Fail

Facebook prompted me to check for my polling place and could not find it based on what I had entered.

Is a comma really enough to throw off the search?

Halloween Costumes for the Parade

It's best to wear layers for the cold.

And not to wear anything too big that could get caught on someone else in the crowd. 

And plan to be there early. And carry very little in terms of valuables or weight.

And over-organize with your friends.

Craziness will ensue!

A New Coworker presenting at UXPA

I had wanted to encourage everyone at work to attend.

But Manhattan is too far of a commute, whether you do it everyday or not. Everyday is too much, and to go that far on a day during the week (a Tuesday) is just beyond imagining.

And so the day came and went, as if it were a parallel event in another career.

But I'd like to think it would have been fun to watch.

The Best Commute Ever

I love the idea of flexibility of locations in my working life. Being forced to travel is one thing, and having the autonomy to express freedom is another.

Boston and New York (or NJ) for me in my current UX Researcher role.  Going back & forth, the variety is the thing I'm after.

Taking the ferry from NJ to Wall St to Brooklyn.

The distance I travel going to and from exposes me to the electricity of the city. And to remember who I am now.

As a job experience, it is HUGE. 

The UX of all the things around your job, and you you see yourself as.

The skyline of Brooklyn & Queens is changing.

In my commute in the suburbs of Boston,  I know all the streets. All too well. And there is not this variety.

UX of Opportunity

Combined with the ideas of Inherent Fallacies, opportunity seems to be the greatest moment for UX.

What is the easiest moment of any transaction to actually act on a decision.  This is after the choice.  When a person, customer, user wants to do something, and then see feedback from the system to know that are doing what they intend.  Confirmation, and knowing where they are in the process.

Microinteractions.
-Feedback (clear communication of what you are doing, relationship of the computer)
-Modes (what stage are you in? where are you?)
-Triggers (Clear call to actions)
-Rules (Things should not be a surprise, there are rules in this world)

And everything you design, you should remember the person who wants to break it.  True for life and true for programming.  You are focusing on getting things to work, but the world wants you to be sophisticated.

Cognitive Bias Towards Victims

In American society, there are a lot of ingrained biases.  In the NYTimes article below, the authors of the study grouped people according to "individualizing" or "binding" preferences. The first prilioritizes care of the individual, the second is about group loyalty and cohesiveness. 

The findings go deeper than race, or class or religious or even political affiliation.  And they determine how people view the victim of a crime, and even a perpetrator!  

Excellent example of finding a new way to take apart an age old problem. Imagine if there were a way to evaluate jurors on this basis, rather than leaving it up to the skill of lawyers.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/26/opinion/sunday/who-blames-the-victim.html?_r=0

UX of Crime

So if you turn your keys over to someone who claims to be a Valet, and then your car is stolen, are you at fault?

Or to rephrase, how much are you at fault?

If you see a website which looks like a reputable bank, and you give over all your info, how can you prove that it is genuine?

And if a bank has a reputation for "convenience" and your account gets frozen/flagged because you used an online tool which you have never used before-how convenient is it to prove that it was you?
If you must call an office only between 8-5 on weekdays (unlike their other offerings), and you end up spending an hour on the phone to get the right number, is that false advertising of convenience?

If the User Experience/Customer Experience is essentially a bait and switch routine, would that ever get reflected in a revision of the procedures? (Doubtful indeed)

Presidential Candidates & UX: The Ease to Act Upon A Choice

UX should be looked at from a larger perspective on its identification of how efficiently someone can act upon a choice.

Involving speed and accuracy and confidence that the action initiated has been completed.

Buying a tshirt, forwarding a work object, solving a problem, issuing a complaint.

Propaganda, marketing, salespeople want to have you give them money, make a choice & press the button.

Voting, a popularity contest on a certain day. But how do we KNOW who we are electing?  It's a giant bait and switch. The best speechifier is not the best policy person.  It's the strongest & most vivid character, not the strongest politician. It's acting, but also its playwrighting.

Are we Seeing the Same Digital Language?

UX is based on the idea that it is possible to identify (or at least screen for) a majority of the usability problems on any site by testing a standard number of users.

Usually the magic number is considered 8, or so.  This came into vogue to dispute the Stats people and the Marketing crowds, who believe that the MORE the better.  Maybe they were influenced by the business people too.  It stands to reason, if you test THOUSANDS of users, you'll find most of what you are looking for, but how to SCALE it down, so that you can spend a lot of time (1 hr) with the fewest numbers of people.  8. Or fewer.

That was the standard rationale, at least for the past 20 years.  But now that we've become more sophisticated, both as designers and users, aren't our problems MORE complicated?

Sadly, yes.

Jared Spool sent out his UX thought for the day and cited this study, "Eight is NOT Enough", stating that among 18 users, every test had a NEW problem discovered. And only 35% of problems were found with the first five users.

Also, the researchers "estimated" over 600 "obstacles to purchase" on the site, and after 18 people found only 247.

This leads to a deeper question: now that digital business has evolved into a complex language of Semiotics, how are we to achieve the DREAM of a Common Language (thanks to the poet Adrienne Rich for her title)?

Not only is the digital world made up of words (in a variety of languages, including all the computer based ones), but it is encoded with signs, symbols and shadings which change the meanings of words.
(A word highlighted in blue might be a hyperlink, or something underlined.  Or larger. Or it could only be revealed on Hover Over-or not at all).

We also now have to shift our idea of langauge to include:literary, visual and ALSO layer in the complexities of Time/Interaction.  If I click onto one page and take another action, is it possible to navigate back to the first-or am I now in a different mode? (i.e. signing in to a webpage) AND-big question-does the screen REFLECT this change of state, or have the developers/designers introduced an inequality of information?  (Cookies, bad UI display, HIDDEN UI state)

It's not that UX Testing can be limited to 8 users, it's still a miracle that it is done at all, and that some companies think they are "done" at a certain point.

In fact, there is an inherent fallacy in any UX Team that gets assigned by project can sign off on anything, as if representational Users can be found who cover all the future users.  At best, UX tests find the biggest problems which might not have been found through ANY OTHER PROCESS.

Nothing is perfect.

Chris Rock on the Oscars, doing UX Research

The Oscar controversy #OscarsSoWhite about the lack of diversity is not a laughing matter.

And it is something that artists have approached from every angle and haven't managed to get it right yet.  And definitely not for the second year in a row of no black actors being nominated.

What to do when there is an impossible problem?? Call for the UX superheroes!
Or, just bring in the end-users and see what they have to say.

Chris Rock used his moment to go to the people on the streets, standing outside of a movie theater.   In Compton, right next to Hollywood.  Audience= Customers=Users of the film industrial complex.   The actual audience of movie go-ers.  Except, the innovative thing here is that it was an AFRICAN AMERICAN audience, which is not a minority at all.

And they did not even KNOW about most of the movies which were nominated, even convinced he was making them up.  Did they miss the grand advertisements?  Or are they so used to tuning out these irrelevant dramas that the ads didn't even matter?

By doing this, he brought the issue to the people who need to pay attention. The Producers and the Marketing people, who just so happen to hate being shown how wrong they are to the world. Who else in the industry saw it?  Anyone else in Hollywood who wants an Oscar.  There's a giant audience that is NOT being served by the Oscars.  And now, everyone has heard the (often ignored) voice of the customer.

The system is broken.  And Chris Rock just showed off his research to the world.

Missed the Oscars? The Video is here.

Fiction & Non Fiction

I'm currently working on a book. Or two.

Since I prefer comedy to drama, I'm creating a UX Detective character. 

The situations will be within the context of a UX gig, and contain lots of inherent absurdities. 

At the same time, I'm working on a non-fiction UX book bringing together overlapping disciplines. 

I'd like to bring them together. I've been working on a version of this for a very long time.

The stories might be best served as a graphic novel.

More to come.