March 2008 Issue
Placing Value on User Assistance
Published: March 24, 2008
User assistance writers are often the Rodney Dangerfields of the UX world, bemoaning the fact that we don’t get any respect. I think the real problem is that user assistance folks are not particularly good at communicating the ways in which we add value to an enterprise. This column explores two models that show how user assistance adds value and how we can communicate that value to those who pay our salaries—something I would like to encourage other user assistance writers to do.
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Category: Columns
User Friendly 2007: Connecting User Experience Communities
Published: March 24, 2008
User Friendly 2007 was held in Beijing on November 23–25, 2007, as shown in Figure 1, and—like the previous conferences in Beijing (2004), Shanghai (2005), and Hangzhou (2006)—was a rousing success. UPA China
saw the 2007 event as an opportunity to return to Beijing, giving attendees the opportunity to visit the 2008 Olympics host city as it prepares for its moment in the spotlight.
The capital of China, Beijing is the heart of China’s economy and culture. With a 3000-year history, there are many places of interest for people to see—such as the Great Wall of China, The Forbidden City, Summer Palace, Temple of Heaven, and many more.
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Category: Reviews
Where’s My Stuff? Beyond the Nested Folder Metaphor
Published: March 12, 2008
As I mentioned in my inaugural column, “Envisioning the Future of User Experience,” I often have difficulty remembering where I put my digital documents and files. It takes considerable cognitive effort to maintain a mental map of my computer’s nested folder structure, and inconsistencies creep into my folder structure as a result of the on-the-fly taxonomic decisions I make when filing things away.
There’s got to be a better way of keeping track of our digital stuff than this decades-old organization scheme.
Google, with the laudable mission of organizing the world’s information, has created desktop tools for content retrieval. Microsoft and Apple, too, have added desktop search capabilities to their latest operating systems. But let’s face it: Keyword search happens after the fact. Search tools help us to find our stuff after we’ve already lost it. They don’t help us organize our stuff.
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Category: Columns
Closing the Communication Loop
Published: March 12, 2008
When our online service channels fail to meet the needs of our customers, if we’re lucky, customers will resort to an alternative channel to get the assistance they need. In doing so, our customers offer us the potential of gaining rich insights into their needs and mental models. Feedback forms, complaints, call center logs—all of these tell us valuable information about customers’ failed interactions.
It’s in the nature of user experience work that we really begin to understand the success of our designs only after a project goes live. We minimize the risk of a complete failure by using iterative design methods and carrying out usability testing at various stages of the implementation. Whether we follow user-centered design or activity-centered design or even agile development methods, there is a certain element of uncertainty about the quality of the finished result until it hits the production servers.
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Category: Columns