Over the weekend, I had the chance to attend UXCampDC 2011, my first experience with a BarCamp-style unconference and a great introduction to to UX/design community just up the road from me in our nation’s capital. Uber-librarian Erin White and I drove thru snow and slush to the Goethe-Institut for a day of awesome presentations and discussions about user experience, best practices, design geekery and the wonderful world of Joss Whedon.
I was really impressed with the quality of the content that attendees offered this year, and am already looking forward to going back in 2012. Here are some of the highlights I took away from the sessions I attended:
Steven Fisher: Architecting Social Experiences
Steven’s presentation hinged on a very simple idea: not all of your users are alike, so your site should offer paths/features/affordances for many different types of users. Some users want to browse. Some users want to search. Some users will only access your site from a mobile device. Plan for diversity among user behavior, not a homogenous single User. Good suggestion, right?
But this presentation started to go off the rails at Slide 14, which broke users down into 4 groups: Matures (65+), Baby Boomers, Gen X (1965-1980), and Gen Y (1981-1991). Steven offered observations about each group and how they currently use technology. Gen Y doesn’t use email, for example: they text instead, and access sites via mobile devices. Baby Boomers, however, still love email. Matures are the most rapidly growing group of Facebook users, and have fallen in love with the iPad. His observations were pretty general, and were offered as a way of illustrating how current designers (most of whom are Gen X) shouldn’t assume that their own ways of interacting with websites and applications are true for everybody else. After all, you are not your user!
Some folks in the audience, however, felt these generalizations were unfair to their particular generation (Baby Boomers), and offered themselves as exceptions to the behaviors Steven had outlined. “I am a Baby Boomer and I use text messaging! I am a Baby Boomer and I access websites via mobile devices!” And so what started out as a presentation about diversity among users turned into a somewhat heated debate over generalizing about Baby Boomer internet behavior. Yawn.
My takeaway: Baby Boomers don’t like it when you make assumptions about their user patterns based on their age, but they will get quite huffy when a site doesn’t take their preferences into account. Tread cautiously.
I sang Steven a few bars of The Hero of Canton on my way out of the room, and discovered that he’s one of the masterminds behind Browncoats: Redemption. Proving once again that Joss Whedon is the key to soothing hurts and finding friends in almost any situation.
Brian Talbot: The U(X) Files
Brian’s session was an open discussion offering “An informal look into some new, abnormal, or just plain weird design patterns and interactions happening in web and digital interfaces today.” I thought Brian’s reference to The X-Files in the session title was clever, and he did a great job of leading the discussion and offering his own examples.
Our group spent at least 35 minutes discussing infinite scrolling, particularly as executed by Tumblr and Twitter. We identified at least 6 different ways a user can scroll down the page of a website: clicking the scroll arrows, dragging the scrollbar, using a mouse scroll-wheel, using the page-down key, using the space bar, and dragging down on a touchpad. (And those don’t even take into account touch interfaces!) Several people expressed frustration at the bugginess infinite-scroll sites frequently exhibit—and why wouldn’t they, considering how many different scrolling behaviors developers have to test and de-bug for?
My takeaway: UXer’s (myself included) can obsess about scrolling for much longer than I ever expected, and that’s what makes us awesome.
Zack Naylor: UX and Start-ups
Zach lead an informal discussion based on his experience working at ModCloth.com and Pikimal.com. He offered a client-side perspective on working for start-ups and the challenges that poses, as well as identifying what kind of start-up is a good fit for you as a designer. I described some of my experiences working with start-ups from the agency side, such as the difficulties of designing for a company that hasn’t finalized its business strategy, and several other UXers and Project Managers chimed in about how they handle the constantly shifting sands of a start-up environment. I found it really helpful to hear that other designers have experienced many of the same challenges I have, and to discuss how projects can be structured to account for the specific needs of start-ups.
My takeaway: Designing for start-ups is hard, but rewarding. There’s a big difference between a start-up created by an experienced founder, and an online business started by someone who’s never worked in the digital space before. Experienced clients have more appreciation for the value offered by UX and design.
Andrew Nacin: UX and Open Source Projects
Nacin was drafted in to one of the last slots of the day, and did a great job throwing together some slides using this cool WordPress Presentation Plugin. He offered an insider’s view on how the WordPress team makes decisions that affect the User Experience of the platform, from design to UI to introducing new features.
I’ve admired the simplicity of WordPress ever since I moved from Blogger to b2 cafelog (from which WordPress was eventually branched) back in the day, but I’d never really thought about what it takes to maintain that commitment to simplicity as a product grows in scope and complexity. Nacin discussed the Philosophy behind WordPress, which serves as the guidepost for every decision the team makes. One of those principles, “Decisions not Options” may be the coolest UX concept I’ve learned in quite awhile, and I find myself bringing it up in conversations about product design over and over again.
Overall, this discussion clarified (for me) why WordPress is such a great product and why I love it so much. “Design for the Majority” and “Strive for Simplicity” are principles I apply to my own work, and I enjoy using a product that aligns with my own values so well.
My takeaway: Building a product with exceptional UX requires an unwavering commitment to the principles that form good user experience. The team behind WordPress is doing one hell of a job and making it look way easier than it really is.
Leave a reply