We’re gearing up to do several rounds of usability testing. We’ll be traveling to do the tests, but stakeholders back at the office will gather in a room to observe using Morae.

In our planning, we decided we should post ground rules for observers. I searched online for rules I could steal, but didn’t come up with much beyond dead links and general suggestions.

So I quickly created my own and am sharing them with you here. Please steal them and modify to suit your own needs!

House rules for usability test observers

1. Don’t talk.  Others in the room are trying to absorb what’s happening.
2. The notetaker may ask if anyone has questions. It’s ok to talk then.
3. Turn your phone off & close your email. Minimize distractions! You’ll be shocked at how much you learn from watching thoroughly.
4. Don’t re-design or problem-solve. We know you’ll get lots of good ideas, but it’s more important to watch than to brainstorm right now.
5. Don’t run back to your desk & start making changes. The UX team will assess and report findings from all participants. Systems changes will be prioritized then.
6. Don’t mock or laugh at participants. They are the people who use the products you create. They pay your salary.
7. Take good notes. You’ll forget much of what you learned. Notes are a great reminder!
8. Stay the duration of the study.  It’s key to understanding the full context of the users’ actions.
9. Leave quietly. If you absolutely must exit the room, don’t make too much noise.

- @michaelseidel

A short roundup of good things we’ve read/watched/listened to in the last 7 days. Sometimes about UX, sometimes not. All things you can learn from.

Squirrel eating a whole hot dog bun - nature is amazing

Read

Designing a Readable Experience. Great article on iPad reading experience.

More Than Usability: The Four Elements of User Experience, Part I.

Why reviews matter to local businesses. Infographic

Devium. The way a car stereo should work with your iPhone.

Ethical Graffiti – Keep it green.

Watch

The absolute worst movie you have to see. – The Story of O.

A short roundup of good things we’ve read/watched/listened to in the last 7 days. Sometimes about UX, sometimes not. All things you can learn from.

Photo by Ghazal Sheei

Read

“Simplicity is really about comprehension and clarity of purpose.” What Does it Mean to be Simple?

Sticking with mkeUX’s Content Strategy theme this week Taxonomy: Content Strategy’s New Best Friend.

Some real “sharp” design! Vintage Razor Blade Wrappers

Astounding living quarters: Milwaukee artist Charles Dwyer’s house, on the Home Again blog. (That’s where the photo at top is from)

How to design a logo.

Watch

Great documentary on the making of Nirvana’s  Nevermind.

Listen

The Truth = modern radio drama.

We’ll be raffling off 2 copies of Margot Bloomstein’s book, Content Strategy at Work, during our meetup tonight!

$5 for your chance to win! Enter as many times as you want to increase your odds.

The $ will go to Margot – she traveled all the way from Boston for this event! How rad is that?

GO RSVP, if you haven’t already. We’d love to see you there.

- @michaelseidel

My brother once likened social media addiction to cigarette addiction. You check and recheck (or smoke and re-smoke) to fill lulls in time. You don’t really care about what you’re seeing. It’s a mindlessly compulsive act. It’s just something to do. And I do a lot of it.

Brains resetting themselves
Last week, I heard Nicholas Carr speak on Wiretap about how adaptable human brains are. In the digital age, they’ve modified themselves to taking in small snippets of information quickly (duh). This isn’t necessarily an evil thing. It just means that, overall, it makes it tough for us to then turn around and concentrate for long periods of time or to learn deeply about one specific thing. We’re always itchy for the next amusement or nugget of information. The result being that we have knowledge but not understanding.

Detoxing
After hearing Carr, I decided that I needed to do a social media detox. I deleted the Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram—oh, sweet, sweet Instagram—apps on my iPhone and iPad. I put myself on lockdown.

That was 6 days ago. While I won’t say I’m totally reformed, I do find myself feeling less…twitchy….as I go about my day. There’s no longer the nagging thought at the that, OH GOD, IT’S BEEN 5 MINUTES—BETTER CHECK!!! A sense of slight mental clarity has bore through, mainly because there’s less of a strain on my attention span.

Oh, god, life is meaningless and I’m just a speck
Mainly, I’ve realized how insubstantial my digital life actually is. Updates still come pretty furiously via Google Reader (I’ve allowed myself that), but I rarely get any emails. People obviously aren’t aching to peek into my life. I’ve actually always known this, but social media gives one a false, surface-level sense of it being otherwise. Additionally, I’ve also realized that I don’t really care all that much about knowing what others are up to on micro timescales.

For the longish haul?
Not sure how much longer I’ll keep this up. Maybe another day or two. Or maybe I’ll give it a while an see if my brain resets itself to the extent that I can finally finish V. And The Brothers Karamazov, too. And other stuff I’ve been too fragmented to get through for the last decade or whatever.

PANTS ON FIRE!!!!
Um, actually, I fibbed. I’m going to fire up Twitter/FB as soon as I post this, to share the link (I’m fully  aware that I’m contradicting much of what I’ve said above). Then I’ll continue my detox. I swear!

- @michaelseidel

A short roundup of good things we’ve read/watched/listened to in the last 7 days. Sometimes about UX, sometimes not. All things you can learn from.

Read

We are Colorblind is dedicated to making the web a better place for the color blind.

What a tidy summary! An Intro to Metadata and Taxonomies

Our friend Mike Rohde is writing a book about sketchnoting! Chart his writing progress on his excellent blog, rohdesign.com.

Not reading Contents Magazine? There is probably something wrong w/ your brain.

My new favorite website, The Public Domain Review.

Watch

Stop whatever garbage it is you’re doing right now & spend the next 50 minutes watching Aaron Draplin’s 50 points talk.

Listen

STEAL MORE OF YOUR IDEAS. Imagination on TTBOOK.

Jonathan Goldstein’s 70 year old father explain YouTube & iPads.

I’ve started painting again after 8 years away.

I had no idea how much I missed it, but I regained a connection that I had been missing for a long time. And it’s funny, painting has even given me a better perspective on my day job as a User Experience Architect for Johnson Controls.

It’s not just the painting part that gave me this perspective, but it was the actual decision to start painting and the studio space set up in my house.

The first thing I needed to start painting was an easel. One that was big enough to handle large canvases and still be adjustable enough for small ones. I searched the internet high and low and all the easels that would fit my needs were in the $200 range – blew my mind! And, they weren’t exactly what I was looking for.

So I decided to build one. I didn’t have a plan, just an idea in my head. I drove to the hardware store and bought $23 worth of wood, clamps, screws and washers, and then went back home to assemble it. It all took about 4 hours and the finished easel exactly what I needed.

After building the easel, I needed two other things:

1. A table to put all of the paints, brushes, palette, rags, water jars, etc
2. A space to put all this stuff in

I cleared out a space in my basement and made sure it was comfortable, had good light and was arranged to work best for me.

Then it hit me like a ton-of-bricks – this is what everyone truly is looking for in their lives. They want spaces that are comfortable and fulfill exactly what they need, nothing more, nothing less. These spaces can be workspaces, software they use, web sites they visit. Whatever it is, people want to arrange their spaces in a way that is comfortable to them!

In the past, I searched for structure that people could live with and a uniform way of doing things that works for everyone. I mistakenly believed:

• There has to be a linear way to get people to complete tasks
• The task always is the focal point
• Most people complete tasks the same way

My painting set up works for me, and only me. Others would come in and immediately rearrange it to make sense to them.

As we move into this user experience era, I am coming to realize that a huge list of features and functionality in applications is not what most people are looking for. They want something that is comfortable and does exactly what they need it to do.

Simple customization needs to be at the forefront of experience design and user interfaces. People want to set up those “spaces” to work best for them. Getting all the non-essential things out of their way to get what they need done.

It’s time we let them.

A short roundup of good things we’ve read/watched/listened to in the last 7 days. Sometimes about UX, sometimes not. All things you can learn from.

Read

Mercury – a beautifully designed, simple weather app.

Image Blender – faux double exposures, right on your iPhone.

NO MORE BULLSHIT The League of Movable Type –> open source typography

Lean UX is Dead. Long Live Lean UX. Lean UX isn’t about a new way to just make stuff and avoid deliverables.

Six Things User Experience Designers Forget When They Criticize Websites. We’ve all been there.

“Over the years, we’ve become the virtual equivalent of hoarders, tacking on content and features without stopping to clean house.” For a Future-Friendly Web

Watch

Jer Thorp’s Ted Talk – Make Data More Human.

Incredibox – the greatest time waster ever!

Listen

HVAC and hidden tubs at The White House – 99% Invisible’s The Bathtubs or the Boiler Room

User research and accessibility concerns of designing taxicabs Hail, Hail! ‘Taxi Of Tomorrow’ Arrives In NYC

Graphic at top by Slava Kirilenko, via Grain Edit

I have a weakness for documentary radio. Listening to it and—very irregularly—making it.

Recently, I started reading Reality Radio. It’s a collection of essays by documentary radio luminaries like Scott Carrier (my fav), The Kitchen Sisters, and Ira Glass.

There are many parallels between UX and documentary. In both, you listen intently to your interview subjects and then hunker down at your computer, cut, edit, and expand, and turn your findings into something compelling.

In radio, it becomes a story.

In UX, it becomes an interface, an experience. Which, I guess, in a way, is a story—there’s a narrative that’s inherent in navigation, right?

In John Biewen’s introduction, he says:

 All documentary work involves collaboration of some sort. At the very least, the producer needs the person on the other side of the microphone.

Where I work, we often talk about collaboration. We have a UX team of 14. That’s a lot of smart, user-focused people to get in a room to discuss ideas—to yell and cheer and provide counterpoints.

Often, discussions with users are relegated to being an auxiliary activity. We know it’s necessary in order to have usable designs (especially given the specificity of our the products we work on), but it’s often thought of as going out and soliciting feedback.

Biewen’s quote is making me rethink how user research should function. We shouldn’t be seeking feedback. Instead, we should be involved in ongoing collaboration with our users. To forge relationships with our users, we should involve them in things like:

• Design reviews at all stages—including sketches & wireframes
• Longitudinal studies
• Brainstorming, concepting, and dreaming sessions

(I’m still thinking this through, reader. Please leave a comment with additional ways we can collaborate with users!)

By showing getting our collaborators our greasy and dirty with us, they’ll understand the evolution of our designs and how their input directs the final product.

Mainly, I believe we should dismantle the façade of formality. Our aim should not be to enter as researchers, but as partners-in-crime. Several authors in Reality Radio discuss visiting their interviewees many, many times and getting an insane amount of tape. Time leads to trust and trust leads to the letting down of guards. That’s when the good stuff spills out. I believe we can do the same thing within UX, through continued collaboration.

This collaboration with users should not be a luxury—it’s a necessity. They’re the voices on the other end of our microphones and without them, all we have is dead air.

A short roundup of good things we’ve read/watched/listened to in the last 7 days. Sometimes about UX, sometimes not. All things you can learn from.

Read
Don’t go it alone: collaborative web design – great collaboration inspiration from the dudes at bearded.com

Why I don’t wireframe much

Redefining Hick’s Law – a new stab at Hick’s Law as we move into the responsive design age.

An introduction to Lean – good advice how to deliver in an agile development world.

Technology can push our crazy buttons, rewire brains – am i right?

Watch
Henry Miller, Asleep and Awake. A short documentary that takes place in the author’s bathroom. The pictures he has on the walls are “a gateway to his mind.” (via The Millions) (NSFW)

Stream Being Elmo on Netflix. A tremendous portrait of passion, vision, and dedication.

Listen
Radio producer Jay Allison discusses innovation in this talk. “It sharpens the mind to feel lost and then found.” Invitation: PRPD Benediction

“We err on the side of doing the maximum amount possible.” Alan Lomax’s Massive Archive Goes Online