Category Archives: design

Speak easy, or is that easily?

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Our sister company Optimal Usability won a Plain English Award recently for their clear and concise web content. So I thought now would be a great time to speak about plain English power in our branch of the Optimal family.

I’ve always thought plain English (or any other language!) is to content what usability is to design. It just makes things easier to read, to understand and to act on. It means not trying as hard to be comprehensive as comprehensible.

A quick test for plain English is whether you can understand something after just one reading. This rule of thumb guides all our communication: on our website, in our usability products, even our emails.

Plain English doesn’t mean boring, dumbed down or even everyday English. We are often dealing with complex information and that makes the challenge even greater, and more rewarding. Turning technical specs or instructions into plain English can sometimes feel like translating from one language to another. You’ll know you’ve nailed it when that sentence you’ve laboured over finally feels effortless.

If I was to offer just one tip for making your writing crystal clear it would be:

  1. Read your writing aloud
    You’ll stumble over anything that doesn’t need to be there.

And then if you begged me for another pearl of wisdom it would be:

  1. Put it down for a few days
    and then go back to tip #1

Of course plain English wouldn’t have the universal profile it does today without the schadenfreud factor. Every year crimes against clarity are celebrated for their ability to confound as much as perfect specimens are held up as shining examples.

After you’ve checked out the winners in the WriteMark Plain English Awards be horrified at the ‘brainstrains’ and the Plain English UK Golden Bull awards.

My personal favourite is from the Canadian Emergency Medical Service news report after a man had been attacked and lost part of his ear. They reported it like this:

‘He was missing a body part to the side of his head due to the assault. Luckily he was [in] stable and non-life-threatening [condition].’

Sometimes you need to know how not to do something before you can learn to do it well.

Lying to yourself

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Recently we observed a participant in usability testing fail most of the tasks we set him. Surprisingly, when we asked him if he found anything difficult he responded, “No, not at all. BrandX.com is the best!”.

This is not uncommon. In another recent usability test we ran, many participants attributed mistakes to some fault of their own instead of embracing the uncomfortable alternative – the brand they love had a lousy website.

Recent psychology and neuroscience research point to an uncomfortable fact -most cognitive activity (think 95%) is happening in our subconscious andinaccessible to our conscious mind. It appears that the rational “conscious” part of our brain is being notified after a decision has been made by our subconscious. Our conscious brain then has the unenviable job of explaining and rationalising decisions made by our subconscious.

For example, I see a donut and think “That looks good, but I probably shouldn’t eat it. Then again, I didn’t eat breakfast so maybe I should.” I think I’m in control. In reality, my subconscious has already determined to eat the donut. Without me knowing, my conscious mind has rationalised my subconscious decision.

Similarly, test participants will tell us things that they genuinely believe is true – but their behaviour would suggest otherwise. A little frightening really isn’t it?

This makes me nervous about poorly constructed focus groups and surveys. If the research is true (there’s a lot of it to suggest it is) – it forces a rethink of qualitative research.

What do you think? How do you get around not only facilitator bias, but bias inherent with participants themselves?

Picking the right tool for the job

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Life as a UX professional is busy. One day you’re trawling through pages of content, then you’re doing wireframes, next you’re user testing and not to mention presenting results to clients.

We built our tools to help our consultants work more effectively. We have been asked about when the best time is to use which tool. So here are our answers. In general it pays to keep in mind that our tools can be used for generative purposes or evaluative purposes.

We have categorised our recommendations into how you may use our tools depending on what you’re doing. They include:

  • Information architecture (IA) overhaul
  • Intranet
  • Navigation
  • Redesigns
  • A/B split testing

Continue reading →

Have you experienced cute design?

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One of the guys was installing Microsoft Office on his home notebook that he brought in today. The DVDs came in a fancy new plastic case with soft rounded corners. Its contents gracefully swivel out courtesy of an innovative corner hinge. The catch: you have to get it open first.

Scissors? Teeth? Hammer? Just about everyone in the office had a go and wound up wanting to smash it into a thousand tiny pieces. To me, this is an example of cute design. An over-enthusiastic designer had obviously thought that this infuriating piece of packaging was going to take the world by storm. The cuteness won out and suddenly it was a great idea.

Is it just me, or would a simple usability test have shown that this DVD case was a bad idea?

What are you working on that has cute design? Chances are, you already know about it but the others can only see how cute it is. Test it and get some data to support your case.

Values as a design tool – our manifesto

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A few days ago, the following question was posed on this mailing list:

Does anyone have examples of or can point to companies who have brand guidelines/principles that are truly useful to guide and direct product/service development (not just advertising and marketing messages)?

We do.  It’s our manifesto that we use to drive our business, product development and design decisions.

The interest from sharing our manifesto with those on the mailing list has prompted us to consider whether we share it more widely.  This is a little intimidating because:

  • The manifesto is a draft and far from being what we would consider done.
  • Anyone and everyone can now hold us accountable to whether we live up to it.

Yet, we believe that our core values can, and will, drive our decision making.  Values can, and should, be another design tool.  Each design feature or decision should be in line with one of our core values.  This simplifies what we’re about and provides a real focus on what is in and what is out.

Here is the Optimal Workshop manifesto.