👋 Oi, mga repapips, Brian Dys here! I love music, photography, and creative stuff like UX design and art. This is a place where I collect my thoughts and works. Apart all these, I’m Jaycelle’s better half and Bryce’s dad. 🥰
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The design team at PayMaya had the opportunity to have a two-day workshop with Elizabeth Baylor—a senior UX researcher at Google.
Day 1 topics covered the following:
- UX Process
- Usability and Usefulness
- Generative and Confirmatory Research
The Curse of Knowledge
We assume that others think like we do but that is only an assumptions. Here is where research comes in handy—to test our assumptions.
UX Process
Two keywords in UX: effective and delightful. People’s experiences in using a product or service must be effective (doesn’t waste time while achieving their goals) and delightful (makes them feel good while doing it).
In UX Research, the effectiveness and delightfulness of solutions must be backed by insights and data. Success metrics is measured.
| 1. Discover What’s the problem? | 2. Explore Conceptualize on the possible solutions |
| 4. Iterate Polish the solution | 3. Design Implement solution based on a concept that works |
When you’ve invested time in discovery and exploration and the solutions failed during implementation, it is easier to look into the implementation phase for improvements rather than attributing the failure due to a bad concept.
During the design and iteration phase, you’re already testing for usability and polishing the solution.
Usability and Usefulness
During the Discovery and Exploration phases, it is better to test for usefulness, then during the Design and Iteration, the usefulness and usability. Test them separately in order to easily attribute where the problem lies
| 1. Discover Usefulness | 2. Explore Usefulness |
| 4. Iterate Usefulness and usability | 3. Design Usefulness and usability |
Usability (Problem)
Imagine an ice cream dropped and melting on the group—generally inedible and it’s a problem when the goal is ice cream consumption.
Can users successfully reach their goals while using the product or service?
Six to eight users (anyone) could be recruited to test the product—enough to uncover 85% of usability problems.
Usefulness (Preference)
Imagine your favorite ice cream flavor—each person has his/her own. Flavor, in this example, is a preference.
In testing for usefulness, sampling matters. Recruit who’s in scope and know who’s out of scope. Identify your primary and secondary target users.
Generative and Confirmatory Research
Generative: Discovering new ideas
- Literature review
- Contextual inquiry (observation)
- User interviews (open-ended, ethnographic)
- Focus groups
- Free listing
- Card sorting (open, unconstrained)
- Photovoice
- Diary studies
Confirmatory: Selecting right idea
- Behavioral observations (quantitative)
- Structured interviews
- Rating and ranking tasks
- Card sorting (closed, constrained)
- Usability studies
- A/B testing
- Surveys
Conclusion
Test your assumptions.
Put pain points to a test.
Avoid self-centered design.
You are not the user.
Your solution is only as good as your understanding of the problem.
Research’s effectiveness lies in the right sample and the right method.
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The last week of November was Jaycelle’s birthday week so we were focused on preparations and celebrations. I didn’t really get to read a lot of stuff this week (in fact, I only got one).
- To Create a Better Society
Yes, we need to go into communities. But we should be looking to find the creative people in those communities who are already addressing their problems. People who live in the community don’t need anthropologists and design researchers to figure out their needs. They know the problems and they often have creative ideas. Moreover, they present practical solutions because they understand the culture, the capabilities, and the resources of the community.
Don Norman
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Woke up early morn scampering to find all the knickknacks that once filled up my backpack. I emptied it since March early this year and retired it into a forgotten corner of the house. The quarantine’s end wasn’t in sight, after all. All the things that I think I might need when in the office were all lined up on my desk — they are the following:
- water tumbler
- coffee tumbler
- laptop computer
- notebook and pen
- battery pack
- umbrella
- digital pouch
- toiletry pouch
- shades
- jacket
The bag? Yes, it’s nowhere to be found. I was about to check a mountain of luggage one by one and thankfully, Jaycelle was half-awake to tell me that it might be in a box full of bags. There it was, my old army green friend.
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- The hand and the brain
Collaboration is a compounding investment: taken alone, each individual episode might not be optimal. Over time, the team learns and improves, gets more attuned to each other, uncovers surprising opportunities and novel strategies. That old saw: if you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.
Matthew Ström - Productive Thinking Model
- Memory bias: how selective recall can impact your memories
- Two Friends by Guy de Maupassant
Some days they did not speak; at other times they chatted; but they understood each other perfectly without the aid of words, having similar tastes and feelings.
Guy de Maupassant - Personal values: how knowing yourself can guide your actions
Many of us state values we wish we had as a way to cover up the values we actually have. In this way, aspiration can often become another form of avoidance. Instead of facing who we really are, we lose ourselves in who we wish to become.
Mark Manson - The New York Times
- Why Do We Still Have ‘Girl Stuff’ and ‘Boy Stuff’?
I don’t see gender nonconforming as an identity, I see it as a set of behaviors not hued to stereotypes. If we stop falsely labeling traits masculine and feminine and embrace ambiguity, there would be a lot less distress.
Lisa Selin Davis - Singing My Dad Back to Me
- How Pediatricians Are Fending Off Coronavirus Myths
- Covid in the U.S.: Latest Map and Case Count
- ‘Remote Learning Is Not Working’: Shutdown Hurts Children, Parents Say
- Why Do We Still Have ‘Girl Stuff’ and ‘Boy Stuff’?
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On Exaggeration
Grabe! One would exclaim in a local language (Tagalog) as exaggeration of a feeling or an event. It’s part of my daily expressions, and exaggeration is one I consider a great tool in my existential musings.
It is not unlike a thought experiment or addressing edge cases in UX.
Two persons are in danger, who will you help first?
How do we handle a very long string here?
Will you eat turd for a million dollars?
What would you do if a love one is gone tomorrow?
Yes, simple questions, albeit provocative. The scenario might less likely happen today but what if it does? What would you do? How would you react?
In talks of exaggeration, there’s a pitfall to avoid, though — when facts are misrepresented for manipulation with malice. On the other hand, thinking in extremes helps us in realigning our principles and values with how we think and who we are now. It helps us be prepared for things unforeseen.
Oh yeah, the reading list
- Exaggeration: why we make a mountain out of a molehill
- 8 Design Guidelines for Complex Applications
- Writing Better Self Reviews
- UXmatters
- Growing Your Career as a Multidisciplinary UX Designer, Part 2
Do not wait for the perfect career opportunity to come along. It’s often necessary to create rather than find such opportunities. So keeping your career-growth goals locked inside your head could ensure that you’ll never achieve the growth you want.
Jonathan Walter - Designing with the Mind in Mind
Regardless of how well designed a digital product or service is, it won’t be perfect. Even if it were perfect, people are not. They will make errors, both mistakes and slips. To be successful, digital products and services should help their users recover from errors.
Jeff Johnson - Universal-Design Principles and Heuristic Guidelines
- Growing Your Career as a Multidisciplinary UX Designer, Part 2
- Speak Ai
Capture, analyze and share media, research, notes and more to improve communication, awareness, well-being and productivity.
A screenshot of Speak Ai’s Dashboard.
Categories
Grabe! One would exclaim in a local language (Tagalog) as exaggeration of a feeling or an event. It’s part of my daily expressions, and exaggeration is one I consider a great tool in my existential musings.
It is not unlike a thought experiment or addressing edge cases in UX.
Two persons are in danger, who will you help first?
How do we handle a very long string here?
Will you eat turd for a million dollars?
What would you do if a love one is gone tomorrow?
Yes, simple questions, albeit provocative. The scenario might less likely happen today but what if it does? What would you do? How would you react?
In talks of exaggeration, there’s a pitfall to avoid, though — when facts are misrepresented for manipulation with malice. On the other hand, thinking in extremes helps us in realigning our principles and values with how we think and who we are now. It helps us be prepared for things unforeseen.