Speaker: Jared Spool
From the program:
“In this presentation, Jared will share these “fast-food budget” techniques, showing you cost and time effective methods for extracting the core benefits of any user experience design process. You’ll learn simple ways to gather information about your users, the tasks they are doing with your designs, and how well the designs meet their needs. In turn, you can use this information as you continue to make changes, thereby making each new release that much more delightful.”
Jared was a great speaker. He was funny, insightful and definitely lived up to the buzz surrounding his keynote. The presentation wasn’t so much about exact techniques or technology, but about how the best teams create great design. He broke it down to these factors:
Process: Every team has a process, whether formal or informal, if they’re getting something done, there was a process
Methodology: The system in which things are done
Dogma: An unquestioned faith independent of any supporting evidence (ex. we have to do web 2.0, we have to do standards, etc.)
Techniques: Individual building blocks
Tricks: Using tools to get the job done, even if they’re the wrong tool.
Jared went on to say the best teams didn’t have a methodology or dogma. Struggling teams try to follow a methodology without success. He says the best teams focused on tricks and techniques. He gave the example of university web sites and how teams approach it. The problem for U sites is that they are really big and there are multiple web sites. General approach: Let’s use templates! Jared states that research shows that there is no evidence that templates result in quality designs. Templates are dogmatic and atempt a methodology.
Jared also talked about the three core UX attributes for great experience design:
Vision: Can everyone on the team describe the experience of using you design five years from now
Feedback: In the last six weeks have you spent more than two hours watching someone use either your design or a competitor’s
Culture: In the last six weeks, have you rewarded a team member for creating a major design failure
The bit on culture was very interesting. He gave the example of what Intuit does for failures. Intuit throws parties for failures, complete with champagne and caviar. Whoever is the main culprit of the failure is brought up to the podium and is berated in a fun way. Then, there is a 20 minute presentation on what they’ve learned from the failure. It’s how we all get better, using failure as learning experience.
Jared went on to talk about the “Five Second Page Test” and having quality ingredients in addition to great preparation, vision, feedback and culture to create gourmet user experiences. Trick and techniques are the way you do it on fast food budget, because you’re using tools you have, even if they’re not quite the right tool. The right tool might be too expensive or doesn’t fit the timeframe.
You can make a great gourmet sauce, without having a sauce pan. You may end up using a large stock pot. That’s ok because you have quality ingredients, a great family recipe, and you’re great with knives. You’re fully ready to create that gourmet experience!
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