Emotional. Playful. Delightful.These words resonate with user experience (UX) practitioners. We put them in the titles of design books. We build products that move up the design hierarchy of needs, with the goal to go beyond just reliability, usability, and productivity. We want to truly delight the people who use our products.Designing for delight has parallels in the physical world. I see this in restaurants which offer not only delicious food but also an inviting atmosphere; in stores that don’t just sell clothes but also provide superior customer service. Whole industries operate on designing for delight.
The amusement industry has done this for over 500 years. The world’s oldest operating amusement park, Bakken, first opened for guests in 1583 – about 300 years before the first modern roller coaster. Amusement parks experienced a boom in growth in the US in the 1970s. As of November 2014, China had 59 new amusement parks under construction. Today, hundreds of millions of guests each year visit amusement parks throughout the world.I've been fortunate to work in the amusement industry as the owner of a digital UX design company called Thrill & Create. Here is my story of how I got to do this kind of work, and my observations as a UX practitioner in this market.
Making user-centred purveyors of joy
I've been a fan of amusement parks for most of my life. And it’s somewhat hereditary. Much of my family still lives in Central Florida, and several of them have annual passes to Walt Disney World. My mom was a Cast Member at the Magic Kingdom during its opening season.Although I grew up living east of Washington, DC, I spent most of my childhood waiting for our annual trip to an amusement park. I was a different kind of amusement enthusiast: scared to death of heights, loath to ride roller coasters, but so interested in water rides and swimming that my family thought I was a fish. The love for roller coasters would show up much later. But the collection of park maps from our annual trips grew, and in the pre-RollerCoaster Tycoon days, I would sketch designs for amusement parks.
In college, my interest in amusement received a healthy boost from the internet. In the mid-2000s, before fan communities shifted toward Facebook, unofficial websites were quite popular. My home park — a roller coaster enthusiasts’ term for the park that we visit most frequently, not necessarily the closest park to us — had several of these fansites.The fansites would typically last for a year or two and enjoy somewhat of a rivalry with other fansites before their creators would move on to a different hobby and close their sites. The fansites’ forums became an interesting place to share knowledge and learn history about my home park. They also gave us a place to discuss what we would do if we owned the park, to echo rumors we had heard, and start our own rumors. Some quite active forums still exist for this.
Of course, many of us on the forums wanted to be the first to hear a rumor. So we follow the industry blogs, which are typically the first sources of the news. Screamscape has been announcing amusement-industry rumors since the 1990s. And Screamscape and other sites like it announce news not only in the parks but around the industry. Regular Screamscape readers learn about ride manufacturers, trade names for each kind of ride, industry trade shows, and much more. And the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions (IAAPA) keeps an eye on the industry as well.Several years ago, I transitioned from being a software developer to starting a user experience design company. It is now called Thrill & Create. I was faced with a challenge: how to compete against the commoditization of freelance design services. Ultimately, selecting a niche was the answer. And seeing IAAPA’s iconic roller coaster sign outside the Orange County Convention Center during a trip to Central Florida was all I needed to shift my strategy toward the amusement industry.
What UX looks like in the Amusement Industry
Periodically, I see new articles about amusement parks in UX blogs. Here are my observations about how UX looks in the industry, both in the physical world and the digital world.
Parks are focused on interactive rides
The amusement industry is known for introducing rides that are bigger, taller, and faster. But the industry has a more interactive future. Using cleverly-designed shops which produce some of the longest waits in the park, Universal Studios has sold many interactive wands to give guests additional experiences in Hogsmeade and Diagon Alley.
Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters at Disneyland
At IAAPA, interactivity and interactive rides are very hot topics. Interactive shooting dark rides came to many parks in the early 2000s. Wonder Mountain’s Guardian, a 2014 addition to Canada’s Wonderland, features the world’s longest interactive screen and a ride program that changes completely for the Halloween season.Also coming in 2015 is the elaborately-themed Justice League: Battle for Metropolis rides at two Six Flags parks. And Wet‘n’Wild Las Vegas will debut 'Slideboarding', which allows riders to participate in a video game by touching targets on their way down the slide, and is marketed as 'the world's first waterslide gaming experience'.
UX design is well-established for the physical space
Terms like 'amusement industry', 'attractions industry', and 'themed entertainment industry' can be interchangeable, but they do have different focuses, and different user experience design needs. The amusement industry encompasses amusement parks, theme parks, zoos, aquaria, museums, and their suppliers; the attractions industry also includes other visitor attractions.Several experience design companies have worked extensively on user-centered themed entertainment.
Jack Rouse Associates, who see themselves as “audience advocates”, have worked with over 35 clients in themed entertainment, including Universal, Ocean Park, and LEGOLAND. Thinkwell Group, which touts a 'guest-centric approach to design', showcases 14 theme park and resort projects and attractions work in 12 countries.Consultants in the industry have been more intentionally user-centered. Sasha Bailyn and her team at Entertainment Designer write regularly about physical-world experience design, including UX, in themed entertainment. Russell Essary, owner of Interactive Magic, applies user-centered design to exhibit design, wayfinding, game design, and much more.
In-house teams, agencies, and freelancers are becoming more common
Several large park chains have in-house or contracted UX design teams. Most mid-sized parks work with in-house marketing staff or with outside design companies. One company I know of specializes in web design and development for the amusement industry. Smaller parks and ride companies tend to work with local web designers, or occasionally free website vendors.
Screenshot of the Memphis Zoo homepage, designed by Speak Creative
Screenshot of the Extreme Engineering homepage, designed by Extreme Engineering
Sometimes, amusement sites with a great user experience are not made by UX practitioners. The website for Extreme Engineering has a very strong, immersive visual design which communicates their brand well. When I contacted them to learn who designed their site, I was surprised to learn that their head of marketing had designed it.
What I think is going well
Several developments have encouraging me in my mission to help the amusement industry become more user-centered.
UX methods are producing clear wins for my clients and their users
My clients in the industry so far have had significant fan followings. Fans have seen my user-centered approach, and they have been eager to help me improve their favorite sites. I told a recent client that it would take a week to get enough responses from his site visitors on an OptimalSort study. Within a few hours, we exceeded our target number of responses.
The Explore the Park feature concept of this Busch Gardens Williamsburg
When I worked on redesign concepts for a network of park fansites, I ran separate OptimalSort studies for all 8 fansites in the network. They used comparable pages from each site as cards. We discovered that some parks’ attractions organized well by themed area, while others organized well by ride type. Based on this, we decided to let users find attractions using either way on every site. User testers received Explore the Park and the two other new features that emerged from our studies (Visit Tips and Fansite Community) very well.
Although not all of the features I designed for The Coaster Crew went live, the redesign of their official website produced solid results. Their Facebook likes increased over 50% within a year, and their site improved significantly in several major KPIs. Several site visitors have said that the Coaster Crew’s website’s design helped them choose to join The Coaster Crew instead of another club. So that's a big win.
In-park guest experiences and accessibility are hot right now
IAAPA offered over 80 education sessions for industry professionals at this past Attractions Expo. At least nine sessions discussed guest experience. Guest experience was also mentioned in several industry publications I picked up at the show, including one which interviewed The Experience Economy author B. Joseph Pine II.
And parks are following through on this commitment, even for non-riders. Parks are increasingly theming attractions in ways that allow non-riders to experience a ride’s theme in the ride’s environment. For example, Manta at SeaWorld Orlando is a flying roller coaster themed to a manta ray. The park realized that not all of its guests will want to ride a thrilling ride with four inversions. So, separate queues allow both riders and non-riders to see aquariums with around 3,000 sea creatures. And Manta becomes, effectively, a walkthrough attraction for guests who do not want to ride the roller coaster.
The industry has also had encouraging innovations recently in accessibility. Attractions Management Magazine recently featured Morgan’s Wonderland, an amusement park geared toward people with physical and cognitive disabilities. Water parks are beginning to set aside times to especially cater to guests with autism. And at IAAPA, ride manufacturer Zamperla donated a fully-accessible ride to Give Kids the World, an amusement-industry charity.
Several successful consultancies are helping amusement parks and attractions deliver both a better guest experience in the park and better results on business metrics. And that's something I'm definitely keen to be a part of.
Amusement business factors with UX implications
While this is not an exhaustive list, here are some factors in the amusement industry which have UX implications.
While ride manufacturers continue to innovate, they are starting to encounter limits on how much physical thrill the human body can handle. A new world’s tallest complete-circuit roller coaster should open in 2017. But that record, only broken one other time since 2003, was broken 5 times between 1994 and 2003. So the industry is shifting toward more immersive attractions and "psychological thriller" rides.
Increased reliance on intellectual property
While some parks still develop their own worlds and characters for attractions, parks today increasingly rely on third-party intellectual property (IP), such as movies, TV shows, and characters. Third-party IP provides guests with a frame of references for interpreting what they see in the park. For example, The Wizarding World of Harry Potter enjoyed a very positive reception from guests due to its faithfulness to the Harry Potter books and films. In the same way, fans will notice if a themed area or attraction is not faithful to the original, and will see it as a broken experience.
Bring your own device
Many guests now carry mobile devices with them in the parks. But so far, guests have not been able to use their mobile devices to trigger changes in a park’s environment. The closest this has come is the interactive wands in The Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Most parks ban mobile devices from most rides due to safety hazards. And amusement parks and museums are both beginning to ban selfie sticks.
Multiple target markets at the same time
Because parks look for gaps in their current offerings and customer bases, they very rarely add new attractions for similar audiences several years in a row. My regional parks tend to handle additions on a 5-10 year cycle. They alternate year by year with additions like a major roller coaster, one or more thrilling flat rides, a family ride, and at least one water ride, to appeal to different market segments, as regularly as possible.The same goes for in-park UX improvements. Themed environment upgrades in a kids’ area appeal to few people in haunted attractions’ target audiences, and vice versa.
Empathy
According to the Association of Zoos and Aquariums (AZA), the fact that most people today will never see sharks, elephants, or pandas in the wild is making conservation efforts more difficult. Zoos and aquaria, in particular, have a large opportunity to allow families to empathize with animals and efforts to conserve threatened species. But, according to an International Zoo Educators Association presentation, most zoo and aquarium guests go there primarily just to see the animals or please their kids.
Ideas for improving the user experience of websites and software in the amusement industry
My primary work interest is to design digital experiences in the amusement industry that support the goals of their target users. To understand where the industry currently stands, I have visited several thousand websites for amusement parks, ride companies, suppliers, zoos, aquaria, museums, and dolphinariums. Below, I've documented a few problems I've seen, and suggested ways companies can solve these problems.
Treat mobile as a top priority
Currently, over 500 websites in the industry are on my radar as sites to improve. At least 90 of them are desktop-only websites with no mobile presence. Several of these sites — even for major ride manufacturers — use Flash and cannot be viewed at all on a mobile device.The industry’s business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations, such as parks, realize that a great deal of traffic comes from mobile and that mobile users are more likely to leave a site that is desktop-only.
These organizations recognize the simple fact that going mobile means selling more tickets. IAAPA itself has capitalized on mobile for their trade show attendees for several years by making a quite resourceful mobile app available.However, at IAAPA, I asked people from several business-to-business (B2B) companies why their sites were not mobile yet. Several told me that they didn’t consider mobile a high priority and that they might start working on a mobile site “in about a year or so.” Thus, they don't feel a great deal of urgency — and I think it's time they did.
Bring design styles and technologies up to date
Many professional UX designers and web designers are well aware of 1990s-style web design artefacts like misused fonts (mainly Comic Sans and Papyrus), black text on a red background,obviously-tiled backgrounds, guestbooks, and splash screens. But I've seen more than a few live amusement websites that still use each of these.Sites that prompt users to install Flash (on mobile devices) or QuickTime increase users’ interaction cost with the site, because the flow of their tasks has been interrupted.
And as Jakob Nielsen says, "Unless everything works perfectly, the novice user will have very little chance of recovery."
If a website needs to use technologies such as Flash or features such as animation or video, a more effective solution would be progressive enhancement. Users whose devices lack the capability to work with these technologies would still see a website with its core features intact and no error messages to distract them from converting.
Organize website information to support user goals and knowledge
Creating an effective website involves much more than using up-to-date design styles. It also involves the following.
Understand why users are on the website
Businesses promote products and services that make them money. Many amusement parks now offer front-of-line passes, VIP tours, pay-per-experience rides, locker rentals, and water park cabana rentals, which are each an additional charge for admitted guests. And per-capita spending is very important to not only parks’ operations, but also their investor relations.Users come to websites with the question, “What’s in it for me?”, and their own sets of goals. Businesses need to know when these goals match their own goals and when they conflict.
The importance of each goal should also be apparent in the design. One water park promotes its changing rooms and locker rentals on its homepage. This valuable space dedicated to logistical information for guests already coming could be used for attracting prospective visitors. Analytics tools and the search queries that they show are helpful tools for understanding why users come to a website. Sites should supplement these by conducting usability studies with users outside their organization. These studies, in turn, could include questions allowing users to describe why would visit that website. The site could use this knowledge to make sure that its content speaks to users’ reasons for visiting.
Understand what users know
Non-technical users are bringing familiarity with how to use the internet when they visit a website. They quickly become perpetual intermediates on the internet, and don’t need to be told how buttons and links work. I've noticed amusement websites that currently label calls to action with “Click Here”, and some even do so on more than one link. This explicit instruction to people is no longer needed, and the best interfaces signal clickable elements in their visual design.
Similarly, people expect to find information in categories they understand and in language familiar to them. So it's important to not make assumptions that people who visit our websites think like us. For example, if a website is organized by model name, users will need to already be familiar with these products and the differences between them. Usability testing exercises, such as card sorting, would contribute to a better design and solve this problem.
Design websites that are consistent with users’ expectations
Websites that aim to showcase a company’s creativity and sense of fun sometimes lack features that people are used to when they visit websites (like easy-to-access menus, vertical scrolling, and so on). But it's important to remember that unconventional designs may lead to increased effort for visitors, which in turn may create a negative experience. A desire to come across as fun may conflict with a visitor's need for ease and simplicity.
The site organization needs to reflect users' goals with minimal barriers to entry. People will be frustrated with things like needing to log in to see prices, having to navigate three levels deep to buy tickets, and coming across unfamiliar or contradictory terms.
Design content for reading
Marketers have written about increased engagement and other benefits resulting from automatically playing videos, animated advertising, and rotating sliders or carousels (all of which usability practitioners have argued against). And this obsession with visual media has sometimes taken attention away from a feature people still want: easy-to-read text.There are still websites in the industry that show walls of text, rivers of text, very small text for main content, text embedded within images, and text written in all-capital letters. But telling clients, “Make the text bigger, higher-contrast, and sentence case”, can conflict with the increasing reliance on exciting visual and interactive design elements.
Goal-directed design shows us what that problem is. For example, if people visit a website to learn more about a company, the website’s design should emphasize the content that gets that message across — in the format that users find most convenient.I recently worked with a leading themed entertainment blogger to improve his site’s usability. His site, Theme Park University, provides deep knowledge of the themed entertainment industry that readers cannot get anywhere else. It first came to my attention when he published a series of posts on why Hard Rock Park in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina – one of the most ambitious new theme park projects in the US in the 2000s — failed after only one season.
As a regular reader, I knew that TPU had truly fantastic content and an engaged community on social media. But users commented to us that the site was cluttered, and so didn't spend much time on the website. We needed to give the website a more open look and feel — in other words, designed to be read.The project was not a full redesign. But by fitting small changes into the site’s existing design, we made the site more open and easier to read while retaining its familiar branding for readers. We also made his site’s advertising more effective, even by having fewer ads on each page.As D. Bnonn Tennant says, “Readership = Revenue.… [A website] has to fulfill a revenue goal. So, every element should be designed to achieve that goal. Including the copy. Especially the copy — because the copy is what convinces visitors to do whatever it is you want them to do on the website".
Three final ideas for getting UX a seat at the table
In helping take UX methods to the amusement industry, I have learned several lessons which would help other practitioners pioneer UX in other industries:
1. Explain UX benefits without UX jargon
When I work for clients in the amusement industry, the biggest challenge that I face is unfamiliarity with UX. Most other professionals in the industry do not know about UX design principles or practices. I have had to educate clients on the importance of giving me feedback early and testing with users often. And because most of my clients have not had a technical background, I have had to explain UX and its benefits in non-UX terms.
2. Be willing to do non-UX project work yourself in a team of one
As a business owner, I regularly prospect for new clients. The biggest challenge in landing projects here is trying to convince people that they should hire a bigger team than just me. A bigger team (and higher rates for a UXer versus a web designer) leads to bigger project costs and more reluctant approvals. So I have had to do development – and even some tech support – myself so far.
3. Realize clients have a lot on their plates — so learn patience
The other main challenge in selling UX to the amusement industry is project priority. Marketing departments that handle websites are used to seeing the website as one job duty out of many. Ride companies without dedicated IT staff tend to see the website as an afterthought, partially because they do most of their business at trade shows instead of online. This has led to several prospects telling me that they might pursue a redesign a year from now or later, but not in the near future. That's OK because I can be ready for them when they're ready for me.
As the focus on user-centered design continues to grow in organizations around the world, we’ll also need effective leaders to guide UX teams. But what makes a great UX leader?
Leadership may come as naturally as breathing to some people, but most of us need some guidance along the way. We created this article to pull together a few tips for effectively running UX teams, but be sure to leave a comment if you think we’ve missed anything. After all, part of what makes a great leader is being able to take feedback and to learn from others!
The difference between a manager and a leader
There’s a pretty clear distinction between managers and leaders. As a leader, your job isn’t necessarily to manage and tell people what to do, but instead to lead. You should enable your team to succeed by providing them with the tools and resources they need.
Know your team’s strengths and weaknesses
Intel’s Andy Grove, who infamously ruled the Silicon Valley semiconductor company with an iron fist, may be a polarizing figure in the leadership sphere, but he did institute (or at least help popularize) some techniques that are still widely practised today. One of these was to sit in an office cube with his fellow employees, instead of in a siloed office by himself. There’s a good lesson here. Instead of sealing yourself away from your team, immerse yourself in their environment and their work. You’ll develop a much better understanding of the types of problems they deal with on a daily basis and as a result be in a better position to help them.
You can also take this a step further and conduct an audit of your team’s strengths and weaknesses. Also known as a skills audit, this process is more commonly performed in organizations at scale, but it’s a good way to show you where your capabilities lie – even in small teams. With an intimate understanding of your UX team you’ll be in a good position to assess which projects your team can and can’t take on at any given time.
Taking this process even further, you can undertake a skills audit of yourself. If you want to develop yourself as a leader, you have to understand your own strengths and weaknesses.
This quote by Donald Rumsfeld, although it applies to crisis management, provides a great way to self-audit: “There are known knowns: there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns: That is to say, we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns: the things we don't know we don't know". You can see a visual example of this in the Johari Window:
Here’s how you can take this approach and use it for yourself:
Identify your known unknowns: Skills you don’t currently possess that you’re able to recognize you need yourself.
Identify your unknown unknowns: Skills you don’t know you don’t currently have, but which your team can identify by asking them.
When it comes to projects, be inclusive
NASA astronaut Frank Borman, echoing a sentiment since shared by many people who’ve been to space, said: “When you're finally up on the moon, looking back at the earth, all these differences and nationalistic traits are pretty well going to blend and you're going to get a concept that maybe this is really one world and why the hell can't we learn to live together like decent people?”.
On an admittedly much smaller scale, the same learning can and should be applied to UX teams. When it comes time to take on a new project and define the vision, scope and strategy, bring in as many people as possible. The idea here isn’t to just tick an inclusivity box, but to deliver the best possible outcome.
Get input from stakeholders, designers, user researchers and developers. You certainly don’t have to take every suggestion, but a leader’s job is to assess every possible idea, question the what, why and how, and ultimately make a final decision. ‘Leader’ doesn’t necessarily have to mean ‘devil’s advocate’, either, but that’s another role you’ll also want to consider when taking suggestions from a large number of people.
Make time for your team
Anyone who’s ever stepped into a leadership role will understand the significant workload increase that comes along with it – not to mention the meetings that seemingly start to crop up like weeds. With such time pressures it can be easy to overlook things like regular one-on-ones, or at the very least making time for members to approach you with any issues.
Even with the associated pressures that come along with being a leader, stand-ups or other weekly meetings and one-on-ones should not be ignored.
Sit down with each member of your team individually to stay up to date on what they’re working on and to get a feel for their morale and motivation. What’s more, by simply setting some time aside to speak with someone individually, they’re more likely to speak about problems instead of bottling them away. Rotating through your team every fortnight will mean you have a clear understanding of where everyone is at.
Hosting larger stand-ups or weekly meetings, on the other hand, is useful in the way that large team meetings have always been useful. You can use the forum as a time for general status updates and to get new team members acclimated. If there’s one piece of advice we can add on here, it’s to have a clear agenda. Set the key things to cover in the meeting prior to everyone stepping into the room, otherwise you’re likely to see the meeting quickly get off track.
Keep a level head
You know the feeling. It’s Wednesday afternoon and one of the product teams has just dropped a significant amount of work on your team’s plate – a plate that’s already loaded up. While it can be tempting to join in with the bickering and complaining, it’s your job as the leader of your UX team to keep a level head and remain calm.
It’s basic psychology. The way you act and respond to different situations will have an impact of everyone around you – most importantly, your team. By keeping calm in every situation, your team will look to you for guidance in times of stress. There’s another benefit to keeping a level head: your own leaders are more likely to recognize you as a leader as well as someone who can handle difficult situations.
Two leadership development consultants ran a study of over 300,000 business leaders, and sorted the leadership skills they found most important for success into a numbered list. Unsurprisingly, an ability to motivate and inspire others was listed as the most important trait.
Be the voice for your team
While no user researcher or designer will doubt the value of UX research, it’s still an emerging industry. As a result, it can often be misunderstood. If you’re in charge of leading a UX team, it’s up to you to ensure that your team always has a seat at the table – you have to know when to speak up for yourself and your team.
If you a problem, you need to voice your concern. Of course, you need to be able to back up your arguments, but that’s the point of your role as a leader. Those new to leadership can find this aspect of the the job one of the hardest parts to master – it’s no surprise one of the key qualities in a great leader is an ability to speak up if they feel it’s the right thing to do.
Finally, you’ve got to assume the role of a buffer. This is another general leadership quality, and it’s similarly important. Take the flak from executives, upper management or the board of directors and defend your UX team, even if they’re not aware of it. If you need to take some information or feedback from these people and give it to your team, pay close attention to how you relay it to them. As an example, you want to be sure that a message about reducing customer churn is made relevant and actionable.
Master your own skill set
Stepping into a UX leadership position isn’t an excuse to stop developing yourself professionally. After all, it was those skills that got you there in the first place. Continue to focus on upskilling yourself, staying up to date on movements and trends in the industry and immersing yourself in the work your team carries out.
A leader with the skills to actually function as a member of their team is that much more capable – especially when another pair of hands can help to get a project over the line.
Wrap up
The field of user research continues to grow and mature, meaning the need for effective leaders is also increasing. This means there are near-limitless opportunities for those willing to step into UX leadership roles, provided they’re willing to put in the work and become capable leaders.
As we stated earlier, many of the skills that make a great leader also translate to UX leadership, and there’s really no shortage of resources available to provide guidance and support. In terms of UX specifically, here are a few of our favorite articles – from our blog and elsewhere:
Welcome to our third speaker interview for UX New Zealand 2019 (check out our other interviews with Gregg Bernstein and Nate Foulds). In the lead up to the conference, we’re catching up with the people who’ll be sharing their stories with you at the conference in October. Today, we chat with Torrey Podmajersky, a UX Writer at Google and the author of Strategic Writing for UX.
Thanks for chatting with us Torrey. Let’s dive in with a little bit about your background. What was your path into UX writing like? How did you get started?
Torrey: It's funny, I did not start in anything like a normal way, because UX writing was so difficult to hire for in 2010, when I was hired to do that at Xbox. They already had a very small writing team at the time that they had inherited as a result of technical writing needs, and the writing manager knew that he needed to hire another. But it's funny – the title of UX writer/content designer or anything like that just didn't exist.
At the time, I was looking to transition from doing internal communications at Microsoft into more of product-oriented work. So it seemed to be a great fit. And actually, that writing manager talked me into it, because he knew that I had been a high school teacher. I taught high school science for nine years, and he said, "Perfect. You can explain difficult abstract concepts to teenagers, and have them not hate you at the end and probably have them pass a test."
It’s fairly well known that Microsoft was one of the pioneers of the importance of UX copy, especially with regards to Microsoft Office. What was that culture like when you were there?
Torrey: So it’s worth mentioning that every part of Microsoft is separate from every other part, or at least that was the case when I was there.
It was the various products people were working on or even the teams inside those products that really defined what that culture was. And that culture when I was working at Xbox was incredibly collaborative and incredibly user-focused because we knew who our audience was and we knew how we wanted to expand that audience. So we knew about the core gamer and the people who were already Xbox enthusiasts at that point because we had shipped the Xbox 360 several years before.
We knew that for every household with an Xbox, there was usually one person in that house that knew how to use it and was excited about it. But we also knew that they lived with other people who could potentially also be excited about it. So focusing on the core user and that core user's family made it really easy to make product decisions and UX decisions. It kept everybody on the same page.
Talking about the Xbox specifically, can you speak a little bit about the relationship between marketing copy and UX copy, and how those work together?
Torrey: Absolutely. It's important as soon as the people turn the Xbox on and are looking at the UX for the first time themselves. There’s a clear transition from marketing copy, like, "What does the box say? What do the ads say? What does the flyer say or the poster?". And then people set it up, they're turning it on. How does it greet them? How do they, or if their family member has set it up, how does it include them or exclude them when a new person wants to play for the first time? That is a UX problem, in the sense of a design problem that needs to be solved.
Do you know much about how that process worked in other parts of the company?
Torrey: I actually don't think it's very different anywhere else. Not just at Microsoft, but anytime you've got a team that understands their user. No matter if they are inside Microsoft or making a consumer app or an enterprise app. If they know who their users are and who they want to target next, every experience maker is looking to grow the audience and the appeal of their product.
It sounds, more than many other UX roles, like UX writers spend a significant amount of time working across a range of products and services. Can you speak to that at all?
Torrey: When I'm generally presenting to my teams, or talking about what I do or what I've done, people get this surprised look on their face. Because they say, "Well, how did you have time to work on all of those things? How did you ship those nine different features?" And the problem with UX writing is that it is endemic to everything. The writing, the words in any experience are probably about half of what a person experiences. People need to use those words for navigation, and control, and all of the functions, all of those user experience interactions. And there are very, very few UX writers to go around.
So whether I am consulting on those features, or engaged with the design process, or just editing them as a last minute thing, the context switching for a UX writer is pretty intense. Because I'll be talking about one feature with one team, and then my next meeting will be a different feature with a different team, sometimes with a totally different audience.
So that’s something that I think every professional UX writer is working hard at right now. I mean maybe not every writer, but a large majority of UX writers are working on how they manage their time and energy so that they can be most effective? And, how do they prioritize the work to be done so that the most important work is getting done well, and the rest of the work is pointed out to say, "That can't be done with the staffing and resources we have right now".
Engagement and conversion are thrown around quite a bit when talking about UX writing. But also, in my experience at least, that's also one of the prime concerns of a marketing copywriter. So there's definitely a crossover, but where is it? How important is collaboration here?
Torrey: There's a diagram I put in the first chapter of my book that talks about the entire life cycle of getting customers into a business or interested in a product. Getting them onboarded, engaged into that product, supporting them if anything goes wrong, and hopefully transforming them into repeat customers or fans of the experience. And hopefully then they also bring along their friends and family or coworkers, or whatever's appropriate for that experience.
What happened then is the first part of that cycle really is the domain of core marketing and copywriting, the descriptions of the app, the positioning in the marketplace. The social media engagement that uses that brand voice extremely well, and differently than the UX writer does. That's where to entice and engage and make things that are snappy lines, and very memorable taglines, for example.
And then that person really cares about the funnel, and getting people to the point of purchasing and engagement in that first moment of using the experience. And sometimes that that moment is bridged by a different person entirely, doing sales. So we have the marketing motion, the sales motion, and then when people are in the experience: that's when the UX text really needs to shine.
Interestingly, and this is especially true for enterprise apps, the people who need to be engaged with the marketing and the advertising and who are committed to the sale are not the people who are going to use the experience every day. For example, in an education environment, it's school boards and administrators that choose the software for the school district. And then it's teachers and students who end up using it.
So it's very different audiences there for the two groups. But even when they're the same group, if the copywriting before the moment of sale and the UX text after the sale are not aligned, if they don't feel like the same product, that's a big problem. So there needs to be a lot of alignment there.
In New Zealand and Australia we’re just now starting to see the growth of UX design as a practice. Do you have any advice for UX writers and UX designers who need to make the case for why UX writing needs a seat at the table – and even in the organization in the first place?
Torrey: This is something that plenty of companies are still struggling with. Whether that's Microsoft, or Google, or even Facebook. I mean, Facebook has a bunch of content strategists, Google has a bunch of UX writers. Microsoft has a content developers and content designers and UX writers. Part of the problem here is the difference in titles and also the widespread title differences. But trying to make the case for, "Why should we have this person or somebody in charge of this?" is a tough thing to do, until you start saying, "Hey, if we took out all the words on this screen that we're designing, nobody could use it at all. If we took out all the labels and the titles and descriptions, it's unusable."
In fact, for most of the experiences we design, the text is half or more of what people interact with. That text creates a story and creates a sense of the brand. We can build people's confidence, we can hint at what's coming next.
So when the value of UX writing is made clear, people tend to get it pretty fast. But it's making that case and finding different approaches that is difficult. It helps that there's more books coming out about it, it helps that it’s becoming more widely recognized, "Hey, these people are great at that." Well, they have somebody full-time, writing those words. Turns out, that’s an area that makes sense to invest in.
Let’s chat about sharing and consistency. Setting up the processes so that, when writers come back in the future, or a designer comes back to look at something or some part of the app, there’s an explanation for why it's written the way it is.
Torrey: I like to ask people, "Are you shipping things with words on it?" If you are shipping experiences that have letters next to each other that form words, or characters in non-letter-based languages, then you have UX writers. Are those the UX writers that should be doing it? Or is it everybody doing a little bit of it? What are you doing to keep them consistent? What are you doing to make sure that you have only hired people to do the UX writing, who have capability in the language that you're shipping in?
If you're shipping in say, American English as we generally do in the US, are you only hiring people that have English as their first language? Whether it's the engineers or the product owners or the support personnel, do you look at their writing samples before you hire them?
It'd be pretty silly to do that, but at the same time, it's also pretty silly that we have historically not been paying much attention to the language skills of the people who are putting all of this language in front of our customers. People spend a lot more time with the UI text than they do with any single piece of marketing text, and that marketing text I know gets a lot more scrutiny.
So if we just switch gears, can you explain a little bit about what you do at the School of Visual Concepts?
Torrey: Sure! The School of Visual Concepts is a Seattle-based independent school. I developed the UX writing curriculum there several years ago with Elly Searle, and have been teaching sections of it ever since. It’s a 5 week class, so classes once a week for 3 hours each week. We go through the very fundamentals of what it is it to be a writer.
This means everything from defining voice to creating and editing text to be conversational, clear, purposeful and concise. We also go through critique of that in class, and eventually come out the other end with portfolio pieces. This means that these students, some of whom are already designers, some of whom are looking to get into UX design, have some of these fundamental UX writing skills so that they can make their designs really sing.
Thanks Torrey. Just to wrap up, what are you looking forward to most about UX New Zealand?
Torrey: I am so excited! I've never been to New Zealand before. I have heard amazing things about Kiwis in general. So I’m really excited to just breathe new air and see the ocean from a different perspective. I’m also there to learn a little bit about the culture. I'm taking a few days before the conference to just enjoy Wellington a little bit. And then at UX New Zealand, similarly soaking up the UX culture of a new place. We’re are all making this up as we go along, and we make it up better when we do that together and when we learn from each other.
We're all still struggling with the same fundamental curiosities of figuring out how we interact with humans at scale. Whether it's to delight them, or inform them, or enable them or empower them, whatever it is we are doing with those humans, we’re trying to work out the right ways to do it. What are the ethical ways to do it? What are the effective ways to do it? I’m looking forward to having those conversations at the conference.
Hello, my name is Rick and I’m a sociologist. All together, “Hi, Rick!” Now that we’ve got that out of the way, let me tell you about how I use card sorting in my research. I'll soon be running a series of in-person, moderated card sorting sessions. This article covers why card sorting is an integral part of my research, and how I've designed the study toanswer specific questions about two distinct parts of society.
Card sorting to establish how different people comprehend their worlds
Card sorting,or pile sorting as it’s sometimes called, has a long history in anthropology, psychology and sociology. Anthropologists, in particular, have used it to study how different cultures think about various categories. Researchers in the 1970s conducted card sorts to understand how different cultures categorize things like plants and animals. Sociologists of that era also used card sorts to examine how people think about different professions and careers. And since then, scholars have continued to use card sorts to learn about similar categorization questions.
In my own research, I study how different groups of people in the United States imagine the category of 'religion'. Asthose crazy 1970s anthropologists showed, card sorting is a great way to understand how people cognitively understand particular social categories. So, in particular,I’m using card sorting in my research to better understand how groups of people with dramatically different views understand 'religion' — namely, evangelical Christians and self-identified atheists. Thinkof it like this. Some people say that religion is the bedrock of American society.
Others say that too much religion in public life is exactly what’s wrong with this country. What's not often considered is these two groups oftenunderstand the concept of 'religion' in very different ways. It’s like the group of blind men and the elephant: one touches the trunk, one touches the ears, and one touches the tail. All three come away with very different ideas of what an elephant is. So you could say that I study how different people experience the 'elephant' of religion in their daily lives. I’m doing so using primarily in-person moderated sorts on an iPad, which I’ll describe below.
How I generated the words on the cards
The first step in the process was to generate lists of relevant terms for my subjects to sort. Unlike in UX testing, where cards for sorting might come from an existing website, in my world these concepts first have to be mined from the group of people being studied. So the first thing I did was have members of both atheist and evangelical groups complete a free listing task. In a free listing task, participants simply list as many words as they can that meet the criteria given. Sets of both atheist and evangelical respondents were given the instructions: "What words best describe 'religion?' Please list as many as you can.” They were then also asked to list words that describe 'atheism', 'spirituality', and 'Christianity'.
I took the lists generated and standardizedthem by combining synonyms. For example, some of my atheists used words like 'ancient', 'antiquated', and 'archaic' to describe religion. SoI combined all of these words into the one that was mentioned most: 'antiquated'. By doing this, I created a list of the most common words each group used to describe each category. Doing this also gave my research another useful dimension, ideal for exploring alongside my card sorting results. Free lists can beanalyzed themselves using statistical techniques likemulti-dimensional scaling, so I used this technique for apreliminary analysis of the words evangelicals used to describe 'atheism':
Now that I’m armed with these lists of words that atheist and evangelicals used to describe religion, atheism etc., I’m about to embark on phase two of the project: the card sort.
Why using card sorting software is a no-brainer for my research
I’ll be conducting my card sorts in person, for various reasons. I have relatively easy access to the specific population that I’m interested in, and for the kind of academic research I’m conducting, in-person activities are preferred. In theory, I could just print the words on some index cards and conduct a manual card sort, but I quickly realized that a software solution would be far preferable, for a bunch of reasons.
First of all, it's important for me to conductinterviews in coffee shops and restaurants, and an iPad on the table is, to put it mildly, more practical than a table covered in cards — no space for the teapot after all.
Second, usingsoftwareeliminates the need for manual data entry on my part. Not only is manual data entry a time consuming process, but it also introduces the possibly of data entry errors which may compromise my research results.
Third, while the bulk of the card sorts are going to be done in person, having an online version will enable meto scale the project up after the initial in-person sorts are complete. The atheist community, in particular, has a significant online presence, making a web solution ideal for additional data collection.
Fourth, OptimalSort gives the option to re-direct respondents after they complete a sort to any webpage, which allows multiple card sorts to be daisy-chained together. It also enables card sorts to be easily combined with complex survey instruments from other providers (e.g. Qualtrics or Survey Monkey), so card sorting data can be gathered in conjunction with other methodologies.
Finally, and just as important, doing card sorts on a tablet is more fun for participants. After all, who doesn’t like to play with an iPad? If respondents enjoy the unique process of the experiment, this is likely to actually improve the quality of the data, andrespondents are more likely to reflect positively on the experience, making recruitment easier. And a fun experience also makes it more likely that respondents will complete the exercise.
What my in-person, on-tablet card sorting research will look like
Respondents will be handed an iPad Air with 4G data capability. While the venues where the card sorts will take place usually have public Wi-Fi networks available, these networks are not always reliable, so the cellular data capabilities are needed as a back-up (and my pre-testing has shown that OptimalSort works on cellular networks too).
The iPad’s screen orientation will be locked to landscape and multi-touch functions will be disabled to prevent respondents from accidentally leaving the testing environment. In addition, respondents will have the option of using a rubber tipped stylus for ease of sorting the cards. While I personally prefer to use a microfiber tipped stylus in other applications, pre-testing revealed that an old fashioned rubber tipped stylus was easier for sorting activities.
When the respondent receives the iPad, the card sort first page with general instructions will already be open on the tablet in the third party browser Perfect Web. A third party browser is necessary because it is best to run OptimalSort locked in a full screen mode, both for aesthetic reasons and to keep the screen simple and uncluttered for respondents. Perfect Web is currently the best choice in the ever shifting app landscape.
I'll give respondents their instructions and then go to another table to give them privacy (because who wants the creepy feeling of some guy hanging over you as you do stuff?). Altogether, respondents will complete two open card sorts and a fewsurvey-style questions, all chained together by redirect URLs. First, they'll sort 30 cards into groups based on how they perceive 'religion', and name the categories they create. Then, they'll complete a similar card sort, this time based on how they perceive 'atheism'.
Both atheist and evangelicals will receive a mixture of some of the top words that both groups generated in the earlier free listing tasks. To finish, they'll answer a few questions that will provide further data on how they think about 'religion'. After I’ve conducted these card sorts with both of my target populations, I’ll analyze the resulting data on its own and also in conjunction with qualitative data I’ve already collected via ethnographic research and in-depth interviews. I can't wait, actually. In a few months I’ll report back and let you know what I’ve found.
