User Experience Design & Development

aka UX Engineerette

Design, development: which is your focus, you ask? Both. Both are puzzles; opportunities for problem-solving. My focus has been in technology problem-solving, where problems come in a wide variety of sizes. Some problems are wide-ranging, like confusing information organization. Other problems are narrowly focused, like aesthetic effects that obscure a message. Despite the difference in scales and solutions, I firmly believe design thinking can be brought to problems of any size and shape. Sometimes the identified problems require solutions in graphic design, solutions in code, solutions within IA, or even solutions calling for more multi-disciplinary “hats”. But those solutions are only truly successful if they keep focus on the user experience. In my work, I try to keep the user-experience a living part of the discussion, whether that’s individually or within a team of colleagues.

In 2004-2005, I completed a graduate-level certificate in user-centered design at the University of Washington. We studied a wide variety of problem-solving techniques, focusing on how and why people use things, and how we could change the design process to keep a people-oriented focus in mind at all times. The strength of the program was that I learned how to move design thinking beyond “usability” and “intuitiveness”, both of which have become misaligned terms in the technology industry. Design thinking can bind the traditional separation of design & development into one user-centered effort, which I like to think of as UX Engineering.

As designers, we might geek out on flow, analytics, use cases and tools, but for the people using things we’ve designed, it boils down useful “magic”. Adaptive Path’s Todd Wilkins recently showed a diagram that struck a chord with me, in its simple expression of user-centeredness, during his recent presentation on “User Experience Design” at WebVisions (from my notes):

UX Experience

Run.com ~ Hillclimb Media, a Demand Media company (Spring 2007)

Recently, Run.com evolved from a parked domain into a running-oriented tool, which running enthusiasts use to build a library of mapped running routes around the world. Run.com was the first project within Hillclimb Media where UX was given some priority within the schedule, as an experiment in adding user-centered processes to other projects.

User Experience Design

• With project manager, conducted competitive assessment, exploring existing tools for runners and informally interviewing running enthusiasts within the company and outside the company
• With project manager, developed UI wireframes and flow charts around an existing prototype
• Led low-fidelity, paper prototyping of improvements, for task-oriented role playing with team members
• Led education session on tags as supplemental IA methods
• Led discussion of adopting judicious AJAX technical solutions, as a way to simplify the experience for users
• Injected an awareness of interactivity barriers into team, which developed a degree of empathy during development, unique within Hillclimb projects
• Within the mapping tool itself, single-handedly developed type, classification and organization of marker system, to add meta information to routes

Graphic Design

• Designed logo, marker iconography overlaying map and “bare-bones utility” website UI, with a strong focus on minimal barriers to entering a route

Code

• Worked within ASP framework
• Wrote supplemental Google Maps API integration (adding to the core work of a contractor on the map creation and display)
• Wrote web-standard HTML & CSS

GardenGuides.com & RunThePlanet.com ~ Hillclimb Media, a Demand Media company (Winter 2006-2007)

Hillclimb Media’s specialty is acquiring and converting “distressed” recreation- and hobby-minded websites into new, monetized websites, which could then be tailored toward community-oriented features like social networking and user-generated content.

User Experience Design

• Part of informal team (3-8 people) developing associative groupings of content types
• Led informal team in development of grouping and display scheme for a taxonomy tree/scientific name hierarchy from database information
• Led informal team in development of usability and IA heuristics for use during “migration process” and unit testing
• Participated in and guided re-organizing content types into a coherent information architecture, via a home-grown method akin to card sorting

Graphic Design

• Dissected and coded from design comps provided by design team, supplementing design components as needed

Code

• Worked within ASP framework
• Wrote web-standard HTML & CSS
• Selective work with regular expressions, as part of migrating content from the original site into new templates

User-centered Design Certificate ~ University of Washington (2004-2005)

Within the UCD program at UW, I had a unique chance to work with my colleagues through a variety of design thinking tasks. I continue to try to bring many of these tasks into my work, as appropriate to the team, time and project.

Out of the program, two projects stand out: the full usability finding report on an early iteration of iTunes (test designed, conducted and written up by myself and two classmates) and a visual analysis for an Audi vehicle instrument panel, written by myself alone in a class focused on cognitive visual perception and information gathering.

User Experience Design

• Persona development
• Card sorting / affinity diagramming
• Site mapping
• Flow diagramming
• Usability test design
• Running a usability test
• Report-writing for usability findings, results
• Report-writing and statistical analysis for a statistically relevant sample usability study
• Developing and applying usability heuristics and web-content-writing heuristics
• Physical prototyping
• Paper prototyping, with varying degrees of fidelity
• Writing up persona-based use cases

WhitePages.com (2002-2005)

Within my ~4 years at WhitePages.com, the role of design shifted continually, covering many different teams and team compositions. I completed my study at UW during my employment, so UX efforts were more on a toe-hold than a full initiative.

User Experience Design

• Observer/advisor role within 6-person usability testing team in Product Management, which infrequently ran in-house usability tests
• Occasionally led low- and high-fidelity cognitive walk-throughs of co-brands and prototypes with team members
• Long-term member of an informal group that frequently looked at improving internal processes and deliverables between teams
• Part of 3-person technical team (me, lead technical architect and a PM) that redesigned system architecture in XML/XSLT to better fit business rules and how people within the company used the tool set—a major advance in productivity

Graphic Design

• Designed 2 older UIs for WhitePages.com, since replaced
• Designed numerous co-branded solutions, frequently following branding standards
• Numerous “mockup”, comp and component design projects

Code

• Worked within XSLT site-templating framework
• Wrote XSLT system allowing sites to be a series of template-driven components
• Wrote HTML & CSS, approaching web-standards

SeaCoast Vitamins (current freelance project)

Working as a consultant with SeaCoast, I’m part of a small team planning a large “realignment” project for SeaCoast Vitamins.

Planned UX Design

• mind-mapping
• mental model/alignment diagramming (a la Indi Young’s upcoming book with Rosenfeld Media)

Digital Web Magazine (2006-present)

As a volunteer staff member of Digital Web Magazine—an online publication for web professionals from a wide range of disciplines—I keep up-to-date on as wide a variety of web topics as I can manage. Digital Web features some of the best, most-current writing on design and design-thinking issues, along with many other topics within website and web-application design. In my position, I’m fortunate to get a chance at advance reading, as well as a opportunity to connect with our authors.