Creating a Mobile Usability Lab

As a User Experience Designer I spend a lot of my time designing solutions to problems for websites.  So it was nice to a have a physical challenge at work for once.
I needed to run some user testing with customers to see if the new menus we have designed allow them to find what they are looking for on the website.  Testing on desktop is pretty easy but we needed to test the mobile design too.
Testing on mobile is a bit harder because even if you can record their screen you can't see where their finger is, or what they tap, as they work through the different screens.
The best way to see this is to get a camera to point down on the screen so you can see everything.
There are options you can buy, but they are very expensive and we were on a tight budget, and you can set it up so you sit the phone on a table and stand a camera over it but that's not how people really use a phone.

So I decided to make something.  My first iteration used bits and bobs off amazon.  It was actually a really good set up, but way too heavy meaning a participant wouldn't be able to use it, even for the 15 minute tests we were going to run. 
Having found an article from someone else doing something similar I started to look for plastic.  In the end the best deal was with Wickes and although it was a bit too big, it does mean I can make more as we improve the design.

I cut a piece 6cm wide and 30cm long and 'im outdoors drilled a hole in the top for me - this gave us a way to attach the webcam, and then used his heat gun to help me bend it.
The first one we made wobbled a bit as the webcam was a bit heavy, but we added another strip of plastic to strengthen it and it seems much better now.
We used it last week and it worked really well.  It helped us to see where there are some issues with our current design which means we can fix them before we set it live. 
I love how creative I get to be at work and so nearly 3 years since I quit my regular job I have to say I really have no regrets over changing roles!

UX Blog

Apparently I've been writing this blog for something like 8 years. Over that time I have used it as a way to keep motivated on my creative journey and I have to say I love writing these little posts.
I'm aware though that in recent months my interest in UX Design has been creeping in and while it is a creative endeavour, that's not what this blog is supposed to be about.
So over the Christmas holidays I created a new blog which is linked to my portfolio purely for posts about UX, leaving this one free for the wonderful world of wool, or paper or whatever I happen to be working on this week.
So if you are only here because of the UX or you are interested in reading my thoughts on UX please visit my new UX blog.
Normal service will commence here next week...

My portfolio

You might remember this image from Week 7 of UXDI when I started working on my portfolio

Anyone who has been reading this blog for a bit, might have noticed that my little logo has now appeared in the top right corner along with the links to other social media.  If you're brave you might even have clicked it and found yourself on my portfolio.

This portfolio has been long in the making and is in fact my second attempt.  The point is to show my UX skills off so people can see the sorts of projects I have worked on and my design methodology, and because I like a challenge and I like to learn new things I built it from scratch in HTML and CSS, rather than use a template.  This does mean that its not responsive yet, but I'm working on this and soon it will look just as good on a mobile phone as it does on a desktop.  Normally I would have build it the other way round so it looked good on the mobile first, however I had a deadline to work to.  But I did have the mobile version in mind when designing the desk top, so it shouldn't be to hard to amend.

Feel free to go have a look and if you have any comments do let me know.

Business Cards

After all the work on UXDI to learn about UX design, now I have to go and show potential employers why they should employ me rather than any of the other guys from my course.
First things first - I need a business card!

They arrived today and I'm really excited.  I've never had business cards before and these rather fetching 'green' cards from Moo have come out just how I wanted. 

I designed myself a logo after week 6 - visual design week, but wasn't sure what it would look like in print.  I shouldn't have worried, they came out perfectly.

And I might have got a little excited and bought some stickers too, but they are very excellent.  At least you'll know if I've been around if you find these stuck all over the place.

UXDI - Week 10

Me with Ben, Zhenjie and Simon - last rehearsal 

So there it is 10 weeks done and UXDI complete.  Except it’s not really - now the hard work begins as we sort out our portfolios and start to look for jobs.
I have had an amazing 10 weeks!  I’m so glad of all my previous reading, I think I would have found some of it much harder without it, and of course there were ups and downs, but right now I am just amazed at the amount I have learnt and how well our final project went.

Coffee shop paper prototype - a little bit of last day fun

Week 10 was all about Wednesday.  On that day all our clients came, one by one, to hear us present the work of the past 2 weeks. My group were last and the bar was high after watching everyone else’s presentations, but when we finally stood up there it went really well and ALL the feedback was so positive!
To have the client ask if I would continue on the project was another real confidence booster.

The final presentation

I have to say a huge thank you to everyone at GA - not just Andrew and Luis but all the people like Laura and the TA's working behind the scenes just making it all happen.  Also to the rest of the class, everyone has been so nice and supportive - it made it so easy to work with them.

And finally I have to say a massive thank you to ‘im outdoors.  For all the lifts to and from the station, all the dinners cooked for me and for all the UX stuff he’s had to listen to and read every day without a word of complaint.  I might have been able to do it without him, but it certainly wouldn’t have been such a good experience.

Celebrations

So in true UXDI style here are my three key takeaways from the course:
1. Don’t be so precious about your work.  Be ok with chucking it out and starting again (once you’ve taken photos)
2. Take photos of everything, you never know when you might need them
3. Time management is key (I already knew this, but I think it might have been a new concept to some of my class mates)

So now is the start of a brand new adventure.  I don’t know what comes next but I’m excited to find out…

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 on UXDI. 

UXDI - Week 9

Luis explaining something to me

Another busy week as we went into the second week of our client project.  This week was all about design and actually started on Sunday when we spent the day at Ben’s house working on a first rough paper prototype.
This gave us something to test on Monday and as the week progressed we made changes and made it clickable, then into hi fidelity mock ups.
We met with Rishabh on Tuesday and Thursday and I think he was happy with the work we’ve done.  We’ll find out for real when we present the proposed design to him on Wednesday.

Second Home where our client works

Again it was another great week.  We’ve worked hard and I’m tired and suffering with a bit of a cold, but I’ve come home happy most night’s knowing that we are really making headway with the project.

Me with Simon, Zhenjie and Ben

To keep me going I’ve started to listen to some podcasts in the mornings when there is nothing I can do on the train.  My favourite is the Design Details podcast where Brian and Byne talk to designers based in San Francisco.  It is always interesting, inspiring and full of things that I can identify with and as long as I don’t think about the fact that most of them are younger than me by a good 5 years but are still talking about 'full careers', then it’s fine.

Having my photo taken

On Tuesday we had headshots done.  A quick photo session with a professional to give us good photos for our portfolios and social media.
On Thursday I attended the Mobile UX meet up at ustwo.  It was a really inspiring session called UX for Good.  I could have stayed there all night listening to the stuff they’ve worked on and their process.  One of the project was MoodNotes which feels like it really might help people.  These are the sort of projects I want to work on!
And then on Friday afternoon Christian and James from Sword and Stone came to help us with our presentation skills.

Creating our first paper prototype

With just a week to go, there still seems to be an awful lot to do but the idea of sleeping until 7am, going for a run any time I want and a bit of evening knitting are beautiful things I am looking forward to and will keep me going for the last 7 days.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 and 8 on UXDI. 

UXDI - Week 8

Creating personas

This week has flown by but its gone really well.

Week 8 was probably the one I was most worried about.  For the last 3 weeks of the UXDI course we are working on a client project - this time with a real-life company who really do need our help.  It is also another team project (and you know how the last one went), and it means there are only 3 weeks until we finish the course and are released out into the wild!  All reasonable things to worry about I think.
However there was nothing to worry about (as is so often the case with these things).
We were given our teams and briefs last Friday and I found myself assigned as team mentor working with Simon, Ben and Zhenjie.
  

Capturing possible user tasks

My role as team mentor is to keep the team organised and make sure we keep to schedule, along with all the other UX stuff, and as I love planning this is my perfect role.
We started the week by meeting with our client Rishabh to get a better understanding of his company and the issue he needs help with.  Then it was into the UX process which we’ve just spent the last 7 weeks learning, concluding this week with a ‘design studio’ on Friday afternoon where Rishabh and his team joined us in generating ideas.  It was a really fun session and and we got some really interesting ideas out of it, perfect for next week which is design week.

Idea generation in our 'design studio'

Thanks to anyone who filled in our survey or let us interview you!  (The survey will be up for another week so if you haven’t done it there is still time!)  Without your input we wouldn’t be able to start designing tomorrow.

This week we also had lectures on Working with Client and Content Strategy, and Olga from Red Badger visited us on Friday to talk about Kanban - a method of organising your time and work.  Sadly we missed some of that due to the ‘design studio’.

Presenting ideas back to the team in the 'design studio'

If next week continues in the same vain as this one then we have nothing to worry about, although I can’t help but be glad that we gain an hour tonight.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7 on UXDI.

Another Survey

Writing survey questions

This week we start on our last project.  This one is with a real client which is really exciting but a bit scary too.  They are a small start-up who want to help people save money on their energy bills.  More about that at the weekend.

So if you pay for energy, please take 5 minutes to fill in our survey, or if you don't pay the bills and know someone who does - pass the survey on to them.

Thank you!

UXDI - Week 7

This week was Front End Web Development (FEWD) week.
About 7 years ago I did a part time distance learning course on all things web.  At the end of it I was awarded the Master CIW Web Site Manager certificate, but didn’t really use it although it did give me the confidence to apply for the role in the Digital Team which kinda got me to where I am right now.
At the end of the course I created a website for ‘im outdoors but other than that in the last 7 years I haven’t really done any coding, just some basic stuff for HTML emails or web forms for work.

My code

So I wasn’t sure how this week would go, and while I was pretty rusty I was surprised how quickly it came back.  I also really enjoyed having someone to ask when things weren’t going quite to plan, something you can’t really do when distance learning.

Andrew made the classes fun and even those who had been feeling worried about it came up with some great results.  We also had Keith helping, a graduate from the Web Development Immersive course.

And how my page actually looked

The point of the week wasn’t to learn how to use HTML, CSS, JavaScript and jQuery in a week, but to help us understand what developers are doing and get us to start reading code, even if we can’t write it.  From experience I know this makes it a lot easier to work with the development team and makes it a quicker and more pleasant experience for everyone.

So now I have to decide if I want to code up my own portfolio or use a template.  Both solutions have their own pros and cons but I have to say I’m leaning towards doing it myself.  I guess it will all depend on how much time I have to do it, and maybe even how much support there is too.

The UXPA panel

In other news I am feeling pretty exhausted now as I attended the Ladies that UX meet up on Tuesday and the UXPA meet up on Thursday.  Ladies that UX was held at Google this month and covered International Research, while UXPA covered The Role of UX in Advertising.  Both were really interesting and gave me much to think about, especially about the ethics of UX.

The other thing to think about this week was my CV.  We had a CV workshop on Wednesday afternoon which gave us some good tips on things to include (or not to include) on a CV.

And finally we no longer have the top floor to ourselves as the next UXDI class started this week.  Its odd not being able to spread out anymore.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 on UXDI.  

UXDI - Week 6

Week 6 was all about Visual Design and after the last 5 weeks it was a nice change.  There was still much to learn, but it was a little less intense.
Andrew was taking a back seat this week as Tricia was running the class.  She’s from America and has run the UXDI course in New York and London so knew exactly what she was doing.
The aim of the week was to take our app designs from Week 1 and make them look nice.  To do this we used a programme called Sketch (although some people stuck with things like Photoshop if that’s what they were used to).
Not only could we make our old designs look nice but we could fix the problems which were now obvious to us after 5 weeks of intensive UX training.

Dan's app Dare, allows you to dare your friends to do activities

 I was sitting next to Dan this week and was intrigued to watch him create his rocket icon for his app.  I’m new to visual design and Sketch so I’ve been learning as I go along, but I’ve learnt lots from just watching what he’s been doing and asking for help when needed from the guys who have visual design backgrounds - particularly Dan and Stratis.  Thanks guys.  The TA’s Tom and Mollie were also invaluable resources. 

Moodboard for my app

We also had a field trip out to the Design Museum to look at the Design of the Year nominations.  The range was amazing, but I did find myself drawn to the designs which aimed to improve life by filtering city air, removing plastic from the sea, or responsive street furniture which helps disabled people, amongst others.  It was nice to see Monument Valley (see week 2) nominated! 

Style Tile - helps me to keep my design focused

And as we aren’t going to present any projects in the next couple of weeks, we were asked to do flash talks (2 a day) - 5 minutes on a subject we’re interested in.  I had the privilege of going first on Monday afternoon, so put together some slides on making paper (what else?!).  The photos from this blog came in very handy.  I made sure to take some samples with me too which everyone loved!

Before: How my app looked by the end of week 1

After: How my app looked by the end of week 6

 So all in all a very satisfying week.  It was amazing to see the metamorphosis of my grey design of week 1 into a beautiful colourful butterfly.  It’s hard to even recognise it.  I’m still no visual design expert but maybe with a little practice I can do this.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5 on UXDI.

UXDI - Week 5

Walking across the Thames to catch the late train home

Hello October!  Hello week 5!  Where did September go?!

I think this has been the most difficult week so far of UXDI.  Second week of project 3 and everyone is feeling the pressure. 
Project 3 is a team project and so while learning more new UX methods we have also been learning how to work with each other as a team.  
Teams are tricky things at the best of times and can take a while to really gel, so expecting perfection in 2 weeks is a bit silly but I’ve worked in teams for the past 15 years and never had problems like this!  
I have thought about this a lot over the last week or so and have come to the conclusion it is mostly because no-one on this project had a job title and so no clearly defined set of tasks to do.  The fact we also had 4 strong personalities probably didn’t help either.

Redesigning a remote control - not as easy as you might think

The week was mostly workshop time letting us work on prototypes of our design and test them, before putting together the presentation for Friday.
We did have a lecture on Interface Design and one on how to use Axure but I think we all agreed that we’d maybe leave Axure to another project.  It’s an amazing programme but looks like you could get pretty complex pretty quick.

Pin up of all our work so far

On Wednesday we had a guest speaker Jo Phillips from BlackRock.  I found her very inspiring.  It was so nice to hear someone being so honest about the challenges of working in a large business and trying not only to bring UX in but Lean too.  Some of the things she said really rang true from where we tried some of these things at the University.

Anyway, we got there in the end and I’ve learnt a hell of a lot about how  teams work.  The Friday presentation went really well and we got some good feedback.

Next week we’re back working on our own and onto Visual Design week which should be very interesting.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2, 3 and 4 on UXDI.

UXDI Week 4

Team Quora

Week 4 and I think everyone is starting to feel it a bit.  We are all tired and some of us are ill (yep me too) and we’ve had our first drop out taking us down to 17 students.  (I think this was a joint decision as I don’t think her English was good enough for the pace of the class)

This week we start on Project 3.  This one is a team project and I’m working with Liv, Walter and Zein.

Zein and Walter discussing personas

Not living in London hasn’t been an issue, and I’m not sure it’s an issue now, but it has meant the team have had to plan more.  On Sunday we had to meet up to discuss the project.  But I couldn’t really afford or face the hour and a half journey up and back for an hour and a half meeting.  Luckily Skype stepped in and allowed us to meet to discuss everything we needed to be ready for Monday.  Then during the week Trello and Slack have helped us keep in touch out of class hours.
Lessons over the week included project planning, user research and its deliverables, creating surveys, contextual inquiries, mobile design, personas and designing to be accessible.  All fascinating stuff.

Affinity map of our research so far

Our brief looks at the website Quora so our research needed to look at Q&A’s and AMA’s (Ask Me Anything).  First things first we needed to create a survey to send out to as many people as possible.  

A big thank you for everyone who took the time to fill it in!  Without your answers we would have nothing to base our design on!  

If you haven’t filled it in and want to the survey will be live for a little longer.

By the end of the week we had enough survey result and user interviews (thanks to anyone who allowed me to interview them too!) done to allow us to run another design studio - to help us come up with ideas before making our first paper prototype.

Purely by chance I attended the monthly UXPA event this week, which happened to be a panel Q&A discussion on ‘Everything you’ve ever wanted to know about design (but were too afraid to ask)’.  Perfect for our project!  It was a great event and I took many notes on how a real life Q&A session works.  
I’ve been volunteering with UXPA for about a year now - normally I’m on the door handing out name badges and ticking people off the guest list - for doing this I get to sit in some really interesting talks and discussions.  All of which have helped with my understanding of UX and Design.

Proto-personas

On Tuesday we also had a panel of ex UXDI student come and speak to us about life after GA.  They are all doing some really cool stuff now and look pretty happy.  Maybe in the future I’ll be able to sit up there and try to inspire and reassure some future students.  That would be really cool.

And on Friday we had a guest speaker, Ross Robinson who was a recruiter before he did UXDI.  He came to give us tips on working with recruiters to find a job after the course, or as he said why wait till then - get looking now!

Friday was also Graduation for the UXDI7 cohort - the guys who did this course over the summer.  GA is all about community so we were invited to come along and meet them and celebrate with them.  But before that we were kicked out so they could get the rooms set up, so we went for a class dinner together at a local pizza place.  So nice to just chill together with no deadlines or need to talk UX.  These guys are all amazing.

Class dinner before going to graduation

Then back up the 4 flights of stairs to the party.  I didn’t stay too long as I was starting to feel pretty ill (its just a head cold), but the bit of the party I saw was great.  It's weird how big the classrooms look without tables in and no post-it notes on the walls.

I’ve plenty to get on with over the weekend, but hopefully I can catch up on some sleep too and feel better for Monday.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1, 2 and 3 on UXDI.

User research

Coming up with questions for our survey

So we’re into week 4 now and rather than just be given pre-done research to base our projects on we are now starting to do our own research.  So if you’d like to help me out on learning how to conduct user research please give me 3 mins of your time and fill in my survey.  Come back on Saturday to hear how I’m getting on.

Thank you!

UXDI - Week 3

Wireframe for one of the pages on my mini site

So that was week 3 and project 2.  It wasn’t quite as intense as week 1 and 2 in the sense that there were a few less lectures but there was still a tonne to do.
It helped that I had spent the weekend creating wireframes for my site, so on Monday I was in about the right place.  But I know that some people have started to feel the strain a bit.  I have to say that the two hours on the train every day have actually been quite helpful.  Time to work and no internet to distract.

Pin up of all my work so far (that day) for project 2

We started the week looking at Navigation and how it is important that we make sites that our users can learn, rather than having to remember where things are.
We then looked at web forms.  In my old role I created many web forms and yet I never thought about half the things covered in the lecture!

Wireframe sketches before getting them into OmniGraffle

We also looked at creating another clickable prototype this time using inVision.  Its quite a nice site to use and made my prototype feel like a real site, even if it didn’t look like it.
With clickable prototypes all set up we could then start testing and collecting feedback, before fixing any issues and testing again.  Over the week I think I managed 4 iterations, but there are still things I could do to improve my prototype.
On Friday we presented our projects to the class which went quite well.  I got good feedback with some good pointers for improving.  And before we'd even had time to congratulate ourselves we were given the brief for project 3!

Presenting Project 2

On Tuesday evening I went to the September Ladies that UX London meeting, this month at AKQA.  I’ve been going to these monthly meetings for nearly a year now and always find them interesting and useful.  I couldn’t help but smile when the subject this month covered prototyping.

And on Wednesday we had another guest lecture.  This time it was Amit Patel who is an ex UXDI student from this time last year and is now a Product Manager at ADIO (launching later this month).  It was great to see how UX fits into his role and to see how you don’t have to have a job with UX in the title to be using it.

Testing my prototype with Ayo

So another grand week with the only problem being my jealousy of the runners I see as I walk from Waterloo to class.  I’d much rather be running, although with a 15lb (7kg) pack I’m not sure I’d be able to.

I look forward to much sleep this weekend to start week 4 and project 3 fresh and full of beans.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1 and 2 on UXDI.

UXDI - Week 2

So that was week 2.  It didn’t feel like week 2, we’ve done so much that each time Andrew says something like ‘don’t worry about that now, we’ll cover it later, remember its only week 2’, I am shocked every time.

Writing out index cards on the train

So as you can tell another busy week.  We kicked off Project 2 on Monday.  This one runs for 2 weeks so shouldn’t be quite the mad scramble of last week.
We started off by getting an understanding of the design process and how this relates to our brief; this project is a mini site for an e-commerce website.  Most of the research has been done for us, so we have a good basis to work from.
We then looked at Information Architecture (IA) which is the name for sorting information and giving it meaning.  To do this we created a card sort.  

A completed card sort

Basically we took 100 index cards and wrote down items of information on each, in my case groceries as I’m working on a food website, and then asked people to group the index cards together depending on the information on each.  Once they had groups we asked the user to give each group a title.  For instance a group of cards with ‘coffee’, ‘tea’ and ‘hot chocolate’ on might sit in a group called ‘Hot Drinks’.
Our first attempt, in groups, was with sweets - surprisingly difficult, but fun.  It's easier when you can't eat your 'cards'.

Card sorting with sweets

From this information we created site maps which show all the parts/pages of a website and show their relationships to each other in one diagram.  
Then we started to look at Interaction Design (IXD) which takes the information from the site map and turns it into the navigation of the site, but is so much more than that - think of every interaction with a website you have - think buttons and carousels and sliders etc.  I imagine we’ll be covering more of this as we go.  If you want to see some amazing IXD check out Monument Valley.  Its a game with the most amazing IXD as well as being beautiful.
Next we used a method called Design Studio to create ideas to solve a problem as a group.  This was great fun - lots of sketching and stealing of ideas.  You’re not really stealing as you are all working together to solve the problem and by doing this you end up with a better design.

Learning OmniGraffle

And last but not least we then learnt how to use a software called OmniGraffle, which helps us to build site maps, user flows and wireframes in a way which should communicate our ideas in an easier to read format than our messy sketches.

Starting to sketch wireframes

On top of this we had a guest speaker on Wednesday.  Murat from Marvel App came to speak to us about setting up his own business and creating an app to help UX designers prototype their designs.
Not only was this interesting but insightful too - if we have a cool idea there is no reason why we have to go out there and work for someone else.

In other news Mollie and Tom were both away this week so Neej, another past student, was helping out.  It’s so useful talking to them as they know exactly how hard it is, and can explain things in a different way from Andrew or Luis to help us understand.
And I’ve already worn out my first pen and had to swap to another one!  If that’s one pen a week I’m going to have to get some more pens.
Commuting hasn’t been too bad this week, it helps that I’ve not had to stay late for anything.  We worked out that I must be walking about 17 miles a week now, which is way more than I would have run (depending on my long Sunday run), so at least I’m still getting some exercise.
And ‘im outdoors is learning way more about UX than he thought he would; good value for money - 2 for 1!
So another good week.  I’m looking forward to really getting to grips with my design for Project 2. I wonder what we’ll learn next week.

Read about why I left my job and Week 1 on UXDI.