Agile User Experience Projects

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox for November 4 is now online at:
  > http://www.useit.com/alertbox/agile-user-experience.html

Summary:
Agile projects aren't yet fully user-driven, but new research shows that
developers are actually more bullish on key user experience issues than UX
people themselves.

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Usability Week 2009 conference

  > Berlin, Germany: November 15-20
  > San Francisco, CA: December 7-11

Full program:
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events

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REGISTRATION DEADLINES

San Francisco: THIS Friday, Nov. 6 - save 10% on early registration

Berlin: NEXT Friday, Nov 13 - save €150 on advance registration

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NEW SAN FRANCISCO SEMINAR: Emerging Patterns for Web Design

New Web design ideas come up all the time, and it's tempting to try them
on your site. Many of them, however, could cost you business or alienate
your loyal users. Others could bring you new users, delight your existing
site visitors, increase customer loyalty, and improve business
performance.

How can you sort out the good ideas from the bad? We analyze user
interface trends and innovations from the perspective of their impact on
the total user experience to help you choose among the best new designs.

Presented by Kara McCain, a new member of Nielsen Norman Group. Before
joining NNG, McCain was a senior visual and interaction designer for
Yahoo!'s Search and Social Media division, working on Yahoo! Answers,
local search, and defining the way people integrate social media into
search.

  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/design_patterns.html

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EMAIL STILL RULES

A survey from Forrester shows that information workers use email
substantially more than other technologies: 87% for email compared to only
26% for instant messaging:

  > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/10/25/technology/25count.html

This is one of the main reasons email newsletters remain so powerful,
especially in B2B (like this newsletter...):

  > http://www.nngroup.com/reports/newsletters/

As always, we should question any claims made on the basis of surveys,
since what people do and what they say are so different. In this case,
however, I think the survey is reasonably accurate, as long as you don't
expect differences of a few percent to be meaningful.

When the question is simply whether people use something, and when the
categories are so big and fairly well understood as email and IM, it's
likely that most people would (a) know the answer, and (b) answer
truthfully.

Of course, if the question had been *how* people use, say, email, then the
answers would have been close to meaningless. And if the question had been
how to design an email newsletter, then the answers could easily have been
worse than meaningless, because they could have been false. To research
design questions, you have to observe actual user behavior, even though
that does take more time than circulating a questionnaire.

You get better design insights from observing 5 users than from having
questionnaire responses from 2000.

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WINDOWS 7 UPDATE

I installed Win 7 on my main computer last week. This was mainly a smooth
experience, and much nicer than previous upgrades. Now, I'll buy the
upgrade for my laptop as well. Better user experience = more sales.

One element in the *total* user experience philosophy that many companies
overlook is to plan for future changes and upgrades. It's not enough that
the current UI is designed well. When the user makes a change (upgrades or
migrates) the experience should be supportive.

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INTUITIONS OFTEN WRONG

I can't count how many times I have said that what people say and what
they do are different things, but here's very striking evidence of this
old lesson:

In an opinion poll, the New York Times asked whether Americans wanted to
outlaw mobile phone use while driving:
	
  > http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/02/technology/02textingside.html

80% of respondents said that using a HAND-HELD cellphone while driving
should be illegal.

But almost 90% said that it should be legal to talk on a HANDS-FREE
cellphone.

Completely OPPOSITE INTUITIONS about the danger of these two ways of using
a mobile phone. This despite the fact that all studies show that it's
EQUALLY DANGEROUS to use hands-free and hand-held mobile phones while
driving.

Research has found that the danger comes from the cognitive distraction of
carrying out a conversation with somebody who's not in the car. The
problem is not holding the phone with one hand while driving with the
other. The problem is the conversation and the way it lays claim to
limited cognitive resources.

This finding is completely counter-intuitive: how can it endanger your
life to carry on a simple, everyday task like a conversation? The survey
clearly demonstrates that people's perception of danger is completely
divorced from the actual danger.

This, of course, is why we need observational research of actual,
empirical behavior. Please don't just ask users. Watch them.

For more on users' cognitive resources and the design implications of 
human brainpower limitations, come to our full-day course:

  > Usability and the Human Mind: How Your Customers Think
  > http://www.nngroup.com/events/tutorials/usability_mind.html