Web Design and Typography

via InfoDesign

The folks at Information Architects Japan have an interesting article about typography online. The title says it all: Web Design is 95% Typography.  A little exaggerated in propotion but they make a good point: typography online is often neglected and misunderstood. I agree with this point. Finding a good information design specialized in online typography.

The resources at the end of the article are really good.

The problem I have with this article, though, is that it’s not well written. (Note that this comment is not based on grammar alone as I realize the authors may not be native English speakers–it’s more about the structure and argument presentation). This is something that annoys me more and more. Maybe I’m getting like a grumpy old man as I get older, but writing also seems to be a forgotten craft. There are some bad writers out there. But content still is kind, you know.

Maybe I’ll write an article with the title “Web Design is 95% Writing Well.”

Personas and Innovation

In preparation for my talk at the Euro IA conference this year, I’m re-reading Diffusion of Innovations by Evertt Rogers. I came across this statement and immediately thought of personas:

One of the most distinctive problems in the diffusion of innovations is that the participants are usually quite heterophilous. A change agent, for instance, is more technically competent than his or her clients. This difference frequently leads to ineffective communication as the two individuals do not speak the same language. (p. 19)

Personas are a way for designers to conceptually deal with a hetergenous target group. They build the necessary empathy for the user to allow us designers to “communicate” effectively with them through our designs. They also help focus our attention. But in light of the above quote, personas may also lead to solutions that are more readily adopted by the target population. Why? Because the use of personas in design results in more satisfaction for the users they represent. As Alan Cooper says in The Inmates Are Running The Asylum:

The broader a target you aim for, the more certainty you have of missing the bull’s-eye. If you want to achieve a product-satisfaction level of 50%, you cannot do it by making a large population 50% happy with your products. You can only accomplish it by singling out 50% of the people and striving to make them 100% happy. It goes further than that. You can create an even bigger success by targeting 10% of your market and working to make them 100% estatic. It might seem counterintuitive, but designing for a single user is the most effective way to satisfy a broad population.

So if a common goal of innovators is to have a target population actually adopt the innovation at hand, personas are a tool that help meet that goal. Now, that might sound obvious but it’s good to have an explicit reasoning that marries the concept of innovation adoption and personas. You can throw on to your pile of arguments for using personas.

And vice-versa: when developing an innovation or innovation programme be sure to use personas to focus your attention. This means that personas should represent dimensions such as adoption rate in the persona description (e.g., early adoptors or laggards?).  Focusing on both ends of the spectrum at the same time may be more harmful than helpful in many cases.

Paper on the Effectiveness of Personas

A new research paper investigates the effectiveness of personas in design teams to arrive at usable designs: Real or Imaginary: The effectiveness of using personas in product design, By Frank Long. People have advocated the usefulness of personas for a long time now–from Cooper to Pruit and Adlin. It’s good to see some more solid evidence to support the use of personas.

Here’s the abstract:

The use of personas as a method for communicating user requirements in collaborative design environments is well established. However, very little research has been conducted to quantify the benefits of using this technique. The aim of this study was to investigate the effectiveness of using personas. An experiment was conducted over a period of 5 weeks using students from NCAD. The results showed that, through using personas, designs with superior usability characteristics were produced. They also indicate that using personas provides a significant advantage during the research and conceptualisation stages of the design process (supporting previously unfounded claims). The study also investigated the effects of using different presentation methods to present personas and concluded that photographs worked better than illustrations, and that visual storyboards were more effective in presenting task scenarios than text only versions.

Design de Navegação Web – DWN in Portuguese

Got an unexpected package this morning: a copy of Design de Navegação Web, the Portuguese translation of Designing Web Navigation.

Emotions and Design – Mood Maps

via Steve Baty, I came across a post by Will Evans called Design Ethnography & Mood Maps. He touches on two of my favorite topics at the moment: ethnography and emotions in design. In particular, Will introduces the concepts of Mood Maps to record user emotions. In a nutshell, mood maps are about mapping the emotional states people have to phases of a process.

This is similar to what I recommend in what I call the Information Search Experience (ISX), which I presented at the IA Summit in Austin TX in 2004. See my presentation: Information Search Experience: Emotions in Information Seeking. Of course, I was focused on information seeking in my model, but the principle is the similar: uncover the different states of emotions people have and map them back to phases of a given process. Here are two publications where I also present this idea:

• “I’m Feeling Lucky: The Role of Emotions in Seeking Information on the Web,” Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 57(6), 813-818 (April 2006).
• “Feeling Lucky? Emotions and Information Seeking,” interactions, v. XI.5 (September-October 2004).

I also present this very briefly in Designing Web Navigation. Here’s the excerpt from the end of Chapter 2:

Emotions in Information Seeking
Information seeking on the web, in particular, is an emotional experience. Unfortunately, confusion and uncertainty tend to dominate feelings of enthusiasm and optimism. For many web surfers, the joy of discovery and pride of learning can be rare feelings against a backdrop of frustration and a sense of being overwhelmed.
When discussing the emotions users have while finding information on the web, it is critical to look at common situations and states users are in. Here is where patterns in basic human information-seeking behaviors give rise to a framework for both evaluating and designing web-based search and navigation systems.

Information Search Process
A holistic approach to explaining the user’s experience in information seeking, the Information Search Process (ISP) is a model of searching for information with a difference: it takes emotions into account. Developed by Carol Kuhlthau, a professor at Rutgers University, the ISP has six stages:

• Initiation – The user becomes conscious of a gap in knowledge. Feelings of uncertainty and apprehension are common, and the main task is to recognize a need for information.
• Selection – Uncertainty often gives way to feelings of optimism and a readiness to begin searching. The task is to identify and select the topic to be investigated. Thoughts are forward-looking and attempt to predict an outcome.
• Exploration – Feelings of uncertainty, confusion, and doubt return. A general inability to precisely express an information need commonly results in an awkward interaction with the search system.
• Formulation – Rising confidence and decreasing uncertainty mark a turning point in the process. Forming a focus becomes the chief task as thoughts become clearer.
• Collection – Interaction with the information system is most effective and efficient. Decisions about the scope and focus of the topic have been made and a sense of direction sets in. Confidence continues to increase.
• Presentation – The goal now is to complete the search and fulfill the information need. A sense of relief is common, as well as satisfaction or dissatisfaction (in the case of a negative outcome). Thoughts center on synthesizing and internalizing what was learned.

Kuhlthau also observed a “dip” in confidence often seen after a seeker began looking for information and started to encounter overwhelming, perhaps conflicting information. This contradicts the previous assumption that confidence steadily increases as more information is found. A seeker “in the dip” can experience uncertainty, confusion, and even anxiety until a focus is formed or a search is broken off.

The existence of that dip suggests a gap between users’ natural information use and information system design. Acquiring more information in initial stages (particularly in Exploration) increases rather than decreases uncertainty. In terms of emotions, searching for information is a discontinuous endeavor with highs and low of confidence and certainty.

Tailoring the ISP
In an attempt to avoid the dip, you can use Kuhlthau’s theoretical model as the framework for navigation design, tailoring an ISP to reflect the actions, thoughts, and feelings for your site visitors. The steps are:

1. Segment users and create profiles. An ISP only applies to a particular target group.
2. Identify the information seeking stages and user goals for each. The established phases will serve as a starting point, but must be adapted.
3. Record the typical feelings, thoughts, and actions at each stage.
4. Map stakeholder goals to each stage. What is your organization trying to achieve and how does it fit in with the natural navigation process of users?
5. Derive features and requirements for the site that map to each phase in the seeking process

This is best summarized in a large table. The columns are labeled Actions, Thoughts, Feelings, Features, and Business Goals. The rows are the stages in your tailored ISP.

20 User Experience Books You Should Own

UX By Design has a list of 20 UX books they feel every designer should own. See their post 20 User Experience Books You Should Own.

Designing Web Navigation is #4 on the list. I’m not sure if this is a ranked list or not, but it’s still nice to appear towards the top. AndI’m in good company–places 1-3 rightfully go to:

1. Subject To Change: Creating Great Products & Services for an Uncertain World, by Peter Merholz
2. Communicating Design: Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning, by Dan Brown
3. Contextual Design: A Customer-Centered Approach to Systems Designs (Interactive Technologies), by Hugh Beyer