UXer : Nice picture of a park, right?

Person : Umm… that park is jacked up. The grass and hedges are all trampled…

UXer : You see people ruining perfectly good landscaping… I see patterns, in human behavior and desire.

Take a closer look:

We’ve all seen this and at one point or another use these desire-lines as a routine part of our commute.

As long as humans have roamed the earth, we’ve carved these paths… “I’m here and I need or want to go there.”  If you and others repeat the pattern enough times, a path is forged.

In photo overlays, the red paths are high through-put pathways and the white overlays are low-flow alternate paths.  In the landscape, we’re able to see these marks because the trends trample down plants and compact the soil to a point where things can’t grow.

Once the trends emerge, we can get a sense of what the original design deficiencies were and, as designers, set out planning design solutions to meet the expressed needs.

The interesting thing about human behavior is that, while we all have varying degrees of tolerance in design or system deficiencies, we all modify our behavior to make up for system deficiencies in the name of getting things done.  Often times, these behavioral changes take place subtly and over longer periods of time such that the users themselves aren’t even aware they have bent themselves around a broken system.

It didn’t take much to see these areas and make some hardscaping recommendations, where the evidence is tangible.  But as a system designer, a user interface designer…  a UXer, how do you “see” these desire-lines in the digital landscape?

You have a number of alternative methods depending on available data and resources.  I’m going to cover the following:

• Usage Metrics
• Usability Testing
• Contextual Research

1) Usage Metrics

2)Usability Testing

In any user dependent or focussed system, we say always say “test early, test often”.  5 users can demonstrate 85% of the problems in an interface, given that the probability a user would encounter a problem is about 31%.  Formal usability tests are great for spotting gross system deficiencies, and gathering both quantitative metrics on how a user performs in the system (time to completion, number of errors, task completed, etc) and qualitative metrics on how the system performs in the perception of the end user  (subjective satisfaction, ease of use, etc).

The pre-requisite is knowing what the usability goals are, which parts of the system to test (tasks, workflows, features, designs) and how to recruit for the test.   Usually a good look at the usage metrics should help point to areas that need testing.

For recruiting, you need to screen appropriately to avoid heavy biases that can skew the study results.  This takes some level of understanding about the users and behaviors that trend moderate-to-center of the behavioral dimensions you want to target.

You’ll see which specific design or workflow is tripping up or getting in the way of users task or goal completion.  But unless your moderator is asking the right questions, “Why did you do that?”, “What were you trying to accomplish by doing that?”, “What did you expect to happen when you did that?”, “How would you change this design to better meet your need?”  It’s difficult to get a glimpse into the human intent behind the usability problem.

Going back to the landscaping image, the “user” intent is quite clear…  ”I’m here and I want to go there” – but in the context of system usage, often times the interface is such a complex labyrinth to task completion that it’s difficult to understand all the subtle nuances that impact our behavior.  This is particularly relevant point because most often, usability studies are performed in a lab setting and or the user is removed from their natural context of use.  This brings me to Contextual Research.

3) Contextual Research

In the past 10yrs we’ve conducted a good deal of these studies and the results are always extremely insightful, not only for the system stakeholders, but often times for the subject who realizes how contorted their processes have become to make up for system deficiencies.

If you could draw marks in time and space, the general trend lines go from in-system workflows to jumping in and out of other systems, documents, emails, notes on paper, phone calls, IMs and back to the system to complete the any given task.  Most times when we ask, “Why are you doing that…”  they’re unaware that they’re doing anything out of the ordinary, and once it dawns on them, they realize… “Well… I need this piece of information to complete this task.”

BOOM!

This is a perfect example of a user jumping off and blazing their own to make up for gaps in the system design.  These contextual inquiries have been priceless engagements for our clients who not only discover opportunities for enhancements they were never aware of, but often times entirely new interaction models that had never been considered that bring widespread organizational efficiencies that can save millions of dollars.

Next time you find yourself walking along one of these…

 Think about what other things you do (in your job, online, or at home) interacting with any technology that feel “off the designed path”  and know that you’re probably not alone…  that somewhere in time and space is a beaten path waiting to be discovered and designed for.

I once heard Steve Smith (@orderedlist) say:

“Design is: Intentionally making things Amazing!”  I totally agree, but you need to know the problem space first.

By Jon Fukuda

Quick update: I just found a nice related post by Bella on www.uxgroundswell.com

Everyone’s getting excited about interactive technologies making their way into the automotive space. Social web features like twitter, facebook, foursquare and others have been in our cars for several years now, just on our mobile devices and not packaged as a piece of the overall dashboard experience. Product managers at all major car-manufacturing houses have been thinking about ways to bring technology of today and the future into our cars. To date, a lot of teaser videos and commercials have been showing Minority Report like heads up displays on the dash, touch screen windows and voice command interactions and some of these are starting to come on line… others are still in R&D and off in the distance. So where are we in the meantime?

Over the past several years, Onboard Touch Screen Consoles have been making their way into the market… and they’re all the rage! While the trend started in the mid 90′s with outboard GPS systems and LED media displays, there’s been a lot of momentum behind putting integrated systems into center consoles of vehicle and trying to pack it with as many features as possible.

While the gadget lover in all of us is starting to feel all warm and fuzzy, there are definitely some inherent risks. Basically, anything taking your attention off the road is bad. So it seems the “don’t talk on the phone or text and drive” sensibility is giving way to our gadget luv.

But let’s take a second and acknowledge some contextual realities. You’re in roughly 4000lbs of metal with a combustible engine moving 25-35mph in the city and 55-75mph on the highway. Does it make sense to be taking your hands off the wheel and eyes off the road? The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) has taken the position that:

Some technologies are simply too distractive for most drivers. Touch-screen computers found in most Ford models used to control the radio, climate, and in-car navigation was said to be “overly complicated and distracting” according to Consumer Reports. And, some vehicles in the GM lineup offer communication tools to verbally update Facebook and Twitter pages – a feature too distractive for most drivers.

Here are some approaches to packing your car with technology and apps in a way that doesn’t interfere with your driving:

1) Interactive Apps in the Car are for the Passenger, Not the Driver




This is pretty straightforward… keep the distracting tech geared towards passengers and steer clear of putting the driver’s attention at risk.

2) You’re car is the interface… not your fingers/eyes.

This is the really innovative approach… the car and it’s native features are an extension of you. There is a lot of untapped opportunity to be explored in this concept.

Here are some other ideas worth exploring:
Take advantage of where the driver’s hands already are… the wheel. Thanks to advances in Mobile, tech and gadget users are getting used to a wide vocabulary of haptic gestures. Add text to speech and voice commands technology and you’ll really get some rich user experiences without taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road.

Whatever the approach – there will be mishaps along the way. Today’s ubiquitous cup older has had a long journey from glove compartment trays and door holsters to armrests, center consoles and dash boards, the cup holder seems to be a feature the some manufactures “get” and others don’t.

The only way to continuously improve designs towards efficiency and usability is to explore opportunities, prototype, test, and tweak. Who knows this better than Donald Norman, author of Emotional Design. Donald states that Audi’s approach to the cup holder seems to “reflects the old-fashioned German automobile design culture, which proclaims that the engineer knows best, and considers studies of real people driving their vehicles irrelevant.”

We’re keeping an eye on interaction design in the automotive space, things are about to get interesting! Let us know what interactive automobile experiences you’ve had that either work or fail – we want to hear from you! Thanks for reading.

Learn how our friends at Promet are taking Cab services mobile with Green Cab.

It’s DrupalCon Week!  Our team has been busy getting our materials together for the convention and we haven’t had much time to blog or tweet about things, so here’s the skinny.

For nearly two years now, Limina has been collaborating with Rockstar Drupal development team Promet Source headed up by CEO, Andrew Kucharski (@akucharski).  Together, Limina and Promet have delivered SBA.gov, DiscussRH, CGCGinc, OptionIt, and two other amazing, (yet to be disclosed) projects currently underway that we can’t wait to share with you all. Together, the team has worked on customizing more than 18+ community contributed Drupal modules including:

• Organic Groups
• Drupal Forums
• Content Tagging/Rating
• Social Distribution
• Content Administration
• Category and Geo Targeting
• Cart Timer
• Open Selector
• Open Layers
• Mega-Dropdown Menu
• and bunch of home-brewed custom modules

Have you ever wondered what a solar power plant looks like?

Well, we got to see one in action and it is quite impressive! There are multiple fields of thousands of mirrors and all of the mirrors in each field are directed to reflect the sun’s light at a single point (called a ‘boiler’) to harness the heat and literally boil the water inside. The steam that is created is sent to the turbine where the electricity is generated.

Limina was asked by eSolar to help redesign the application they use to control the mirrors – essentially, controlling the amount of heat that is directed to the boiler.

eSolar designs and develops Concentrating Solar Power (CSP) projects that start at 46MW and are scalable to any size. Limina worked with eSolar to develop a sophisticated conceptual design for their solar power plant control system. Limina used in-person interviews to inform the requirements from a workflow perspective and met with members of the eSolar engineering team to understand the technical parameters of the design. The output was a set of detailed designs that effectively incorporated user and technical requirements – providing an engaging, intuitive, and interactive user experience.

The on-site interviews allowed us to see the users in action and design a concept that gave them the visibility they needed at the various levels of detail – from plant to field to heliostat (individual mirror). Our observations also helped us to understand the hierarchy of information, from most important to least, which allowed us to create effective dashboard designs. The software will be displayed on multiple monitors, and the Limina team designed the application to make full use the available screen real estate.

This was an exciting project for us, and it reinforced the importance of collecting first-hand data from actual users in a real setting as an input to any design process.

Key takeaways:
Project process

• Fast concept iterations helps to avoid unnecessary detailed design. We designed 8-10 concepts in one day and narrowed them down to two during our end of day meeting with the client team.
• Frequent communication with client team. We were able to get feedback early and often from our client that helped the design progress much more quickly.

Application concepts

• Users need to be aware of the plant status at a glance – situational awareness is key.
• Using flags and alerts is more effective than displaying raw data. It allows the user to focus on problem areas and drill into individual issues. They don’t have to spend their time scanning the data looking for problems.
• Tailored information displays will give operators an opportunity to build expertise in systemic trends across the power plant – allowing the user to head off potential issues before they become flagged as problems.

“The deliverable and the process was well above and beyond what I personally expected, and the work output will be (I foresee) extremely useful in our development of our software….It’s snazzy, it’s professional, it follows the operator workflow (which is important), and it makes operation clear and easy.  Thank you!”

- Matt Hartshorn (eSolar Development Engineer)