Thoughts, ideas and solutions on UX, web accessibility and design
Aled, one of our Senior UX Consultants spent a day riding in an ambulance as part of a UK-wide service UX design project. Here are his thoughts.
Focus groups have a reputation for generating ideas, the theory being that listening to other peoples' thoughts and insights triggers fresh ideas. Focus groups are often used within the UX industry to generate ideas for possible new products or services, but may not always be the best method to use.
Personas are archetypes that bring to life a particular set of users in a useful and reliable way. Andrew Grimes, Principal User Experience Consultant at Nomensa discusses when to use them and why.
The roles and experiences of both the user and facilitator within the usability testing process need to be considered as an active, contributory factor in the outcomes of traditional usability testing. When a user comes into our test lab to volunteer for a usability testing session, we need to acknowledge that they are a not simply a unanimous voice of our audience but a person entering a novel environment, with all of the concerns and behaviours that entails.
As our personal collections of web-enabled devices grow, so too do the contexts in which we might use them. A single mobile device can be used across a seemingly infinite range of conditions and environments, but add a second, third or fourth device and the number of ways in which they might be used and used together expands exponentially.
Most of our decisions on a daily basis will be driven by some sort of emotional factor rather than thinking or reason. We process more than 11 million pieces of sensory information every second. We can only attend to about 40 of those but the rest is not disregarded - it's processed. As interaction designers we need to learn to dive below the surface and uncover the factors that will help us design deeper meaning.