Everyday UX and Product Inspirations

If I can do one thing different from now on for my product, that will be user test. I regard it as the most direct way to Make sure we come out a product the market wants Resolve many design discussion from the start Identify the right MVP that create value Give guidance to marketing  ... ... There are many different types of tests, mainly categorized by the type of question we want to find out as well as the material we have that support these studies. Christian Rohrer, on her 2014 article "When to use which user-experience research", divided all researched based on 2 dimensions: Behavioral V.s. Attitudinal Quantitative V.s. Qualitative Behavioral tests answer the question on "How", how does a user find the a product; how they do a checkout; how they fill in a form; while attitudinal tests focus on "Why", what are the reason you will or will not use a product etc. Qualitative  methods are much better suited for answering questions abou...

Advanced Selling Podcast is a good podcast for sales professionals.  Bill Caskey and Bryan Neale are very inspiring hosts who always deliver practical and executive messages. What it had been most helpful to me, was the encouragement I get from listening to their podcast: the way they talks make everything sound incredibly easy, cold calls are easy, negotiations are easy, differentiation is easy etc.  Their talks brought me to think that maybe they are, or even it is not, I can always imagine they are. And by changing my perspective, I am able to make things look easier than I use to think and easier to get my hands on.  Using the same way, I am able to reach out to all my ex-colleagues and re-build all my connections, that is over 200 of them in 5 countries! I am very glad I pushed myself to do that.  Bill and Bryan are also  extremely good in selling products and services that sponsor their talks. They often print beau...

General Assembly task of “Organizing my wardrobe” I am planning for the UX Immersion course at General Assembly Hong Kong, the entry task is to write your thoughts on designing a mobile application that help people solve key problems about their wardrobe.  So what are the key problems people have about their wardrobe, I need to figure it out in order to prioritize the functions in the application and the actions that are available in each case. I set my target audience of adults who have a smartphone, there is no further categorization needed. The best I would plan is to have the ability for users to adjust the font size for elderly people.  I started sketching down a list of questions I want to figure out in the research and set the research time to be 4 hours. I will use online search as the primary research tool and observe some cases of how people use their wardrobe. Of course, it could go on for days or months in another project and include survey and foc...

3 piece of articles I came across today discussed about the importance of a good navigation  which reminds me of some learnings I had in my previous products. I just finished Chapter 6 “Street Signs & Breadcrumbs” in “Don’t let me think” by Steve Krug , he compared the user experience between going to a physical store and look for a particular product and going to an online store.  First, there is no sense of space in the online world, users find it hard to get a feel on if they have seen everything of interest, especially on websites that have a long catalogue, the experience can be daunting; Second, there is no sense of direction, I can’t turn left, right, up or down; so I don’t know exactly how I will turn one step back or two; Third, there is no sense of location, users know they are on a page, but many times, they don’t know how deep they are down the hierarchy, how this page is related to the previous, and most important, how cl...

I often have problems about administrative communications, for example, emails to help you to reset your password; to update an application since I did not pass the approval etc. There seems to be a general lack of attention to these communications, and it is very understandable, after all, they are not frequently used function nor they make money for the business. And they work anyway, maybe after several failed attempts, users find their way out (solve the problem or leave the site for good).  Nevertheless, there is a positive correlation found between sales conversion and easiness of maneuvering on a website. In Steve Krug’s book "Don't Make Me Think”, he emphasized the importance of visual clues for users to know where they are at anytime, and otherwise they may abandon your website and go for somewhere else. You may be saying, wait a second, I read that book, there is nowhere mentioning administrative communications, it is all about navigation, articles,...

I go to Pragmatic Product Meetup in Hong Kong, the host Leon is a very inspiring product manager working for a toy company; we sometimes discuss how to do user testing. We find many things in common. And I guess the common points we discovered can be shared across different industries since we are in totally different industries: Leon, babies, physical, Hong Kong market; mine, adults, smartphone users, mobile application and website, South East Asia, China, United States and United Kingdom. What we found in common can be concluded as the following 5 points: What do you want to test determines how you want to test it : there is not “the” right way to conduct user test, you can do a questionnaire, you can do a drawing on a piece of paper or you can let them test out your prototype or beta version product;  In the Hierarchy of Actions, there are 4 types of products: desirable, usable, persuasive and emotional; Paul Doncaster, Senior UX De...