User experience blog

Just doing it – why writing, sketching and making are useful forms of thinking

By Philip Webb on 7 December 2011

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Writing (words), sketching (pictures) and making (things), the activities of design are all manifestations of the same thing. On the surface of it, they all involve a translation of thoughts into something tangible. They are forms of communication, but I would argue that they also constitute actual thinking and are a useful form of thinking.

Take writing as an example:

For writers, the blank page can be terrifying because the finished document seems so distant. Thoughts are hard to pin down. The writer procrastinates because it’s hard to believe that the required effort will produce anything worthwhile! But with writing, as with any design, the key is to start writing anything.

Once there are words on the page, you’ve started, so the demons of procrastination have been banished. You no longer waste energy worrying that you haven’t started! Also, once you’ve started, you have a vested interest in finishing – it’s now more frustrating to give up than push through to the end.

It doesn’t matter that the quality may not match the writer’s expectations. In fact, it’s highly unlikely that the first words committed to a page will be any good. What matters is that there is something now on the page to change. It’s a cliché that the real hard work of writing is the editing and re-editing that makes the final piece look so effortless. But in truth, it’s much easier to edit than it is to create.

Why does this work? Why is it easier to knock something that already exists into shape, than produce something good from scratch? The act of writing externalises thoughts and makes them concrete – it clarifies the nebulous thoughts you had in the first place. Also, it’s relatively easy to improve the ideas on the paper because once they exist in the world, you can see what’s wrong with them – we are naturally perfectionists. It’s easier to be a critic than a creator!

But the act of writing, whether it’s committing an existing idea to paper or editing text to improve it, is more than that. It’s actually instrumental in adding new stuff. It’s transformative. Like a catalyst, the act of writing actually generates more ideas than the ones on the paper. This is a kind of magic that never fails to amaze me. I have to confess I don’t know how this works with words, but perhaps it’s easier to understand with sketching which is less abstract.

The generative property of sketching:

The traditional view of design is solving a problem that is given to a designer. But a different view is that the definition of the problem is the designer’s task. In other words, a designer can reframe the problem using the constraints at hand, rather than surrendering to them as unchangeable and given.

Sketching is the perfect technique for this reframing concept. For example, an interaction designer might start sketching the interface to satisfy a particular process. He/she starts with some rough layouts on A4 paper where these equate approximately to web pages. But it soon becomes apparent that the interactions are too complex to reasonably fit on one page. Of course, web pages are flexible, but the act of sketching the layout on fixed paper naturally opens various alternatives:

  • Split the process across separate web pages
  • Fit the process onto one long page (perhaps with collapsible/expandable sections)
  • Use one page for the overall process but capture the detail in separate overlays
  • Simplify the process
  • Fit the process onto one wide page (requires horizontal scroll)

Some of these alternatives may not work in practice, but the point is that attempting the first sketch opens the floodgates to new ways to frame the problem and new ways to solve it. As Bill Buxton says in his brilliant Sketching User Experiences book, the more designs the merrier – you need lots of viable alternatives that are sufficiently different from each other in order to make a meaningful choice.

Effectively, sketching involves two purposes that can’t be separated:

  • Use of knowledge to yield a solution
  • Test of that knowledge (i.e. does the solution work?)

The intention behind the initial sketch might not even be formed at that point. Instead it develops ‘in conversation’ with the process of sketching which over time transforms the design. By reflecting upon the external representation of an early sketch, designers can discover unintended consequences that may have remained otherwise hidden.

There is another, perhaps deeper reason, why the activities of design are so fertile. The active doing of design can be enjoyable. If it’s enjoyable then it’s more likely to succeed.

Taking a closer look at making:

Psychologists refer to a pleasurable state of mind, known as flow, which can be attained by performing a challenge which tests our skills. If the challenge is much harder than our capabilities to achieve it, the result is frustration. If the challenge is much easier than our capabilities, the result is boredom. If our capabilities are just enough to meet the challenge, the result is flow.

Perhaps, the design activity that best demonstrates the joy and fulfilment associated with design is making – the least abstract of the three design activities.

The recent Power of Making exhibition at the V&A in London is a celebration of the act of making – over 100 amazing hand-crafted objects, some of them made by amateur enthusiasts. Many of the objects are beautiful like the shark made from the treads of rubber tyres. Some are follies in that they have no purpose or are ultimately unusable like the motorcycle that has 48 cylinders or the prosthetic suit for Stephen Hawking made from wood and rope. But what’s clear as you wonder at these objects is that they were all made for the sheer joy of making them. They are the ultimate expressions of the maker’s skill and, in a sense, the final object is not as important as the process of making. The objects just demonstrate what is possible.

It could be argued that making something isn’t design at all. But an article about the exhibition points out that craft isn’t just a matter of executing a preconceived idea, something that already exists in the mind or on paper. Making is also an active way of thinking, something that can be carried out with no particular goal in mind. It is this type of playful exploration where innovation is likely to occur.

Thinking in relation to design:

So, the activities of design make it easier to improve early designs, and help generate new ideas. In other words, the activities of design aren’t just the by-products of thinking in isolation. The thinking that relates to design goes hand-in-hand with the activities of writing, sketching and making. Thinking cannot be decoupled from doing. At the point at which writing, sketching and making are fluid (such that the designer doesn’t have to concentrate too much on these activities), they actually become thinking.

References:

  • Gedenryd, H. (1998). ‘How Designers Work – Making Sense of Authentic Cognitive Activities’ PhD Dissertation, University of Lund, Sweden.
  • Schon, D. (1992). Design as a reflective conversation with the materials of a design situation. Research in Engineering Design
  • Buxton, B. (2007). Sketching user experiences: getting the design right and the right design.

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An expert review: the user experience of Kinect games

By Alistair Gray on 5 December 2011

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With Christmas on the way & Xbox Kinect games expected to be particularly good sellers, I thought it would be perfect timing to share some findings and thoughts on the  latest game releases for the Kinect as seen at Eurogamer Expo.

What’s so interesting about the Kinect anyway?

Requiring no controller at all, the Microsoft Kinect allows players to interact with the system by moving their body and speaking. This is – or was on its release last year – an entirely new interaction style for the majority of its audience (while there had been gesture-based interaction systems available before, there had never been one made available to the mass-market audience).

A new interaction means new design principles need to be developed, for example how do you select? How do you cancel? Without these design principles every time someone approaches a game for the first time they have to spend time learning how to interact with it – no matter how many other Kinect games they’ve played previously. Common design principles are an essential factor for a great user experience… And unfortunately when the Kinect was first release this was very much a work in progress in the launch titles.

This was understandable. Each game developed for the Kinect release was developed in secrecy and isolation, meaning each game used a different interaction method for common interaction controls – there was no uniformity, no clear design principles.

So, for many people starting up a Kinect for the first time involved a large amount of waving their arms, trying to work out how to interact with the system. It’s now over a year since its release, and a new wave of Kinect games has arrived (including some sequels), so we have done a quick investigation to see if design norms have been established to improve the user experience of Kinect games, and identify which of the latest releases have the best level of interaction and player experience.

At Eurogamer Expo we had the perfect opportunity to find out, observing people trying out the next wave of Kinect games, many interacting with the Kinect for the first time. Have the developers and publishers learnt from each other and started to settle on some standard controls and interactions? We took up position, and started taking notes.

It should be noted that this analysis was carried out at a games exhibition. In no way can this be counted as a thorough user experience study, for example we were unaware which of the players had interacted with a Kinect system previously, or how much they played normally. Also, the noise of the exhibition meant that all sound – instructions and feedback sound effects were lost. However we can safely say that in a game exhibition you should expect to encounter more people who are proficient gamers than the norm and the majority of games have since been playtested by our games experts and the results are very interesting.

So, to the Games!

We chose a variety of Kinect games to observe players interacting with:

Gunstringer

This was a very interesting game, with a very different aesthetic from the norm. The controls are very unusual (one hand is used for movement, the other for shooting), and it does an OK job introducing these at the start of the game.

It works through introducing each of the key interactions one at a time. However we saw several players not really paying enough attention to the on-screen instructions (the text was very small and placed in the corner). For example many players believed that in order to make their on-screen avatar jump they had to themselves… and were able to ‘pass’ the tutorial by doing so. This meant upon reaching the game proper they were baffled by what they perceive as a lack of responsiveness when they jumped, but their avatar refused to do so. This was initially not a problem, but as the game became more complex introducing more tasks and actions, jumping moved too many other body parts that were required for other interactions.

At various points in the game the control scheme changes, for instance introducing 2 handed shooting, and there simply wasn’t enough feedback to inform players of this change. We observed several players struggling to get their avatar to perform one action when they were being asked to perform a different one altogether.

There’s also a common usability issue that other games have already solved – cut scenes that cannot be skipped or paused. I must admit to being surprised such simple user experience issues exist with this generation of games. Its menu controls are fairly effective though – pointing and holding over whatever selection is required. This appeared to be the default interaction expected by many of the players approaching all the games for the first time, so it makes sense to use this where possible.

Dance Central 2

Dance Central 2 has a strong advantage over many of the others at the show, being a follow up to arguably the most successful launch game. This meant the interactions were already know by many of the players when they approached the game.

However in spite of this there are still some issues. As many of the other games available use a ‘pointing’ method to make selections in menus this is many players assumption when playing this game. Several players waited patiently with their hand hovering over their preferred selection, to no effect.

The game uses a hover-to-highlight and swipe-to-select approach, with the hand used being context sensitive (the left hand is used to return to a previous menu, the right to continue to the next). This approach is foreign to new players, meaning several struggled to navigate at first. Having said this many players were able to navigate quickly and painlessly (we assume they may have owned the previous game, and so their skill has carried over to the sequel). However,  even those evidently confident with the swiping motion confronted selection issues as the steady horizontal motion required a very steady and accurate motion which many found difficult to do.

A new feature in the game is the two-player concurrent play… and it needs work. We observed two players who attempted to start a game, only for the system tracking to lose one of the players just before the game commenced. Without realising they proceeded to play single player, unaware there was a problem. Other backing dancers in the scene on screen masked the fact that only one player was being tracked. While this didn’t stop them playing, they were obviously put out at the end when they realised only one player had been tracked. A message was displayed on-screen encouraging the second player to join (with instructions on how to do so) but the instructions were missed by the players, as it was placed at the top of the screen away from the players’ focus of attention.

Kinect Sports Season 2

Kinect Sports Season 2 is a sequel to another launch title, offering a variety of sports mini-games (although we were only able to observe people playing tennis and golf).

The interaction within menus was fairly simple – point and hold over the relevant item. Everyone was able to make their selection with minimal “learning” time required. However, there were incidents of menu items not registering a selection in spite of the player hovering their hand over the relevant item for the correct amount of time.

Issues did start to appear if more than one person attempted to interact with the menu at any one time. The system seemed to struggle, switching control back and forth between the players, meaning they had difficulty selecting anything. Quick disclaimer - This issue may have been due the environmental conditions of the show, however no other game suffered this.

The interactions within the sports themselves were immediately picked up. Players simply knew how and when to swing their arms to play tennis or golf. This partly explains the success of sports games using motion controls – there’s nothing new to learn, just do what feels natural.

One issue is the apparent lack of finesse that’s been put into the game – crowds and scene setting graphics and backgrounds are still and lifeless, it feels like it’s been rushed out to release in time for Christmas. It all undermines the play experience, when everything else is there, which is disappointing.

Rise of Nightmares

This was probably the most ambitious game we saw at the show. It was a first-person horror survival/adventure game, bravely relying entirely on the Kinect. A great idea for moving Kinect games forward into another market  segment and upped the bar of what play experiences had been attempted on the Kinect. From player observation at the show it looked poorly executed and it needed a lot of work.

The game didn’t introduce its controls well, with text heavy introduction screens. Players moved by leaning (as though on a Segway), and turning to each side. The movement controls resulted in several people referring to their avatar as more like a “tank” then a person and when leaning forward didn’t result in the desired forward movement fast enough, players were constantly drifting too close to the sensor.

There were also other interactions required in the game (such as attack, pick up and open door) however these were context sensitive, and the difference between an ‘open door’ and ‘attack’ command was dependant on the avatar being in ‘interact’ mode, activated when the avatar got close enough to (and faced) an object they were able to interact with - which turned out to be a bit too complex. We observed several players ineffectually punching at a door because they had not got close enough, or hadn’t lined themselves up correctly. The feedback appeared clear, so we can only assume the tutorial had failed to introduce this concept properly, or the players had walked up to the game after the tutorial, or the required level of precision was just too difficult to implement for the Kinect at the moment.

Menu interaction relied on presenting three options at a time, and the player making a selection whether they hold their arm forward, left or right. This seemed to work well, but isn’t very scalable for the developers, although that didn’t effect the player (not many games will be able to get away with only offering three options at any one time in a menu). I think most damningly there were staff present at the stand to explain to new players the controls – and they appeared very busy!

However, since play testing the game myself recently I can say that although it takes a bit of time to get to grips with the controls, when you get there the interaction is relatively intuitive and the game itself makes you want to keep playing due to its first person perspective. The forward motion is achieved by putting a foot forward, and when interaction is required the same hover over to select norm has been used by the developers. To interact requires a further action from the player, for instance, to duck under a table you have to first hover and select the ‘interact with (hand) symbol and then physically duck down. There is a lack of instruction for the latter physical aspect but after some trial and error this becomes normal and you interact the way you would in real life.

So, in conclusion I am more impressed having spent some time learning the interactions, or perhaps the right way to put it is learning to act normal, not seek to be told what to do but to try and act how I would in real life. I expect to see more of this type of game on the market soon, and as a hint don’t play this game if you don’t like gore and I suggest not putting it on No Mercy setting first time round!

Fruit Ninja

A fruit slicing game, the user is required to slice fruits that fly up from the bottom of the screen (there are other complexities, but that’s the basics).

In many ways, this was the best game of the lot. The designers seemed aware of the limitations of the Kinect system, and have created a game to fit perfectly within this.It’s surprisingly engaging – we saw many people start by playing a little awkwardly, with small swipes and awkward expressions, before finishing with flying arms and flushed faces.

The players see their silhouettes on screen, so they can see instantly if the Kinect loses track of them. Tracking had a small delay, but players appeared to become accustomed very quickly, and the game was surprisingly accurate.

Menu navigation was quick and efficient. A real positive was taking the action used in the game (slicing fruit) and applying it to the menu systems (slice to select). However as this differs from the norm, there were incidents of players holding their hand over the preferred selection. The game could have potentially supported both interaction styles but there were clear diagrammatic instructions that demonstrated what action was required by the player to continue. There were also points when the desired menu option was too far away from the user, forcing them to move, which is a flaw most game developers have eradicated. It also seemed very sensitive, meaning there was a couple of incidents of accidental selection.

Conclusion - what have we learnt and which is the best?

There are still no common design patterns. With no design patterns developers must remain aware that players will approach their game with no idea how to interact, and design around this.

However these design patterns may have started to evolve – there are common patterns developing across games. The most obvious of these being the hover-to-select menu system, used by 2 of the 5 games. Tellingly, this was the interaction first tried by many players when they first approached each game.

There are two overarching themes found in the issues encountered within each game – the need for clearer feedback and to introduce the controls more clearly (better tutorials). Introducing the controls of each game need to be clearer. Often currently they are heavily reliant on text. If there’s one thing we’ve learnt from hundreds of hours of usability testing and user research is that people don’t read! Feedback is an issue encountered in almost every game (let alone Kinect games). Often the feedback is on the screen, but not placed in an effective location or presented effectively.

Designers and developers often display a lack of understanding around people’s abilities with regards to perception and attention. Designers must also take into account people’s awareness and visual perception when developing both feedback and introducing the controls in the first place.

As to which game is best? I think it depends on your personal requirements for games, which is a bit of a ’sit on the fence’ reply. Fruit ninja and Dance Central 2 were the most popular of the games we tested at Eurogamer Expo and have been very well designed to utilise the natural behaviour of the game player, this was true despite the fact that neither of them use the design norm for selection. For Dance Central 2 this does cause issues as the swiping action isn’t well executed by many players but for Fruit Ninja, as it utilised the movement required during the game was still very natural, it isn’t a problem to go against the developing norm. Also the graphics and backgrounds for both of these games were sharp and detailed, a key to ensuring an great user experience. This detail is where Kinect sports season 2 fell down and fell away from the leading games.

If you’re looking for something a bit more challenging interaction wise, then Gunstringer or Rise of Nightmares are great to get stuck into, the first due to it’s ‘rub tummy while pat head controls’ and the second due to it’s requirement to think, move and interact in a natural manner.

What do you think? Any of the above on your Christmas wish list? Let us know in the comments below!

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What’s happening at Webcredible

By Trenton Moss on 1 December 2011

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To steal a phrase (or perhaps jingle is a more appropriate description) Holiday’s are coming!

With the Christmas tree decorated and advent calendars a plenty in the office (check out our flickr photostream for all our pictures!) we are fully on our way into the holiday season at Webcredible! If you’re in the area, why not pop in for a coffee and a mince pie!

The year has been packed full of events - Volcanoes erupting and ash clouds causing transport issues, BP oil spill, huge numbers of Wikileak and media scandal, rioting in the UK,  The Royal Wedding and so much more. We have had a really busy year at Webcredible too - we have grown our team by bringing in a new Marketing manager, Account director and a number of UX consultants! We have also moved office to a be at the heart of excitement in London Bridge, we have started working on our own Website redesign (coming early next year!), and delivered a whole host of customer experience design, user experience and user testing projects!

So we are nearly at the end of 2011, and with a load of Christmas parties to attend we will all no doubt be in need of a well earned break, but at Webcredible we are already really looking forward to an even more exciting year in 2012 - it’s gearing up to be a great one! We will welcome another team member, Leah, who will be joining our ranks to head up our training services and we are recruiting for a senior UX consultant, a great role with loads of responsibility and working with a wonderful team for some really great clients! Check out the job on our website and if it sounds just up your street then get in touch and send in your CV!

Finally, as my next blog wont be until January I thought I would take a moment to say Merry Christmas, Happy Holiday’s, Happy New Year and all of us at Webcredible wish you all the very best for 2012!

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Which retailer delivers the best multichannel customer experience?

By Gemma Maidment on 30 November 2011

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Having released our Retail Multichannel Customer Experience Report earlier this month and now that we are all meant to be gearing up for Christmas shopping, we thought it would be interesting to get a view of how well you think our sample 15 brands are doing to make you happy, loyal and wanting to go back for more.

Our user experience experts reviewed a number of areas of the chosen retail brands including website, mobile, in-store, home delivery and packaging to see how well the brand experience has been planned and is being executed. Our ultimate retail brand would show excellent delivery of their brand message and product offering that is well targeted and smoothly communicated across all of its customer touch points. So, it’s not only about each digital and physical aspect being well designed to a high level of usability and user experience. The ultimate retail brand would show tight coordination between each platform in terms of look and feel, and provide the up most of flexibility for the customer to choose the touch point most relevant to them at the time. But did we find any?

We looked at the following cross-section of brands, giving them scores for 15 of our top best practice guidelines:

  • Apple Store
  • Bodyshop
  • Blackwells
  • Boots
  • Currys
  • Debenhams
  • Early Learning Centre
  • Hamleys
  • John Lewis
  • Marks & Spencer
  • Next
  • Superdrug
  • Ted Baker
  • Top Shop
  • Waterstones

So, who do you think should get the top spot for cross-channel customer experience?

I’ll give you one clue, our biggest surprise when finalising this report was the very average result from Apple! You can read more about why Apple only positioned mid-table in a separate blog post, which exposes where they lost some of their customer experience points.

We’d love to know who you think deserves to be number one! Drop us a note in the comments below and don’t forget to take a look out our report to check the league table to see if you got it right!

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Maybe Apple isn’t king of customer experience after all

By Philip Webb on 28 November 2011

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As a company, Apple ploughs its own furrow. It has been a hugely successful innovator in terms of its business model and service delivery, re-inventing the way we interact with mobile devices and consume music. So it’s a surprise that the company ends up mid-table in our recent Retail Ecommerce Report. Why hasn’t a company that prides itself on providing the services and technology people crave, that commands such devotion and respect, not trumped the likes of John Lewis and Marks and Spencer. The short answer is that it performs brilliantly on some guidelines and poorly on others.

Some may argue that Apple operates by a different rule book, that their unique way of doing business can’t be judged by conventional guidelines. However, the report investigates the experience of buying and interacting with the brand across multiple channels, rather than the desirability of their products or the persuasion of their brand. The unusual level of corporate good will towards Apple products might outweigh some negative aspects of the experience of buying them, but that’s not to say that improvements can’t be made.

Here is an overview of our findings of Apple’s multichannel customer experience:

  • Mobile customer experience:

As you’d expect, the company excels with its mobile Apple Store app. It opts to put its effort into an app rather than bothering with a mobile-optimised site, which makes sense given its business imperative to steer consumers towards its unique platform for apps. However, it could do more to point customers towards the app. The retailer Next, for example, gives a choice between the app and a mobile site when customers search the web for the company on a mobile device. Apple just loads a site that isn’t optimised for mobile which is not best practice.

  • Cross-channel Mobile and In-store  customer experience:

What really stands out though is the way the company integrates the app with an in-store experience. With the app you can make reservations to join workshops or get 1-to-1 technical help. The design of the app is in tune with the mobile context of its use – ‘I’m out and about, I want to try out the new iPhone, where’s the nearest store, I can be there in an hour, let’s make an appointment…’

  • In-store customer experience:

This leads to the other genius aspect of the Apple retail experience. Apple Stores aren’t really like stores at all. They’re places to admire and try out Apple products. They’re more like demo spaces at slick trade fair stands, or the interactive areas of a science museum. At one

level this helps position them as places of consumer worship where devotees can queue up for product releases and place half-eaten apple cores at the shrine of Steve Jobs. At another level, it’s offering a successful and practical customer experience – lots of eager, knowledgeable Apple geek staff who can’t wait to answer your questions about the products. You can buy there if you want, but the idea is really to get you hooked with no pressure to buy straight away. They’re expensive, luxury items after all – so maybe you need some time to think about it… Apple stores make a confident statement that the shopping experience can be new and different.

So what is going wrong for Apple’s cross-channel customer experience?

Perhaps the way the stores are set up explains why the company didn’t do so well with the multi-channel aspects of flexible customer service. The report examines how easy it is to buy something online and return it in-store. Apple Stores wouldn’t allow me to return the lower value item I bought via the website. The bemused manager claimed it was because they didn’t stock the item in the store. But the stocking policy of the store is of little concern to the consumer. Perhaps it’s possible to return an iPad or an iPhone, but it shows the stores aren’t really designed with the more day to day transaction of money and goods in mind. Perhaps this is due to business prioritisation, or maybe it’s an oversight.

There are other aspects of the experience that don’t match up to the performance of other companies.

  • The lack of ways to manage product search results on the website. It’s true that the site sells only Apple products so perhaps search functionality isn’t that important. But a search for ‘iPhone’ yields 99 results with lots of choice combinations on colour and memory capacity but no sort or filter options to help customers drill down to the right product.
  • And, curiously, while the app does a great job of showcasing the strengths of the physical stores, the website doesn’t - again against best practice multichannel retail.

Steve Jobs was famously obsessive about the details of all Apple’s offerings but the details seem to be missing. At the risk of incurring the wrath of Apple devotees, the verdict on Apple’s multi-channel retail experience is that it’s inconsistent.

What do you think? Should Apple be considered outside the realms of our retail customer experience report due to the nature of the brand? Or do you think that they have, in fact, forgotten some key aspects that matter to customers?

Leave us your thoughts in the comments below!

Images are from Apple’s Covent Garden store information or screen shots from Apple products.

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