Day 10 - Android App Design Principles

Android can be beautiful.  Some Apple fanboys might say otherwise, after all iOS is beautiful too.  But here are some Android Design Principles to help you create better Android experiences.

1)  Enchant Me

• Delight the user in surprising ways.
• Let me make it mine. Users love to customize and personalize to help them feel at home and in control.
• Get to know me.  Learn about the user and place previous choices within easy reach.

2)  Simplify My Life

• Keep it brief and get to the point.
• Pictures are faster than words.
• Never lose my stuff.
• If it looks the same it should act the same.

3)  Make Me Amazing

• Sprinkle encouragement.  Break complex tasks into smaller steps.
• Do the heavy lifting for me.
• Do important things fast.

See all of the Android guidelines at Android Design Principles 

Day 9 - Usability - User Interview Tips

Understand more about your users by doing usability testing.  Used in User-Centered-Interaction-Design, usability research can help you evaluate a product's direction by giving you direct user feedback.

Here are some interviewing tips when conducting research with your users:

1. Get into your "research persona" and be professional so that the interview can feel friendly, casual, and conversational.
2. Smile (no explanation needed :)
3. Be neutral and encouraging. Don't be a grinch.*
4. Don't behave in judgmental or dismissive ways.
5. Ask open ended questions that start with who, what, when, where, why, and how. 
6. Ask follow up questions.
7. Don't pitch nor try and convince the user that your product is the bees knees.
8. Shut up and listen

*Never blame the user (although sometimes you feel like you want to!).

Day 8 - Creating a Persona Checklist

In user-centered design, personas are the fictional characters you create that represent the types of people that will use your product. They're fictional examples of a target user and their goals. Personas are captured in a written summary that includes behavior patterns, goals, skills, attitudes, and environment as well as a few personal fictional details to give the persona a realistic character.

The persona of each character should include the following 8 elements.

1. Name and title.
2. Basics.  As an example, Bob is a 29 year old male living in Boston.  He likes old architecture and machinery and is an early adopter of [your product].
3. Professional and personal background.
4. Quote.
5. Technical background.
6. Favorite apps or websites (1-3).
7. Goals.
8. I need/I want statements.

Day 7 - Improve Your Content Strategy

1)  Put yourself into your user's mindset and create your users personas.  Creating user-focused content that's based on your customer's personas will prevent you from making great content that doesn't resonate with your users.

2)  Ask these questions about your content:

• Will it answer all their questions on the topic?
• Will any of the content frustrate your users?
• What do I expect my users to get out of this content?
• What will the call to action be as a result of this content?

3)  People quickly scan and make snap judgements.  Don't clutter.

4)  Content is not only text. It's also video, imagery, social interactions, and the metadata that underlies it all.

5)  Your content should be valuable, useful, desirable, accessible, credible, findable, and usable.

Day 6 - Copy Good UX Whenever You See it

You don't need to reinvent the wheel.  Study other products and services that are delivering great experiences to their customers.  How are they delighting them?  What are the "Aha" moments that these products and applications deliver?  Borrow and learn from them, then see what you can incorporate into your own design thinking.

Day 5 - Stakeholder Interviews and Understanding the Business

Stakeholders are people who influence a product's direction including the people who fund the product, customers who use the product, the product management team, the technical leads, and the team leads that create, market, and sell the product.  Find people from each discipline to interview.

Basic starter questions:

1. What is the product?
2. Who will use it?
3. What do users need?
4. What customers and users are most important?
5. What challenges do we face?
6. Why?

Day 4 - Business Objectives vs. User Goals - Align Them.

Understand the high level project goals then find the right balance between user goals and business objectives.  Create goals for each section or page.  Align the specific goals so that the business prospers when the user reaches their goal.  Both the business and the user must reach their goals in order for the design to be considered successful.
When testing your designs ask yourself, "Did I get the right balance?".

Generally speaking:

 Client Goal =  Make Money 

 User Goal  =   Make Life Easier or Better 

Day 3 - Three Usability Guidelines for Forms

Here's a few usability guidelines when creating forms:

 * Forms are generally vertical so form labels generally work best above the fields. Users fill forms from top to bottom and putting labels to the left of the form creates two columns.

 * The ideal search box is 27 characters wide according to studies done by web usability expert Jakob Nielsen.   

 * Provide inline validation in forms.  Validation messages are shown immediately after the user types in data to form fields.  Inline validation gives the user real time feedback as they fill in the fields.

Day 2 - Interaction Design iOS Principles - Clarity, Deference, and Depth

When designing an app for Apple's iOS keep their 3 core principles in mind and ask these questions.

1)  Clarity - Ensure that content is easy to read and interact with.  Ask yourself,
 * Am I using words and content that are easy for people to understand?
 * Will users immediately know what the app does when they look at it?
 * Is the app intuitive and can it be used with minimal hand holding?

2)  Deference - The application's interface should not compete with nor overshadow the content.
 * Is the user interface competing with the content?
 * Is the UI overwhelmingly noisy and distracting from the content or functionality?

3)  Depth - Subtle motion and multiple layers create a holistic, compelling experience.
 * Do people get confused or lost in the app?
 * How are things arranged and do screens relate to each other?
 * Is usability diminished?

Day 1 - What's UX in Just a Few Words?

User experience (UX) is how a customer feels when using your product. It generally includes all aspects of how a person interacts with the product or service. A holistic, problem-solving approach to ux design would include the following disciplines:

 * Product Design
 * Service Design
 * Visual Design
 * Information Architecture
 * Content Strategy
 * Interaction Design
 * Prototyping
 * Usability
 * User Research
 * Psychology
 * Accessibility
 * Front end development
 * User Acceptance Testing (UAT)

180 UX Tips in 180 Days

I'm doing a 180 day "don't break the chain" challenge. The objective is to do something, anything for 180 days straight without missing a day. Today is day 1 of my 180 day challenge and I've chosen to read about user experience design, usability, interactions, and UX practices, then write and post a UX tip on the subject each and every day. Off we go!