User experience blog

As a UX consultant, I’m constantly trying to communicate information which is abstract and complex on various scales. This could range from specific to conceptual and existent to existence-unknown. Some examples (ranked from less abstract to more abstract) of information that I need to communicate on a daily basis (to clients or colleagues or anyone at all) is shown in the figure below:

Some of the above examples can be easily solved by producing wireframes or quick mock-ups, but the tricky ones are explaining mental models, subjective experiences and trying to weave them into a story that you’re trying to tell.

Not surprisingly, a lot of my time at work involves cracking my head to figure out what’s the best way to explain something  so that it makes sense to the person who ’sees’ it, and yes, you guessed it right! Visual artefacts help a lot in communicating these ideas, especially abstract and subjective concepts which shouldn’t be communicated via language alone.

Now the question is what visuals are useful for communicating such ideas? Well, unfortunately there’s no handbook to all the ideas we can possibly present in the world. The good news is there’s no right or wrong way in using visual artefact’s as long as they make sense and explain the message accurately. What works quite well sometimes is using existing diagrams or charts and modifying them to suit what I have to explain.

Telling complicated stories which involve complex processes and abstract concepts don’t usually work well on a screen. Some of the methods which I found useful in the past include using posters full of colour-coded post-it notes, storyboards, sketches, or a bit of all the above methods. In fact, the most effective method involves complementing these different artefact’s (e.g. PowerPoint and handouts of page designs) and weaving them together with the story that you want to tell.

So I say let’s get out of our comfort zone and stop being conscious about our drawing skills or ability to cut and paste things and give this a try the next time a story needs to be told. Oh, and please recycle any materials you produce during this process :)

I recently saw a complete version of the silent era vision of the future, Metropolis. What struck me apart from the prophetic glimpses of video-phones, skyscraper living and robots was the user experience of watching a full-length silent film. Initially, I found it alien and didn’t think my attention span, shortened by Youtube and iTunes, would cope with it.

The lack of speech was intrusive – how could the plot be conveyed without it? The screen titles were sporadic and seemed to repeat the one or two words I’d already managed to lip-read: ‘Maria! Maria!’ The acting and the make-up was over-the-top. Action scenes dragged on some time after I understood what was happening. But then gradually, I started to realise how all these elements were intended.

The screen titles are kept to a minimum to avoid interruptions. The lack of speech is compensated by a glorious film score that becomes integral to the film in a way that soundtracks can’t do now because the music is continuous. Modern film music can sometimes intrude on the experience, signalling too obviously what emotion we’re supposed to feel but in Metropolis the score and the image are coupled so strongly, the feeling of manipulation fades away. Even the hammy acting and the theatrical make-up contribute, becoming a necessary means of expression where the subtleties of dialogue are missing.

The result is a different user experience, one that’s rare now that the blend of music, image, and dialogue has been standardised into a Hollywood norm. But it made me realise that the user experience of films can be varied to good effect by altering the mix of these elements. For example, check out the modern Jeff Mills soundtrack to this classic scene of Maria the ‘man-machine’ coming to life. There’s something chilling and hypnotic about the mix of techno and the 1927 vision of a robot.