What it Takes to do Customer Experience Work

I've been reading the fantastic customer experience newsletter Good Experience by Mark Hurst, founder of Creative Good, for several years now and I always enjoy his insights into learning to understand what your customers want.  This week, he proposed a quiz of sorts, asking readers how they would solve a real problem.  He posits that in order to be good at customer experience work, you need to be good at three things:

1. Empathy: being able to see things from the customer's perspective
2. Analysis: noticing all the little things at work leading to an issue
3. Synthesis: putting together observations and insights to create real solutions

Mark's answer to issue of patrons sitting on a bench that is actually part of an art exhibit is to change the wording of a small sign on the floor from "Do Not Touch" to "Do Not Sit." I think this is a good start but my first thought was to put some kind of barrier, like clear glass or plastic, around the installation.  Then I thought about it a little more and maybe that would disturb the flow of the piece or something. (I am not that familiar with art and museums, though.)

My solution would be to raise the installation and place it on a platform about two feet high so that it is high enough to discourage sitting but remains visually unobstructed.

The Principles of Universal Design

I recently came across the Center for Universal Design at NC State University and I think this is going to be a great resource. Among its publications is a list of the Principles of Universal Design which provides seven principles and further guidelines for designing, well, anything. In short, these are

1. Equitable Use: The design is useful and marketable to people with diverse abilities.
2. Flexibility in Use: The design accommodates a wide range of individual preferences and abilities.
3. Simple and Intuitive Use: Use of the design is easy to understand, regardless of the user’s experience, knowledge, language skills, or current concentration level.
4. Perceptible Information: The design communicates necessary information effectively to the user, regardless of ambient conditions or the user’s sensory abilities.
5. Tolerance for Error: The design minimizes hazards and the adverse consequences of accidental or unintended actions.
6. Low Physical Effort: The design can be used efficiently and comfortably and with a minimum of fatigue.
7. Size and Space for Approach and Use: Appropriate size and space is provided for approach, reach, manipulation, and use regardless of user’s body size, posture, or mobility.

It's easier to see how some of these apply to software and website development versus others, but I think there is something to be gained by keeping all these principles in mind when creating user interfaces. As an added bonus, the Center has also provided convenient printout poster versions.

Usability.gov Guidelines

In one of my classes this semester, Internet Applications, we've been reading through a publication available from usability.gov:

Usability.gov is the primary government source for information on usability and user-centered design. It provides guidance and tools on how to make Web sites and other communication systems more usable and useful.

I've been really impressed with the information available from this site and the thoroughness of  the guidelines, which can be downloaded chapter by chapter, or as the full publication The Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines (PDF, 20.64MB). Ironically, these guidelines are only available as a PDF—there is no HTML equivalent which is an accessibility failure.

If you're looking for a quick reference for website best practices, I highly recommend you check out the resources from usability.gov.

Project Proposal

My project proposal has officially been accepted by the University and I am registered for INF 388L for the spring 2012 semester.  Below is the working outline:

This project will give the student an opportunity to work with a user experience design team at a large corporation, helping to improve the experience of customers using OpenText software.  The student will be creating a prototype (and other information architecture-related deliverables such as wireframes) that translates business requirements for a new version of an enterprise software product (OpenText Web Experience Management 8.2) into a graphical user interface.  The student will be working within the context of established corporate UX guidelines, ensuring compatibility of interface labels, considering the impact of user flows through the system and evaluating feedback from the development team and software users.

The student will work on site at the OpenText corporate offices within the Development – R&D group as an extension of her current employment responsibilities in the IT department, which has been negotiated with her manager and agreed upon by her Field Supervisor.  The student will apply 125 hours to this project, approximately 9 hours per week for 14 weeks.  The project is scheduled to run from January 16-April 27, 2012 but could start as early as December 2011 due to changes in project planning and availability.

The Field Supervisor will meet with the student weekly to evaluate the status of the project by receiving updates on the progress of deliverables including any rework requested.  Development is expected to occur within an Agile environment utilizing Scrum methodologies, such as short daily meetings with stakeholders and work sprints.  The Faculty Advisor will meet with the student and the Field Supervisor at least once on site to monitor project status.

The culminating product will be a prototype of a UI which will be used by Engineering to develop release 8.2 of OpenText Web Experience Management.

User Experience Heuristics Review

As part of OpenText's "experience is everything" initiative, the usability and overall user experience of the company's software products are getting more attention.  To this end, the UX team was asked to create a set of heuristics against which sub-sets of a project or an entire release could be evaluated.  I was fortunate enough to be asked to sit in on the review in the Austin office along with members of two product engineering teams.  The goal of these heuristics is to provide specifics on how to make things better and should be seen as a yardstick for best practices. The workbook we reviewed was very thorough and provided guidelines in 16 areas:

1. Task efficiency
2. Control
3. Guidance
4. Accessibility
5. Feedback
6. Interaction
7. User Input
8. Validation
9. System State
10. Layout
11. Appearance
12. Text
13. Messages
14. Consistency
15. OS and Browser
16. Mobile

It was interesting to hear the feedback from the product teams; overall reactions were positive but it was clear there were some areas that still needed to be addressed.  One particular area of stickiness for both product teams is the issue of localization and creating flexible designs that allow for more and often wider or longer text, labels and system controls in languages other than English, though English is the primary interface language used during development.  I am interested to see how this gets addressed going forward.

And So It Begins

It's been a long, long time since I tried to blog--I just don't have that much to say all that often.  But, as a way to keep my faculty adviser apprised of my capstone project, I have set up this blog.  And I think it will be a nice, historical record for myself as well down the road.  The title, User Experience Design in Enterprise Software is more of a working title that I came up with for my project proposal so it might change over time, who knows.  I'll post the project proposal in another entry; this was was just to get the ball rolling.

I struggled with whether to install Wordpress on my own domain and host the blog there, or use a standalone service like Blogger; whether to create a blog for me or just for this project--I tend to over think things.  This time, I've decided for now that 1) I can always move this blog to my own domain and 2) nothing precludes me from posting non-capstone related stuff here if I feel like it. :D  Thanks for coming along with me!