BenZipkin.com

There’s a nice article on the Google Blog that lists the company’s user experience design principles. The principles are broad, but do a great job summarizing how Google addresses the fundamental usability and experience inherent in their products. I love this approach!

1. Focus on people—their lives, their work, their dreams.
2. Every millisecond counts.
3. Simplicity is powerful.
4. Engage beginners and attract experts.
5. Dare to innovate.
6. Design for the world.
7. Plan for today’s and tomorrow’s business.
8. Delight the eye without distracting the mind.
9. Be worthy of people’s trust.
10. Add a human touch.

These principles are defined in depth here.

In his latest Alertbox, Jakob Nielsen publishes the results of a quantitative study on how time needed to complete website tasks increases as you get older. According to the study, there is a 0.8% increase in task time per year for users between the ages of 25 and 60.

Nielsen attributes the increases in time to the human aging process—erosion of cognitive resources, loss of visual acuity, etc. Apparently, the older you get the harder it is to process complex information and tasks on the web.

While there is not enough disparity between 30- and 50-year-old users to warrant different design approaches, Nielsen notes that there is a specific drop-off in ability after age 65. Websites designed for senior citizens clearly need to follow different usability guidelines.

It’s hard to disagree with the Nielsen’s findings, although concluding that older users struggle more than younger users is hardly groundbreaking. The study notes that the age at which people start using the web has some impact on their ability, regardless of age. However, the study does not take into consideration how the types of online tasks you perform vary by age.

Pew Internet released an interesting report on how online activities differ by demographics. While the findings do support Nielsen’s findings, there is equal variance across different demographics such as income, race, and education.

Strunk and White’s Elements of Style (originally published in 1918) identifies clear guidelines and recommendations for clear writing. They also have a list of commonly misused words and expressions. At the top of the list:

-ize. Do not coin verbs by adding this tempting suffix. Many good and useful verbs do end in -ize: summarize, fraternize, harmonize, fertilize. But there is a growing list of abominations: containerize, prioritize, finalize, to name three. Be suspicious of -ize; let your ear and your eye guide you. Never tack -ize onto a noun to create a verb. Usually you will discover that a useful verb already exists. Why say “utilize” when there is the simple, unpretentious word use?

More and more of these ‘-ize’ terms are constantly being added to the modern business lexicon. Perhaps they were created as a catchier, more intelligent technique to state the obvious…

Here are five common terms that overused and some suggestions on replacement terms.

Finalize

‘Finalize’ is one of the most commonly used fake terms. “We can finalize the deal only after both teams agree on the scope.” Also: finalizing, finalization.

• Use instead: ‘Complete’: We will complete the requirements document only after expectations have been defined.”

Strategize

How many times have you heard this one in meetings? “The team needs to meet so we can strategize the elements of the project.”

• Use instead: ‘Assess’ or ‘Define’: “The design team met to assess the creative approach.”

Conceptualize

Somewhat similar to “strategize”, this term is frequently used as an element of the creative process. It’s an ugly word with a number of simpler options. “After the wireframes are completed the designers will conceptualize the creative approach.”

• Use instead: ‘Plan’ or ‘Address’: “The creative director used mood boards and case studies to plan the design strategy.

Templatize

This is an awful term that indicates that something is converted from custom to repeatable. “We can save time if we templatize all the pages.”

• Use instead: ‘replicate’: “The information architecture needed to replicate the structure to maintain consistency.”

Incentivize

A truly cringe-worthy term. “Free water bottles should be enough to incentivize users to fill out the survey.”

• Use instead: ‘motivate’ (or simply ‘incent’): “We can motivate employees if we offer additional personal days.”

More big sites should do what LinkedIn.com is doing: testing a working design concept in real-time—with actual users. The site is testing a new homepage design (which is very good, BTW). There’s a very clear call to action soliciting input from their user community. Clicking on the ‘send your feedback’ link opens a pop-over window with a text box for comments.

I’m surprised that more websites don’t put feedback loops like this into practice. Granted, the site owners probably receive a ton of junk to sift through, but I’m sure they are lots of great insights and commentary that will go a long way towards informing their design decisions. It’s also think that the simplicity of the text boxes results in more candid feedback and is much more user-friendly than a poll or survey.

It would be interesting to learn how the LinkedIn design team plans to assess and act on the data…

I was recently asked to give a brief presentation on the elements of interaction design and web strategy. Distilling all the aspects into a thirty minute presentation was a daunting task! After some deliberation, I decided that the most sensible way was to break interactive design strategy into three elements:

• Concepts: Basic components of interaction design strategy—key “sound bites” and practices
• Process: The five stages of strategy development with their individual artifacts
• Deliverables: Examples of primary deliverables (wireframes, task flows, prototypes…)

Here’s presentation via Slideshare.net.

There’s been an interesting thread going on at the IxDA discussion boards that gets down to a critical issue in the interaction design field: is investing in design really worth the investment by product manufactures?

The post, entitled “Why Do Crappy Interfaces Sell?“, raises some important issues. Do end users really care about great design? Is amazing user experience really worth the investment required by product developers and manufacturers?

I think the answer is a resounding “no”. Outside of our small community of designers there are very few people who would consider paying a premium for an above-average user interface.

Take for example probably the most purchased consumer product: the mobile phone. The vast majority of phones have hideous UIs—many are close to unusable. Still, the vast majority of users barely take the user interface into consideration when buying a phone. I wonder if the normal buyer would pay a premium for a better UI…

I was experimenting with Mint.com, a web-based money-management application. While I haven’t decided if it’s the type of tool I’d like to use, I was impressed by the clear, organized, and simple UI.

Anyone who uses online banking knows how perplexing web-based financial management can be. It’s also not surprising that some of the most intelligently designed web apps are in the financial sector. E*Trade and TurboTax are both great examples.

The Mint UI is a nice example a of clean Web 2.0-styled UI. Simple and structured, the design is clean and well organized – with great use of space, context and design. I like how the primary navigation options are presented in a logical sequence that clearly maps to the financial management thought process: I wanted to see my transactions > see trends > and then use that date to identify ways to save.

Mint.com also does a nice job with data visualizations. Charts and graphs are used frequently but never seem to overwhelm the page. They are presented in a purposeful manner. The spending trends page is excellent. I also like the date range sliders which are similar to those used on Google Finance.

This is one of the nicer UI I’ve seen recently.