Blog

Overview

Matthew Cornell (see his site, http://www.matthewcornell.org/, for lots of ideas and tips on personal productivity) presented "Reboot Your Work: Modern Methods for Productivity, Sanity, and Control" on Monday, January 12th.

This was the first full-day workshop in TriUPA’s 2009 professional training series. Nearly 30 TriUPAians from around the Triangle attended. Special thanks to TriUPA’s generous sponsors, who made this workshop (and all of TriUPA’s events!) possible:

• GSK
• BlueCross BlueShield
• Insight
• Lenovo
• Hesketh.com
• Capstrat
• User-View
• SAS
• MoreBetterLabs

You can help support our workshops, virtual seminars, World Usability Day celebration, and other events: join TriUPA today!

Key take-aways

Here are some of the key points that I took away from the workshop. Please add your own comments, notes, and questions!

Matt emphasized the importance of systematically processing all new inputs (whether email, voicemail, paper, a conversation, etc.) using a consistent workflow [see Matt's flowchart.pdf]. Regular, thorough processing prevents inputs from piling up, which can cause anxiety and stress. Ideally, it's best to set up minimum number of collection points, then train yourself and others (colleagues, family, etc.) to use them consistently.

Calendars are often overloaded with many types of information. Matt argued it's better to keep calendars as clean as possible, containing only appointments/meetings, as well as reminders of upcoming deadlines, and date-specific actions (such as, "Pick up a cake for Fred's birthday party sometime on Friday"). By keeping our calendars clean and current, we can work with confidence: checking our calendars for "must do today" meetings and actions, then reviewing and working from a defined list of actions.

Strong parallels between personal productivity and user-centered design emerged during the workshop. We can treat the challenge of personal productivity as a design problem at the personal level. Consider thinking of yourself as the end user, and imagine how to design a workflow system to support your needs, tasks, and information flows. Matt provided a set of heuristics and guidelines that can inform this personal design process. A related problem is that we've never been taught how to manage ourselves, so need training in "Workflow 101." By combining better design of our personal systems with education and training, we can achieve huge gains in effectiveness, efficiency, and reduced stress. (And as we learned in the workshop, the CDC estimates that 80% of health problems in the US are stress-related!)

Matt recommends people consider planning each day the night before, so as to have a structure in place before diving into a work environment that's often filled with distractions and interruptions. Since multitasking and constant interruptions dramatically reduce our ability to concentrate and do complex intellectual work, it's essential to build defenses that can protect our focus and attention.

Overall, the workshop helped me "reboot my work" by reflecting on how I manage my inputs, calendar, projects, actions, and review processes. I know from experience that personal systems become stale over time, and it's critical to regularly re-assess and improve them. Thanks to Matt for helping me, and others, begin that crucial work.

Resources mentioned:

• Matt's recommended resources.pdf]
• "Getting Things Done" book
  
• "The Four-Hour Workweek" book
• Jott
• Remember the Milk
• ruzuku

Upcoming workshop: Design Research!

Todd Wilkens (design researcher at Adaptive Path) will visit TriUPA on February 20th! Register for his workshop now at: http://triupa.org/DesignResearch

In today's difficult economic environment, knowledge of innovation and new product development best practices is more important than ever to execute more with less resources, and to build a competitive advantage at both organization and individual level.

"Today more than two-thirds of the New Product Development team proudly tout NPDP certification and bring to bear all the credibility and reach of a proven New Product Development Body of Knowledge, helping to tear down walls of doubt and open up new opportunities to innovate and create new value.", Donald Comer, New Product Development Director, Fedex (PDMA Visions Magazine, April 2006, Certification News).

"A promotion to Process Manager and influence with senior managers were results of my NPDP certification efforts...", NPLearning alumni

This two-day training is perfect for those who want to learn about new product development, as well as those seeking PDMA's certification as a New Product Development Professional (NPDP) . The class is capped at 20 students to foster the best possible learning environment to address each individual's learning needs. Both individuals and small teams will benefit from the diverse group interactions and immersion in this off-site workshop. This workshop will be led by NPLearning's Jama Bradley because more professionals have been certified after taking NPLearning workshops than any other training!

Benefits:

• Learn from rich discussion with the instructor and other participants about real-world applications
• Unify virtual teams through a consistent training experience
• Immerse your staff in two solid days of instruction for faster learning
• Personalized coaching session for those taking the NPDP exam
• Online Practice Test for those seeking certification

You'll learn the fundamentals, terminology, best practices, essential tools, and the methods to innovate in a timely and effective manner.

This event qualifies as sixteen (16) Professional Development Hours toward PDMA's NPDP recertification. Other professional organizations up to 16 PDUs.

Date: January 28-January 29, 2009
Time: 8:30 AM to 4:30 PM. Food and drinks included.
Location: 4110 Premier Drive, High Point, NC 27265. Airports: Raleigh Durham (RDU) or Greensboro.

Fees:
(Preregistration required by January 13): $1,489.00 PDMA members, $1,689.00 non-members. Government and group discounts available. Contact Claire-Juliette Beale at carolinaschapter@pdma.org

» Preregistration available online at (credit card payment accepted). Use code TriUPAVIP for a 10% discount!

Refund/cancellations- Cancellations are accepted; however, a credit will be issued to a future public or online workshop with NPLearning.

Questions?
For more information or questions, contact Claire-Juliette Beale at carolinaschapter@pdma.org or 301.996.8325 or Jama Bradley at jama@nplearning.com or 404.931.8525 or 970.292.8066.

When: 9am - 4:30pm | Monday 1/12/09 or Tuesday 1/13/09

Where: Council for Entrepreneurial Development

How: Register online...

» Sign up for the workshop on Monday, January 12th, 2009
or

» Sign up for the workshop on Tuesday, January 13th, 2009


Each workshop is strictly limited to 30 people to promote close interaction with the instructor. You must sign up by January 9th to attend the workshop. So register now to reserve your spot!

Intended Audience
This workshop will help any professional looking to improve productivity and effectiveness while reducing stress and overload. The concepts are relevant to those in user experience, product development, and related disciplines--including researchers, information architects, designers, analysts, and managers.

About the Workshop
Start the year by freeing up your brain so you can think clearly, do more, and work creatively!

In this fast-paced full-day workshop, you will learn modern techniques to juggle and prioritize all the information constantly coming at you: dozens of projects, round-the-clock demands for your attention, and the perpetual overload of email and IM.

You'll apply the concepts using hands-on exercises at the individual, small group, and large group levels. You'll leave with a solid system for doing your job more productively, with less effort, and a greater sense of control.
What You'll Learn
Just as there are principles and guidelines for designing user interfaces, there are smart approaches for designing and managing your personal workspace and system. Matthew Cornell will introduce concrete techniques that will help you…

• Channel the flow of all incoming work, including email, calls, and paperwork,
• Capture the loose ends that occupy your mind and hamper your creativity,
• Reduce stress and overload at work and improve your work-life balance,
• Turn anything requiring your attention into clear, actionable work,
• Create a comprehensive inventory of your projects, actions, and delegated tasks, and
• Start implementing a customized system with your favorite tool - Outlook, Gmail, or iPhone.

At the end you'll have learned in detail all aspects of managing the "incoming stuff" in your life, how to more effectively follow through, and how to make consistent progress on simultaneous projects. Finally, you'll experience the relief of capturing everything that was on your mind, and have the confidence of knowing how to handle whatever comes at you in 2009.
About the Speaker
Matthew Cornell is a consultant specializing in productivity. He has worked with executives at NASA, Dr. Hauschka Skin Care, and the National Science Foundation's prestigious CASA Engineering Research Center. He contributes expert opinions to media (including Men's Health magazine) and his work is regularly featured on leading productivity sites such as 43 Folders and Lifehack.com. He has degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and more than 20 year of experience in software development. Matthew resides with his family in Western Massachusetts.

Matthew's influential blog has gained thousands of readers, thanks to insightful articles like "Add, subtract, multiply, divide: Productivity lessons from basic math".
What UX professionals are saying about Matt…
"Matt guided me through the process of organizing my office and taught me how simple it can be to keep my desktop clean, my email inbox empty, and my mind focused on the task at hand. He is a knowledgeable, patient teacher who offers wonderful insight and guidance about modern productivity techniques."
-- Liza Cunningham, President, FireHaus Studio, Inc. | User Experience Design

TriUPA sponsors Shanna Ward (Insight) and Janey Barnes (User-View) kindly provided these notes based on their viewing of Adaptive Path's recent virtual seminar, "How to be a UX Team of One?"

A slidecast, templates, and links relevant to the seminar are available on Leah's website.

Overview

The discussion began by trying to turn a new leaf, instead of feeling the shame of being a UX Team of One, take pride in being a UX Team of one. Often times this role can hold the most impact, but as a team of one the UX professional is often a jack of all trades and a master of none, really a generalist as opposed to a specialist in their field. These generalists often have to stand alone and need effective strategies to work with the other specialists, i.e. specific research teams, designers, marketers, development, etc. One of the challenges is knowing when and where to get involved into the development process. People with lots of experience tend to avoid being a team of one, but often this level of expertise helps in this situation. There are several stages of growing a UX group, the first and largest is to be interested, then moving into more comitted roles are invested, committed, engaged, and completely emerged.

Stealth Skills for a UX Team of One

1. Be Smart with Documentation
2. Design Better than you Thought You Could
3. Collaborate Like a Master
4. Be Politically Correct

1. Be Smart with Documentation:
There is good documentation and bad documentation.

Documentation can focus attention on the wrong thing. Documentation lends itself to “controlled ownership”, can provide an excuse/reason for procrastinating (e.g., I have to focus on the formatting of the documentation as opposed to the content), and can be an end unto itself.

It's important to assess how the documentation is furthering UX goals and process...

• Who is reading our documentation?
• How long is the documentation?
• How much cross referencing is needed?
• Is the documentation overly glossed?
• Is the documentation communicating an idea?

Good documentation...

• Works for multiple audiences
• Tells its own story
• Is quick to produce

2. Design Better than you Thought You Could
Sketching, simple pen and paper can have save time and is an excellent exploratory and refinement tool.

• Exploratory sketching is the first step, in this step the goal is to generate lots and lots of ideas, some better than others. Using a 6-up template will help push development of several concepts. If you are stuck then play with words, pull out relevant words and design around them. Also having an inspiration library will help to generate additional ideas, these would include interesting shapes and concepts that help to get the creative juices flowing.
• Refinement sketching is done after exploratory sketching, once several ideas are generated now is the time to refine these concepts. For this phase Leah recommended using a 1-up Template to help define the concept in a format where it is easy to share with others and can be used as a tool for discussion. Some sketching tips include: using weighted lines for emphasis, shading to decrease focus, and labels to add clarity and meaning.

Once sketches are refined now is the time to share and get feedback, both positive and negative. Design is not an absolute, there is no right or wrong in design, just MY preference and YOUR preference.

Resource: article on sketchboards.

3. Collaborate Like a Master
This is a critical step and is a helpful way to gain a broader perspective for solutions and serve as a way to critique already established ideas. There are three types of workshops that can be held...

1) controlled review (boring and typical documentation review)

2) collaborative review (all members review current concepts and actively generate new concepts and critique existing ones)

3) collaborative design (this workshop is a bit more challenging to conduct, but with the right group this can be very effective.

When conducting Collaborative Workshops be sure to...

1. make sure there is enough time to conduct the research, this process shouldn't feel or be rushed
2. invite all key players
3. bring tools of the trade - sharpies, sticky notes, paper, pen, 1-ups, 6-ups, tape

Structure of an effective Collaborative Workshop...

1. Give paper/pen to everyone in the room (6-ups blank templates)
2. Explain the design problem
3. Give a set amount of time to solve and sketch the problem
4. Make sure to walk around and help
5. Discuss amongst the team

Structure of an effective Sketchboard Workshop...

1. Get large sheet of paper and place all current sketches in a structure (using tape and sticky notes), you want to be able to roll it up so it can be shared
2. Review and collaborate with others, make sure you explain all ideas and encourage the group to articulate ideas

The goal of these workshops is NOT approval, but rather discussion and critque of concepts. Negative feedback is a good thing and if you aren't getting it then push to receive it. Try holding a black hat session where for 30 minutes you collectively pick the ideas apart.

4. Be Politically Savy
As a UX Team of One we are not the only ones that care about user needs and goals, i.e.development, marketing, and researchers are all interested in users, we all just go about understanding and meeting those needs differently. Being an evalengist for users will often take more energy and yield little results. Try to do fun and engaging activities to illustrate the effectiveness of UX profession, i.e. engaging collaborative workshops, trading cards, posters. Or, get access to folks when they are a captive audience e.g., posters in a bathroom, lunch, cocktails. Design is a process that needs to be effectively promoted.

For UX professionals that need to work remotely with team members Leah recommends using Concept Share.

What: World Usability Day celebration

When: 6pm - 9pm - Thursday, November 13th 2008

Where: Ruvane Auditorium at GSK

Cost: Free to all! Food and drink will be served! Please sign up so we have an idea of how big the crowd will be.

How: Register now: http://triupa.org/2008WorldUsability
(if you're a TriUPA member, be sure to click "Login to Register" once you get to the RSVP page)

About our event:
TriUPA will celebrate World Usability Day this year on Thursday, November 13th, at GSK. We have created a program that centers around UPA's theme of transportation. We are fortunate to have three speakers who have worked in the transportation field and can enlighten us about the usablity challenges in products and services in that area. We have organized a Design Challenge, in which three teams are applying user-centered design to transportation problems. The teams will be presenting their results at WUD. You cannot afford to miss this year's WUD, so please sign up now!

6 pm - 6:45 pm: Dinner and socializing. Make sure to check out our UX trading card game. Everyone who builds a complete set of cards will be eligible for a raffle!

6:45 pm - 7:45 pm: Transportation and Usability:

* Talk by Graham James, Professional Transportation Planner
* Talk by Beth Mcgough, Human Factors Engineer, JCI, Michigan
* Talk by Alex Hussain, Design Engineer, HumanCentric

7:45 pm - 8 pm: Break and dessert.

8 pm - 9 pm: Presentations by teams competing in the Design Challenge:

* Modular design system for bus stops
* Wayfinding and information displays for bus travel
* And one more... (topic TBD)

Presentation of prizes for UX Card game winner and Design Challenge winners.

Thanks to TriUPA's sponsors for making our World Usability Day celebration possible:

* Lulu
* GSK
* BlueCross BlueShield
* Insight
* Lenovo
* Hesketh.com
* Capstrat
* User-View
* SAS

Dr. Deborah Mayhew presented the second workshop in TriUPA's professional training series, "Designing for Efficiency." The workshop was held at CED on October 22nd, 2008.

Dr. Mayhew helpfully sent us both mayhew_1dayefficiencytriupafinal.pdf and an Excel spreadsheet template for conducting keystroke-level efficiency studies.

The workshop focused on helping UX professionals understand when and how to focus on efficiency as part of the user-centered design process.

Some key points:

• Efficiency requires consideration of cognitive, motor, and perceptual activities.
  
• Efficiency should be the key design goal when:
  • Users are highly trained
  • Users perform tasks repetitively with a very high frequency
  • Tasks are generally structured and linear, with low variability
  • User time is at a premium
  • Efficiency has a strong impact on customer service
• Designers can improve their focus on efficiency by:
  • Setting task efficiency goals (a simple, but often-neglected approach)
  • Following design guidelines and principles, addressing cognitive, motor, and perceptual aspects of human-computer interaction
  • Apply unique requirements analysis data

• Three primary techniques for improving design efficiency include:
  • Keystroke level modeling
  • Efficiency heuristic evaluations
  • Efficiency-focused user studies

Recommended reading:
Web Form Design book

TriUPA's 2008 World Usability Day design challenge!

Here's your chance to show off your UX and design skillz by attacking transportation design problems from a user-centered perspective. Form a team and meet other TriUPAians from around the Triangle. It's gonna be a blast... but you've got to sign up to get involved. Sign up before registration closes on 10/22/08!

»» Sign up for the challenge!

Summary of Challenge
Oct 22nd: Registration deadline

Volunteers from the TriUPA community register to participate in the design challenge. At this point all that is required is a commitment to participate, you don't need a team or a specific idea.

Please sign up here.

Oct 25th: Design Challenge Kickoff (at Viget Labs in Durham)

• Registered volunteers meet to form teams and pick a design challenge.
• Each team will have 4 or 5 practitioners each.
• The design problem may be anything related to transportation. Including
  • How do humans interact with the following aspects of transportation:
    • Modes – automobiles, planes, trains and subways, boats, trucks, busses, bikes, animals, and more.
    • Infrastructure – roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, and more.
    • Technologies and resources supporting transportation – online travel advisory and ticketing, maps and more.
    • Security
    • Signage
  • How do the modes interact with each other?
  • How do transportation modes and issues impact our environment? How can being green improve usability of transportation?
  • How have accessibility issues and challenges been addressed by transportation?
  • Waiting (in traffic, for trains/buses/planes to arrive or depart, etc.) is a fundamental part of transportation. How can we improve the user experience of waiting in the context of transportation, particularly public transportation?
• Teams will work on the design problem they pick from Oct 25th to Nov 13th. Each team must prepare a 15 minute presentation for WUD. The presentation must highlight the techniques used, artifacts generated, interesting findings, the final results.

Nov 13th: WUD
Teams will be asked to present their designs at an evening event on November 13th, hosted by GSK in RTP. Prizes will be awarded for innovation, practicality, environmental impact, and creativity.

Dr. Mayhew has been kind enough to provide a PDF copy of slides for her upcoming workshop.

mayhew_1dayefficiencytriupafinal.pdf

[gallery]

TriUPA “Effective Prototyping” workshop from Abe Crystal on Vimeo.

Overview

Todd Warfel (see his site, http://toddwarfel.com/, for updates on prototyping, includes slides from previous presentations, and surveys on prototyping practices) presented "Effective Prototyping" on Monday, September 15th. This was TriUPA's first full-day workshop. Nearly 60 TriUPAians from around the Triangle attended. Special thanks to TriUPA's generous sponsors, who made this workshop (and all of TriUPA's events!) possible:

• Lulu
• GSK
• BlueCross BlueShield
• Insight
• Lenovo
• Hesketh.com
• Capstrat
• User-View
• SAS

Abe's take

Here are some of my notes from the workshop. Please add your own comments, notes, and pictures on the TriUX blog!

Todd emphasized the value of prototyping as a "generative process" that supports collaboration. Prototyping (as opposed to documentation/specification) supports "being on the same page" and creating new design ideas.

He described MessageFirst's design process, known as DRIVE (discovery and research, interaction and visualization, engineering). In this process, "every system we build starts with sketches." MessageFirst emphasizes paper sketching and creates dozens or hundreds of paper skethches to explore ideas before moving into digital prototyping. Paper is "the least intimidating toolkit out there" and has the unique property that clients or stakeholders "can destroy it" (modify, annotate, etc.). This mutabiilty encourages the co-creation of design ideas.

Sketches are best shared in a "design studio" process, in which designers present sketches, accept critique ("don't get attached to your designs"), and annotate/revise. In the workshop, we practiced this process by creating simple sketches and paper prototypes, then presenting them to the group for discussion and critique. Todd noted that this design studio process is underused in software design.

Overall, MessageFirst focuses on creating ideas and discussion quickly through generative sketching. As the team works through a 6-8 week design cycle, weekly update/review meetings keep clients in the loop. Ultimately, "production-ready" HTML/CSS/Javascript are provided to clients, and the designers then work with the clients IT team to help make sure the design is implemented as they had envisioned.

Todd presented six major types of prototypes...
1. communication
2. gauge flexibility
3. sell ideas internally
4. market to customers
5. work through a design
6. testing

... and eight guiding principles for prototyping:
1. "know your audience" (e.g., design, engineering, sales, CEO) and intent (what focus? what level of fidelity?)

2. "plan a little, prototype the rest" (and keep options open through rapid, low-fidelity media)

3. "set expectations" (perhaps the most important principle... use kickoff meetings to explain the design process and educate clients about what type of work they will see and how it's used)

4. "you can sketch" (be bold in using sketching, don't be fearful of aesthetic, and help clients understand your process, and the time and effort it involves)

5. "it's a prototype, not the Mona Lisa" (find the right level of fidelity for your purposes)

6. "if you can't make it, fake it" (e.g., simulate--rather than engineer--ajax transitions)

7. "prototype only what you need" (match to scenarios/usability test script, and be open to leaving out certain features/functions)

8. "reduce risk--prototype early and often" (analogous to agile methods)

Todd also walked through some benefits of prototyping with analog/paper tools (including post-it notes, index cards, transparencies, etc.). Paper prototyping can be extremely fast, isn't constrained to pre-built UI widgets, and encourages modification/annotation of designs. Participants created paper prototypes of a social photo/video player, and presented them for discussion.

Key take-aways:
The workshop encouraged me to remember the importance of sketching and generative prototyping, and revitalize my design research process. I've heard Bill Buxton and others wax poetic about sketching, but looking back at my notebook shows weeks can pass with nary a paper sketch in sight. Todd's points reminded me I can sketch a lot more often, and generate more ideas by doing so.

Similarly, the value of a "design studio"-style review process was apparent, and I agree that it's underused in many cases. I also like the idea that design feedback should be framed to focus on "what's positive/effective about this design?" first, and then "what could be improved or extended?"

I believe the admonition to "set expectations" and explain to clients the time and effort involved in generative prototyping is right on target, applicable to almost any situation where clients/stakeholders aren't deeply familiar with UX methods.

Resources mentioned:

• McAfee redesign ROI
• Cost-justifying usability book

Upcoming workshop: Designing for Efficiency!

Dr. Deborah Mayhew, editor of "Cost-justifying usability" (among many other books) will be hosted by TriUPA on October 22nd! Register for her workshop ("Designing for Efficiency" now at: http://triupa.org/DesigningEfficiency

We are excited to announced the second event in TriUPA's new training series! These events will provide cutting-edge, industrial-strength, knock-your-socks-off UX training in TriUPA's four focus areas: usability testing, user research, interaction design, and information architecture.

What: "Designing for Efficiency" -- a full-day workshop

When: 9am - 5pm // Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008

Where: Council for Entrepreneurial Development

Cost: $125 (TriUPA members) / $100 (TriUPA sponsors) / $50 (students)

How: Register here: http://triupa.org/DesigningEfficiency

Capacity is limited--please register ASAP!

About the Workshop
This one-day course is aimed at anyone (developers, user interface designers, usability engineers, information architects, graphic designers, software end-users and end-user managers, marketers, trainers, etc.) who has an interest in helping their organization achieve end user productivity (i.e., efficiency) through the design of software tools.
Coffee, drinks, and a full lunch will be served.About the Speaker
Dr. Deborah J. Mayhew, internationally recognized consultant, author, speaker and teacher in software and Web usability engineering since 1981. Dr. Mayhew is known as an early pioneer in software and web usability testing and user interface design. Author of many books on usability and UCD.