Posts Tagged ‘design’

Meld is hiring – UX Designer wanted

24 July 2009

We’ve reached that point where I need help to get through the work that’s building up. There’s work on social media strategy and planning to do; work on communications strategy and design to do; work on the strategy, design & implementation of a Website for a small not-for-profit; and some other bits and pieces.

Rather than specify a bunch of skills, knowledge of & experience withs, let me just say what I need you to be able to do:

  • Be observant. Listen, watch, take notes. Ask questions. Communicate what you’ve observed – visually, verbally and in writing;
  • Be thoughtful. Discuss what you’ve seen and heard, and tie it to what you’ve done before, read about, or experienced;
  • Be creative. Based on your understanding of what you’ve observed, discussed, and learned, explore possible solutions – through sketching and prototyping – and communicate those ideas visually, verbally and in writing;
  • Learn. Get better, each time. Ask questions; read; try things out; seek clarification and advice. And at the end of each day, week, month and year, be able to do something new, better than you could previously.
  • Be honest. In your dealings with me, with our clients, and with yourself.

To be successful, you’ll probably have a background in design, and have some real-world experience already under your belt. Not a great deal necessarily, but some. And you probably won’t be an ‘old hand’ either – I don’t think I can offer the sort of salary a really experienced person will want.

At Meld our tools include: InDesign, Pages/Word, Numbers/Excel, a good pen & a moleskine notebook. We work on Macs; and we’re based in Surry Hills (Sydney, Australia). You’ll work on site with the rest of the team – which is either in Surry Hills or with a client – most of the time, but that doesn’t have to be the case every day.

The role is initially for three (3) months with the potential to become a permanent post. Being a small agency, we’re not in a position to provide visa sponsorship or relocation assistance, and it’d be nice if 3 months weren’t the limit to the time you are able to work. (It’d also be great if you could start soon :-)

If you’re interested, send through a resumé or introduction to consultants@meld.com.au.

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What is an Experience Strategy? – a new article at Johnny Holland

5 June 2009

I finally got around to writing down what I mean when I talk about experience strategy.

An experience strategy is that collection of activities that an organization chooses to undertake to deliver a series of (positive, exceptional) interactions which, when taken together, constitute an (product or service) offering that is superior in some meaningful, hard-to-replicate way; that is unique, distinct & distinguishable from that available from a competitor.

The full article, which goes through the definition piece by piece and looks at what each means in detail is available now over at Johnny Holland.

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A little more on eBooks and design research

5 March 2009

I’ve been a little tapped out recently due to a rising tide of work projects, side projects, writing projects, UX Australia, UX Book Club, and preparing to head to the US for IA Summit 2009 in Memphis, and my visit to SCAD in Savannah, Georgia. The work projects have been interesting (more on those some point in the future), but running concurrently and taking up a big chunk of time.

All of which is by way of explanation for not writing anything substantive here for a little while. Time to rectify that.

I wrote here a little while back about what I’d like to see in an eBook reader before I’d buy one. The recent release of the Kindle 2 from Amazon has reignited interest in the topic so I thought I’d revisit one of the points from my earlier post.

“I can ‘loan’ my copy of a book to a friend by transferring it to their reader. If I do that, it’s no longer on my reader. This could also act as a way to give people Gifts.”

Earlier today Dave Malouf lamented the range and cost of eBook titles available for the Kindle and we got onto the topic of loaning books. Books are something that I take a great deal of pleasure in. Not just reading them, but the feel of them, smell of them (dry & musty, I know), and keeping a collection of them on the shelves.

Most of all, though, I like to share them with other people; you can see why UX Book Club came about, can’t you. But sharing a book can occur in a number of ways. I can talk about the story or topic with other people; or I can give a copy of the book to someone else as a gift; or I can hand over my copy of the book for them to read.

And this is something that’s completely missing from the eBook concepts we’re faced with today. You can’t loan someone a copy of an ebook you’ve bought. And that bothers me. I want to carry that sharing from the physical over to the digital world. And I’m sure the reason that it’s been done this way is because of money; the notion that my friend or family member should buy their own ebooks – and pay $359 for the Kindle 2 so they can read it – a large investment for someone who may only buy the occasional book.

This is one of those design decisions that only really turns up through design research; deep contextual research about the use of the object (the book) and it’s broader context. And it’s surprising how few companies use it to inform their design.

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10 Common Misconceptions of User Experience Design

10 January 2009

Whitney Hess (independent user experience designer, writer and consultant based in New York City) has published an article in mashable.com which looks at 10 common misconceptions about user experience design. The article includes comments and quotes from a whole bunch of luminary practitioners, and then there’s a quote from your’s truly.

The article is very well written, and a useful way of answering questions about UXD.

http://mashable.com/2009/01/09/user-experience-design/

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What experience designers can learn from the Mini…

13 December 2008

The very first car I owned was a Mini. That was back in 1988, just after I finished high school. It was worth about $1,500; was British Racing green in colour; and stuck in third gear when it was cold. It didn’t have air conditioning; there wasn’t much room in it; and it was nowhere near as good as the cars my mates were driving.

I loved that car. It cornered like no car I’ve driven since – including two sports cars. The car body is wide, and low to the ground. You could throw it into a corner at 70 or 80km/h and it would just hug the road and turn like it was on rails. When they were first released in the ’60s, they came with a guarantee that you couldn’t roll one.

[Historical note: Turns out that last part wasn't entirely true, as my older brother demonstrated by falling asleep at the wheel and rolling it down an embankment. Ironically, he wasn't wearing a seatbelt, which saved his life: he fell flat across the front seats as the car rolled and hit a telegraph pole - across the roof. A seat belt would have held him upright in his seat, and his head would have been crushed by the telegraph pole. Instead, he walked away with a split forehead.]

The Mini Cooper S was also a very powerful little car. When combined with it’s cornering and general handling, it made an awesome little race car. It’s hard to believe when you see the parade of V8 cars going around the race-track today that the Mini won the Bathurst 1000 in 1966. Actually, Mini’s came in the first nine places. If you want to know why your Holdens and Fords have good handling today, you can mark it down to the embarassment they experienced getting trounced in ‘66 by a little Mini :)

The Mini was, quite simply, an enormously fun car to drive. More than anything else, that sense of fun was what made the car unique – as much as its iconic shape.

So in 2002 when new owners BMW re-launched the Mini marque, there was a great deal of consternation felt around the world by Mini owners and drivers all terribly worried that the new version would have lost those characteristics that made the car unique.

A few years back a friend of mine was looking to replace his car – an Audi TT. He had a mind to get something a little more sensible, which in his case meant an Audi A4 Cabriolet. While he was in the process of looking he also figured he might as well test drive a few other cars that he had no intention of buying, but would like to drive at least once.

One of the cars he wanted a turn in was the new Mini Cooper. So he rolled up to the Mini dealership in his TT, wandered in and asked for a test drive. A few minutes later he was rolling out of the dealership in a Mini, ready to put it through it’s paces.

Now, I’m not sure this is the same all over, but in Australia the car salesman (literally true) comes along with you. My friend was behind the wheel; salesman in the passenger seat. Away they go.

My buddy drove that car around for a few minutes getting used to the handling (much better than his TT), the performance, brakes etc. But he wasn’t really all that thrilled. He even said so to the salesman. To which the salesman replied: “You’re driving it like an Audi. This is a Mini. Drive it like you just stole it.”

Ten minutes after that he was filling in paperwork to buy it. After 40 years Mini had changed a lot in their car: but they retained the essence of what made the original such a joy to drive. And in doing so, they’re winning over a new generation of enthusiastic car owners.

The lesson here is that, having gone to so much trouble to design and build a product that creates a unique, highly-valued experience, it’s possible to reinvent the product without losing touch with the core elements of the experience that made it successful.

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A note about queues and service windows

4 December 2008

We’ve all experienced that annoying sensation that we’re in the “slow queue”. The line next to us seems to be moving faster, but you know that if you shift queues that’ll be the when the new line slows down. You’ve also probably seen that some places set up their queues differently. Typically, you’ll see one of the following configurations:

  • everyone queues up in one line, and goes to the next open service window/register/person (often seen in banks these days, and at airport check-in counters); or
  • people join a queue behind one service window or another. Typically, people will join the shortest queue. (This is what you typically see in fast-food outlets and supermarkets.)

What you may not know, is that getting people to form a single line and go to the next available service window is much more efficient for everyone. Because no-one is necessarily held up by the person with all the excess baggage, or the wheelbarrow full of pennies that need counting, everyone tends to get served faster, on average, than the other model.

The down-side, is that the single queue *looks* longer, and can increase the potential for people baulking. But, the queue also moves much faster, so people are also less likely to abandon the queue altogether.

When designing your service, and looking at your layout options at check-out, it’s important to keep these things in mind.

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