IDEA’09

Firstly, the IA Institute is running its 4th IDEA conference – in Toronto from September 14th – and promises to be another awesome affair. Registrations are still open for what has become established as a must-attend conference. Although I can’t be there. Which sucks. But I’ll be ‘participating’ via twitter using the #noidea09 hashtag – along with those other poor souls holding the fort at home

CanUX

CanUX – the Canadia User Experience workshop – has extended the deadline for their Fly Me to Canux contest thru Sept 4.  The competition is open for two more days and is an excellent opportunity to attend the workshop – in Banff – for free! Or you can just register and attend normally – I’m sure they won’t mind either way

Interaction ‘10

Interaction ‘10 is a conference close to my heart – for many reasons – not least of which is that this will be the first time I’ve actually been able to attend. More so, the interaction design community is such a vibrant group of people that I can’t help but be excited at the prospect of joining them for a few days in beautiful Savannah, Georgia.

The conference itself isn’t until February (4-7th), but that’s starting to seem really close. If you’d like to join me there, you’ve also still got time to submit a presentation proposal. The deadline for submissions is September 15th. Details on the submission process can be found at http://bit.ly/64H2o

(At last count, the conference is offering 11 different types of awesome – for me anyway – so I’m sure there’s at least a few types of awesome on offer for you including – the people, the program, Savannah itself, community, social events, inspiration, sharing… you get the idea

EuroIA

In three weeks’ time Copenhagen (another beautiful city, especially at this time of year) will host the fifth European IA Summit. The program has shaped up into something special, including an appearance from fellow Johnny Holland authors, Joe Lamantia and Leisa Reichelt.

Web Directions South

Closer to home, our good friends – Maxine and John – at Web Directions will be holding the 2009 edition of what has become a landmark Web conference for Australasia. Web Directions South is on in early October – 7-9th – in Sydney. The program looks awesome, and is sprinkled liberally with a friends (who are also kick-ass at what they do) like Donna Spencer, Lachlan Hardy, Suze Ingram, Cheryl & Scott Gledhill, Christian Crumlish (all the way from USA) and Jeremy Yuille.

I haven’t registered for Web Directions yet – my twin girls are due soon but if they hold off making their grand entrance until November (as planned) then I’ll attend. You can still register and receive $100 off the conference ticket (middle-bird pricing!) at https://secure.webdirections.org/wds09/register/billing

And then, as if the program wasn’t cool enough, Web Directions are giving away a trip to Web Directions East in Tokyo in November. Just by attending the conference in Sydney.

Other Cool Stuff

The organizers of OzCHI (another good UX conference coming up in Melbourne, Australia in December) are running a student design challenge as part of the conference program. You can find details at http://www.ozchi.org/24/

They have this to say about it:

The OZCHI conference student design challenge is a great opportunity for students from around the world to win a travel scholarship to Melbourne, Australia, and attend an international conference about interaction design to meet peers, academics, and professionals from the field.

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I’m excited to see taking place, and I’m bummed I can’t attend every one of them.

PS: A few people – yes, you in the comments – have indicated a desire for a more comprehensive list. Rather than go through the effort of making one – since that really isn’t what I was trying to do here – I’ll just link you to this one that somebody else prepared earlier.

• Twitter. Hands down the most valuable resource to which I have access. The UX community on twitter is vast, vibrant and there is usually someone around day or night to offer an opinion, advice, or just listen. Elizabeth Buie (@ebuie) put together this wonderful list of UX practitioners on twitter – check it out: there’s inspiration in every one of them. (I was actually asked “aside from Twitter”, but I had to include it.) At last estimate the UX people I interact with on twitter have over 3,000 years of collective experience. In other words, if you or I had been practicing UX since Moses was a boy, that’s where we’d be now.
• Johnny Holland. This is a magazine-style blog run by Jeroen van Geel out of Amsterdam with a heavy focus on the ‘design’ part of UX design. Lots of good articles about UX, interaction design, methods & techniques, along with a healthy dose of the inspirational and interesting. (Note: I’m an editor and contributor to the magazine which could show I’m just biased, or how awesome the publication must be for me to be involved. I can’t tell
• Konigi. The blog at konigi.com can usually be relied upon to throw out something truly interesting at least once a week.
• Core77. This is a design magazine and takes a fairly broad definition of ‘design’ for its editorial. The articles here range from the visionary to the highly practical; conceptual and case study. Full of interesting articles.
• Wireframes. This is a relatively new blog, similar in some respects to Konigi, but focusing solely on the practical techniques people use to design UX architectures and interactions. As the name suggests, the principle focus is on wireframing, but is broader than that.
• UXmatters. This is a magazine site that I’ve been reading for about four years, and writing for a little over three. New articles are released every fortnight – usually between 2-4 each time. These tend to be longer articles rather than blog posts.
• The Designers Review of Books is a magazine-style blog run by ex-pat Australian Andy Polaine. The site publishes book reviews – by designers, for designers – and is a great addition to the literary side of UX practice (UX Book Club being another .

The above sites are mostly organizations or collections, or individuals acting as collectors and aggregators. The sites below are individuals whose blogs are worth reading – whether via a feed or catching an announcement via twitter. In no particular order:

• Will Evans – http://blog.semanticfoundry.com
• Donna Spencer – http://maadmob.net/donna/blog/
• Peter Merholz (Harvard Business) – http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/merholz/
• Russ Unger – http://www.userglue.com/blog/
• David Armano (Logic + Emotion) – http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/
• Dirk Knemeyer – http://www.knemeyer.com/dk.cfm
• Joshua Porter – http://bokardo.com/
• Todd Warfel – http://toddwarfel.com/
• Whitney Hess (Pleasure + Pain) – http://whitneyhess.com/blog/
• Livia Labate – http://livlab.com/thinkia/

That’s my list – or at least the major highlights. What’s your favourite UX blog, magazine or site? Information, techniques, methods, theory, inspiration, or consolation – send it through.

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.

On a weekend away with a group of my Uni friends, Dana, a lovely girl of Hungarian stock with a practical streak a mile wide, insisted on performing one last check throughout the entire holiday house before we could lock up and leave. Instructions were simple: look everywhere; don’t check your own room; check everything. She called it ‘the idiot check’: the check you do so you don’t look like an idiot.

On that occasion we found: a pair of ear-rings in a bedroom drawer; someone’s toiletry bag in the bathroom (we all must have been through that bathroom when we were packing up, but there it was); and EVERYTHING still in the fridge (it was so obvious to everyone that the fridge needed to be emptied that we all assumed someone else must have taken care of it already).

In a sense, this is what a lot of usability testing is all about: test everything – even the stuff you think is obvious – just to be certain. And it’s also what a good project manager or Q&A person or friend will do at the end just prior to launch. We know that over the course of many days, weeks or months we’ve gotten so close to the project that we’re no longer seeing the forest, and yet we also hate that person who comes in right at the end of a project and points out a bunch of things that could (quite clearly) be improved.

A fresh pair of eyes is a wonderful thing. A pair of eyes free of assumptions; with no baggage or knowledge of all the little decisions that were made along the way. Someone who doesn’t think it’s too stupid to look in the fridge for your sunglasses that simply aren’t anywhere you’ve looked since, by definition, they’re somewhere you haven’t looked and that includes the fridge, right?

The Idiot Check requires that you set aside your pride and be prepared to look silly. Just remember that it’s better to look silly on your own terms with people you know, than publicly and by accident

Microsoft has been putting a lot more effort into the user experience of its software recently. There are clear indicators of the fruits of this effort in Office 2008, for example. So here are a few points I noticed in my tour of IE8.

Installation

Microsoft products always fill with me with a sense of trepidation. The installation process never seems to go smoothly, and take longer than they feel like they should. Downloading and installing IE8 was no exception. Five clicks on a Download option and I was finally into the actual installation process. I’m sure there are good reasons for each of those clicks, but it just reinforces the opening perception that the product may be more trouble than its worth.

Getting Started

Somewhat surprisingly (see above), once the software was installed the set up process was exceedingly smooth. Importing settings and bookmarks from Firefox went off without a hitch and I was ready to use IE8.

Initial Impression

The interface feels cluttered and confused. The header area particularly is full of options and icons – most of which are either ambiguously labeled or not labeled at all. The positioning of these items didn’t feel to be based on any particular prioritisation so I was constantly searching for the right icon to do the thing I needed. This included simple tasks like stopping a page mid-load; going back to the previous page; and accessing the File menu.

Performance

The speed of load and page rendering in IE8 is excellent. Sites like the Sydney Morning Herald, News, and the BBC all loaded quickly and displayed flawlessly.

Tabs & Tab Groups

The tabs in IE8 work in a common sense fashion, meeting the conventions established over the past few years. But IE8 takes this idea one step further through the use of colours to indicate groupings of tabs. Opening a new tab via a link from an existing tab adds that new tab to the same group – displayed in the same tab colour. Using the New Tab command (Ctrl+T) creates a new tab and tab group.

It is easy to rearrange tabs – clicking & dragging; and to move a tab from one group to another – clicking & dragging a tab into an existing group. The tab thumbnail view is a useful feature – similar to that seen on the iPhone – but it could do with the addition of clearer group indicators (the coloured outline is too subtle).

Accelerators

The addition of the Accelerators to IE8 is an interesting one. Accelerators provide contextual functionality to any highlight piece of text. Functions include Search and Translate – configurable to your search engine of choice. If third-party developers produce more of these plug-in features, the Accelerators may become a very effective way to extend the functionality of IE8 without recourse to upgrades and software updates.

If you’re running a Windows machine IE8 is worth a look.

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Re: the debate over whether experience can be designed:

Jon Kolko wrote:

If I claim to “design a rollercoaster”, I intend for it to be duplicated – exactly as I created – over and over. If I claim to “design the experience of using the rollercoaster”, it follows that I intend for that use to be duplicated – exactly as I created – over and over. If I claim to “design the experience framework in which the rollercoaster is used”, it leaves room for people to experience it in their own way.

I’ve always thought that the term “experience design” can also be a shorthand for “designing for experiences”. That is, that we design systems that invite interaction. We create contexts that include opportunities for certain designer-selected activities.

I can agree that an “experience” is a personal thing that can no more be designed than love can be architected or happiness blueprinted. But we can create the affordances that suggest, coax, and guide users towards experiences we designers can reasonably hope or even expect to occur, experiences that our own experience tells us are likely to occur.

So yes, we can absolutely design the “framework” as Jon says.

But if we do the job right we will also create the experience itself — we can permit and even direct users to have almost precisely the experience we intend.

In the rollercoaster example, every user’s experience will surely be a little different, but not so very different that the designer can’t be said to be designing those experiences. Most users will experience damn near the same feelings of fear, excitement, and fun the designer intended them to feel. If a rollercoaster passenger feels melancholy or sleepy, they are likely a rare exception.

I hate to make distinctions between art and design, but in expressive art forms it’s generally more acceptable to allow ‘users’ to have a broad range of potential experience than we are willing to accept from artifacts of design. To that extent, then, how can we say that designers aren’t creating experiences when even artists can?

Is communication not, at its core, the creation of shared experience? As designers, are we not communicating when we design for experience?

We have to have the confidence as designers that we can, in fact, create designs that directly affect the psyches of our users in approximately predictable ways.

[On a philosophical level, of course, there may exist an unknowable quality to human experience. Two rollercoaster riders may describe their experiences in exactly the same words, and MRI scans may show identical heat maps during their voyages, and yet the essential metaphysical experience for each rider may be entirely different. I accept this possibility. But because this sort of understanding of experience is, as I said, unknowable, I suggest we should only discuss that aspect of experience that we can actually describe or measure. And those aspects of experience can, I think, be designed, or at least "designed for".]

…..

Steve Baty # @askrom re: designing *for* experiences – for me the key is the intentionality. There’s a goal to the design wrt the experience.

Chris Fahey # @docbaty *EXACTLY!* The goal is *an experience*, transposed from the designer to the user. This is what communication is all about. Sharing.

Chris Fahey # Sometimes the user experience the designer intends to create is precise (rollercoaster) sometimes it’s more general and vague (silly putty).

Dave Malouf # @askrom is “experience” really the goal? of the user? of the designer? While experiences will happen, not so sure it is a goal.

Dave Malouf # @askrom I had a great convo with @louisrosenfeld about the term experience. He has been thinking of using “engagement” instead.

Dave Malouf # @askrom but I’m not sure that being “engaging” or even a conscious engagement is always in the design. Passivity is still possible.

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD I honestly have no idea what “engagement” means. It’s a far more mushy term than “experience”.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD @askrom Experience is *a* goal, usually. Not *the* goal, although sometimes it is.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom it is? maybe in entertainment, but not in MS Word. #experience #uxabout

Steve Baty # @daveIxD @askrom Come on, Dave. I did say “usually”. If there’s one thing we can agree on it’s the absence of absolutes #experience #uxabout

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Huh? “Experience” is not a goal of MS Word? Sorry, Dave, but WTF?

Dave Malouf # @docbaty don’t you think that MS Word breaks the minority rule as an example. I don’t think it is petty at all. #experience #uxabout

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Wasn’t suggesting you were being petty. Word offers an exception without arguing against what I was saying. #experience #uxabout

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Although Word doesn’t create an ecstatic user experience, it does enable you to do things roughly in the way the designer intended.

Dave Malouf # @askrom uh? Isn’t the goal to elegantly create a document? My goal is never to experience creating a document, no?

Dave Malouf # @askrom I can’t defend engagement except to say that the touchpoints are what a user engages with, ! the experience. engagement is a medium.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD There is *an* experience to using Word. Whether it’s the one intended (if there was an intent) is arguable. #experience #ux

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Engagement merely means connection. A 5000 volt electric current can engage you. It’s too low in the UX stack, below communication.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD But back to my original point: intentionality is the key. To design for experience is to show intent in that dir’n #experience #ux

Will Evans # @docbaty here I have to disagree. Tangerine Sorbet is abso-fucking-lutely marvelous! #experience #ux

Steve Baty # @semanticwill In what way is that disagreeing with me? #experience #ux

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD A Word user’s goal is to create a document. The goal of Word’s UX design is to enable you to create a document *in a certain way*.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I agree totally. All design includes some sort of intentionality from what I can see. then again so is art. #experience #ux

Dave Malouf # @askrom Word’s UX? aren’t you just using UX and UI synonymously?

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Please, no. (Do you really think I’m that dumb?) There *is* a UX to Word, a sensibility and philosophy behind the UI.

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD The intentionality of art is often unclear. Artists often obscure and avoid creating intended experience. It’s emergent experience.

Dave Malouf # @askrom re: art … YUP! I know the diference between art & design. I was just saying that “intentionality” by itself is not that difference

Steve Baty # @askrom The engagement facet of our work can be more meaningful. Think ‘connection’ = ‘loyalty’ or ‘emotional investment’. Can be important

Chris Fahey # @docbaty Okay, that’s a more meaningful definition of “engagement”. It’s a longer-term, big-picture thinking about UX.

Russ Unger # Okay, so that’s interesting. User Engagement. Visual Design, after all, is part of UX. We design the engagement portion, no? Maybe.

Joe Sokohl # @russu The problem with User Engagement is, to me, that it devolves very quickly into branding. I think what I do has most utility in use.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi By ‘branding’ you mean the visual representation rather than brand values or positioning?

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty No, I mean the brand values & positioning as realized in visuals/audio/other means. Again, slippery slope.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi I’d argue that a brand exists in its utility as much as it does in its visual/audio/other means. Perhaps more so

Russ Unger # @mojoguzzi I understand the branding, but I felt it from more of an interaction perspective. And I’m not sold, just pondering

Russ Unger # @mojoguzzi the other issue is that we’re not really the presentation layer–that’s generally someone else

Penny Hagen # @docbaty @daveIxD not sure on articulation but: the link between term “experience” and perspective & embodiment seems impt. #experience #ux

Steve Baty # @pennyhagen Good point #experience #ux

Dave Malouf # @askrom I’m sorry, I know you are smart, and experienced. That isn’t my intent. But you are not listening to my words, either. …

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD Maybe you need to clarify for me how MSWord doesn’t involve a designed user experience, a user experience intended by the designer.

Dave Malouf # @askrom All strategy, Brand, IA, IxD, etc. in SW and HW is communicated how? The user only experiences 1 thing. What is that? The Interface!

Dave Malouf # RT @nadya_d: Gallup: user satisfaction with no emotional engagement doesn’t count. … http://tinyurl.com/crvxh7

Dave Malouf # @askrom MS word leads to an experience. But I do not believe that experience is the goal. Brand, loyalty, success, are goals, but not an exp

Dave Malouf # @askrom If you want to call the combination of those qualities an “experience”. So be it. But that is an arbitrary category. It’s marketing.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD You could generalise to include interactions that are non-computer related. Stores; call centres; the product ‘box’ > interface

Dave Malouf # @docbaty don’t those all have touchpoints? interfaces where the user is engaging?…

Chris Fahey # The user experience is the soul of a user interface. It’s the philosophy that guides the design of the tactile, visual, audible interstices.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Characterising those interactions only in terms of their interface limits the scope of the design challenge. The roots are deep.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty Supposedly though I am uneducated in it. Service Design differs from IxD in that it designs the story between the touchpoints.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I wasn’t characterising them ONLY as interfaces, but as being interfaces. The interface itself has infinite design opps. THANK G-D!

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Fair enough

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I call that strategy.

Dave Malouf # @askrom What is the difference between “strategy” and “UX”? Seriously? Isn’t UX just strategy? Narrative?

Chris Fahey # @daveIxD “Strategy” has oh so many meanings, even more than “UX”. I really don’t know what you mean by that.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Strategy is a combination of UX as a destination and a path

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I don’t understand that? Please try again in the next 140 char please?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD UX is an end in itself – as a manifestation of brand, for example; and as a means – to achieve loyalty, awareness, revenue etc

Dave Malouf # Question? do people just get really pissed off doing this, or do they get the same lessons in rhetoric & practiced thinkng that I do?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD I enjoy it when it’s a dialogue and aimed at furthering understanding; not so when it’s dogmatic (Enjoying this…)

Dave Malouf # @docbaty UX is a thing? the collection of the deconstruction of the elements that make up the interface, maybe?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD That’s certainly a valid way to think of it

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom maybe I’m just an idiot, but it really sounds like UX is the manifestation of a strategy embodied in an interface.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Intangible, but identifiable.

Steve Baty # @daveIxD But no, not the parts, but the whole

Dave Malouf # @docbaty @askrom So UX then is a small part of a Strategy? Strategy being almost obviously wider than UX but both on the same plain?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Not necessarily so small a part of strategy. Depends on the business. Restaurant – very big part; steel manufacturer – small.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty so 1 could argue that it is an arbitrary assignment to the collection of pieces that are used to create a UI to embody a strat?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Again, I would hesitate to assign such importance to UI in that concept. a) it isn’t singular; b) UI doesn’t necessarily exist

Dave Malouf # @daveIxD I believe that UX/UCD etc. are terms created to sell an idea to a small group of people. it has been expanded inappropriately.

Dave Malouf # @docbaty I knew “UI” was a problem. It was my way to abbreviate “interface” more generically. Would TP for touch point be better?

Steve Baty # @daveIxD Touch point would be better since it carries less concise baggage.

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty I see that, but I posit that branding is an extension of marketing which is an extension of business strategy. UX flows more from.

Joe Sokohl # @docbaty …the person looking into a company, as opposed to company reaching out. There are fuzzy intersections, of course. Not hard lines.

Steve Baty # @mojoguzzi Ah well, I’d posit that marketing is a subset of brand and that it’s brand that flows from business strategy

Dave Malouf # @louisrosenfeld Question: Can the word “engagement” apply to passive systems for you? I like it except for this piece, which is big in UbiC.

Louis Rosenfeld # @daveIxD @askrom Engagement is what most of us are trying to design for. Experience is ambiguous; engagement is always positive. Right?

Dave Gray (in response to a re-statement of the original point) # @docbaty mmm food for thought. My answer: you can try. And then shit happens

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The discussion on IxDA’s mailing list is still going. You can find the discussion thread there.

]]> http://www.meld.com.au/2009/03/designing-for-experiences/feed 0 http://www.meld.com.au/2009/03/a-little-more-on-ebooks-and-design-research http://www.meld.com.au/2009/03/a-little-more-on-ebooks-and-design-research#comments Thu, 05 Mar 2009 12:58:39 +0000 Steve Baty http://www.meld.com.au/?p=294 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.

• Its being held in Canberra. Usually, UX & Web conferences get held in places like Sydney or Melbourne or Perth. And we wanted to share some of the love with our capital cousins
• The conference is community based, which means we’re calling for proposals for presenters from the community; and we’ll be involving volunteers from the community to review and help select the conference program
• It’s about UX. Not IA, although that will be covered. Not interaction design, although that will be covered as well. Nor is it about information design, usability, accessibility, or user research. No, it’s about all of those things equally, and about how they all play a role in delivering great experiences to people.

The conference venue – Hotel Realm – looks pretty sweet as well. Brand new; five-star; but with plenty of affordable options for inter-state and international travelers. And plenty of restaurants and bars within throwing distance.

We’ll be calling for presentation proposals in a bit over a week, so think of a good topic and get ready to send it in.

I won’t pre-empt the main article, but as I’ve thought about these techniques I’ve come to the recognition that data visualisation is an analysis technique. It’s a tool that helps us not only make sense of the data, but offers us a way of analysing it as well.

How does that work? We’re not really doing anything to the data, just making a diagram or illustration, right?

Well, what we’re doing is providing an alternative representation of the data. Let me give you an example: let’s say our data is a list of words and the frequency with which they appear in an interview transcript. It looks like a table of word-value pairs, a little like this:

Analysis: 12
technique: 8
well: 6
etc

Now compare that to this:

Suddenly, the data takes on a new dimension. Literally. The significance of those numbers is made more real, more tangible through the visualization. The same is true of graphs, charts, histograms, radial graphs and pie charts: the visualization of the data adds to the narrative and helps expose patterns, grouping and holes that are otherwise ambiguous or completely obscured as a list of numbers.

Visualizations have the added advantage of being a much better tool for communication than a spreadsheet or lists. You can bring them out at a meeting and elicit interest instead of the glazed expression that only a large spreadsheet seems to bring about. And they can be re-used down the track as an illustration for any reports that may be required.

Lastly, they give you something to look at. A good visual is one of those things that brings your data to life, making it stand out (as we saw above) and really start to speak to you. So during those periods when you’re soaking in the research data and the progress you’ve made on the analysis, those visualizations can provide an anchor for your thinking and help you move on to the next stages of the analysis.

So, don’t discount the power of a good visualization to do more than just communicate. Remember that it can also be a powerful tool for gaining insights from your data, which is, after all, what analysis is all about.

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

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