Announcements

My Usability Marathon Preso

by Paul Sherman on October 14, 2009 · 0 comments

in Experience Strategy

I just posted my Usability Marathon presentation to Slideshare. (I love Slideshare btw…no surprise; Rashmi Sinha started out as a UX person.)

I’m getting good feedback and nice retweets on Twitter; which is a good sign.

Normally, I’d pull some choice quotes to whet your appetite. But I’ve got a pile of storyboarding and wireframing to do this week, so it’s back to the UX grind (but what a satisfying fun grind!).

Enjoy.

Usability…Or Strategic User Experience? ::? Usability Marathon 2

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Testing Your Own Designs: Discussion

by Paul Sherman on September 10, 2009 · 12 comments

in Design

I’m putting an article together for UXmatters on the topic of usability testing and validating one’s own designs. My goal is to develop some guidelines for self-testing.

I’d love to get your feedback on some questions I have:

  • Testing your own designs: all-around bad idea? Or is it possible to do it well?
  • If so, what should you do / not do when testing designs you’ve created?
  • What should you look out for?
  • Got a good story or anecdote to share? Please do. Either success stories or cautionary tales are welcomed.

Thanks in advance. -Paul

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ProductCamp Austin Summer 2009 – User Experience Presos

by Paul Sherman on August 26, 2009 · 1 comment

in Design

For some reason this slipped my mind for the last two weeks. On August 15th I delivered two talks at ProductCamp Austin 2009. Before I link you to the talks I wanted to give hat tips to the crew who put together this ProductCamp. It was a fantastic, energetic, and crowd-driven “un”conference, and I highly recommend attending one if you get the chance. They’re springing up in many major metro areas, so finding one shouldn’t be hard. You can learn more about BarCamps at this site.

The first talk I gave was “How To Achieve A Great User Experience For Enterprise Software” and the second was “From Personas To Production: The Role of Personas, Design Briefs, Stories, Storyboards, and Wireframes in the Ideation – Design – Build Process.” The second one had more people than the enterprise talk; which I guess shouldn’t really surprise me as the enterprise talk is more specialized. But the enterprise attendees were full of good questions and there was lots of good within-audience discussion. The feedback I’ve gotten on these two has ranged from slightly to strongly positive. So I’ll put them in the “win” column.

Oh and my past presentations are also available on Slideshare.net here.

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Teaser 2: UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on August 18, 2009 · 0 comments

I know, I said I’d release the UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey last Friday. Unfortunately, paying work and family time prevented me from finishing the report.

But I’m telling you now that I’ve submitted the “members only” full report and the public report to the UPA office, and they should have it posted within 24-36 hours from now, Tue 18 August.

Oh, and here’s another teaser:

  • The average salary in the UX field for men and women combined is $85,283. For women, the average salary is $84,892. Men’s average salary: $85,947. This is the closest that men’s and women’s salaries have ever been since we started surveying the field in 2000. The gender gap appears to be gone, folks.

You can see the details, including salary by job description and other analyses, when UPA posts the public version of the report. UPA members will be able to get the full report, which includes some really in-depth statistical analyses, behind the member login.

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Teaser 1: UPA 2009 UX Industry Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on August 3, 2009 · 2 comments

in Everything Else

Normally I suck at promotion. Particularly self-promotion, which is obviously a problem for my user experience consultancy. But since this is the last year I will be leading the Usability Professionals’ Association salary survey project (I go off the board after this year), I thought I’d go out with a bit of a pop. I cranked away over the weekend to complete the final draft of the the UPA’s 2009 UX industry salary survey. It’ll be available on Friday. There are some *really* interesting results…but before I drop teaser #1, let me give props where they’re due:

  • Ken Becker did a fantastic job on data cleansing, normalizing and initial analysis.
  • Karl Steiner also did great work producing the data tables and charts and helping me on subsequent analyses.
  • Jeff Sauro did some major statistical heavy lifting and contributed a comprehensive report addendum looking at the relationships between multiple variables.

OK, I lied…just a little more background before the teaser:

  • This is the fourth UX industry salary survey by the UPA. After a sputtering start in 2001, the UPA has conducted biennial (I got that right, right? Biennial = every two years?) surveys in 2005, 2007, and this year.
  • I took on the project as part of my board of director duties in 2005, and have evolved the format to where it is today. I am also the report writer and main point of contact for the project until the end of this year.

I know, I know…you’re thinking “enough with the hat tips and background, just gimme some data already!” Frankly, I’m enjoying this more than I should, but alright, here ya go:

  • The over-time rate of increase in average salary has slowed in 2009, a fact that should surprise absolutely no one. The media is full of stories about companies cutting workers’ salaries by 10%, mandating unpaid vacation, etc. The fact that there was any increase at all in UX salaries was surprising to me.
  • When we started looking at the data in detail, the main source of the increase was *quite* interesting… let’s just say that the “gender gap”; i.e., the difference in men’s and women’s salaries for comparable work, appears to be not long for this world. At least in the user experience industry.

Sorry, that’s all you get for now. More later this week! (And the report will be available on Friday.)

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Bad IVR: If You Need Something From Me, How About Letting Me Know?

by Paul Sherman on June 23, 2009 · 5 comments

in Everything Else

Once again I had a sub-optimal experience with an interactive voice response (IVR) system.

I called AT&T to check on the status of my service call – we haven’t had dial tone on our land line since mid-Saturday – and the system asked me to input “my ten digit phone number, starting with the area code.” Which I dutifully did. And you know what happened? Nothing.

And more nothing.

A whole bunch of nothing.

After a good 7-8 seconds of waiting I sighed and figured I should probably press “#” or something.

Sure enough, after pressing “#” the system cheerfully confirmed my input (“You entered yadda yadda yadda, is this correct? Press 1 if yes” etc.) and went? about its business.

This is deeply annoying and a bad user experience. From the experience perspective it’s bad because it puts a barrier in front of the caller and leaves her guessing what the system expects from her. And it’s bad from a business perspective because it increases the probability that the caller will zero out of the system and attempt to get transferred to an agent. Which costs the organization money.

So here’s a bit of advice to IVR designers…and know that even as I dispense this advice there are people out there who think about IVR’s and VUI’s 24/7, and whose advice is much more comprehensive. (I should know; I married one of these peeps.)

  • For touch-tone input where you know the length of the input, don’t require me to press “#” when finished. Just take the input and move on.
  • If you absolutely want (or, doubtfully, *need*) me to press “#” when I’ve finished entering information, then TELL me that you need me to press something. And tell me BEFORE you have me enter the information. Don’t just leave me hanging after I’ve fed you data. It just makes your organization look inattentive and/or stupid.
  • If for some bizarre and mysterious reason you can’t see your way clear to telling me what is expected of me up-front, then tell me something like “If you’re finished entering your number, press “#” to finish” when you notice that I haven’t entered anything in a few seconds.

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(Hope You Like The) New UsabilityBlog Design

by Paul Sherman on June 16, 2009 · 0 comments

Unless you’re using a screenreader (or a feed reader, duh…) you probably noticed the updated visual design I launched today.

Hope you like it. The blue was starting to get to me.

Shouts to Sandeep Gayke for the WordPress coding fu. Recommended.

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My UPA09 “UX Kit” Presentation & Bonus Audience Comments

by Paul Sherman on June 15, 2009 · 9 comments

in Design, Experience Strategy

Today I’m posting the presentation and source document from my UPA2009 presentation “A Kit For Building User Experience Teams in R&D Organizations.” The talk went very well; nearly everyone in the (somewhat small but whatever) audience spoke up and contributed.

Happily, when I posted links to this content on Twitter I got about a half-dozen retweets, which for a second-stringer like me is not too shabby. So I think you’ll like this preso and the kit doc, which I’ve released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. BTW you can learn more about this license and what it means at http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/us/. Basically, it means you are welcome to make use of the content as long as you attribute it to me and you share any derivative works under the same license. Which I think is more than fair, and leads to boatloads of good UX karma besides.

And here’s a little bonus: I asked my friend and session chair Lyle Kantrovich (@lkantrov for the Twitterati in the crowd) to take notes on the audience comments and contributions; which he peevishly (kidding! I meant happily) did. I’ve posted his notes below.

Before I link you out to the content you might be interested in the “story behind the story” of this presentation. About 7 or 8 months ago I decided to submit to UPA2009, and scoured my hard drive for something appropriate. I realized that I had created a comprehensive resource while at Sage that detailed how to staff, budget and run a user experience team at a medium-to-large software organization. I figured that this was as good a submission as any. Plus, it really fit my whole “get the organizational structure and processes right” theme. If you’ve been reading me for any length of time you know I have a passion for this area of our field, having trained in social/organizational psychology and built several teams over the past 12 years.

So I submitted a proposal, which went something like this:

This submission provides an overview of a “User Experience Kit” that one user-centered design team developed as an implementation guide for other product teams within their global organization. This kit was first released in mid-2007 within the organization, and has been used in the organization to guide the creation of four additional teams since then. The primary audience for this presentation is people who are able to drive change in their organizations and have the authority to support those changes with allocation of resources.

And it got accepted. Yay.

Of course I put off writing the presentation for months, but not for the usual reason (i.e., pure procrastination). As the day of the talk drew nearer, it became clear to me that the kit itself was a really boring story. And I don’t do boring. I HATE boring. I have high standards for presenting, I do it well, and I was stressing out about how boring this talk was shaping up to be.

That is, until I realized that the more interesting story was *why* I had to create a UX implementation guide/kit, what it said about my then-organization (and other organizations), and what we as a field should be doing about it.

And then everything was alright, I wrote some entertaining slides (keep on the lookout for “Captain Obvious”) and I gave a kick-@ss talk.

So, without further ado, here’s what I covered in my talk:

  • The sad truth about the need for a “UX kit”
  • A bit about the kit itself
  • An extended discussion about launching UX teams and spreading UX in medium to large orgs

As I mentioned above, Lyle was kind enough to capture discussion notes, which I’m including immediately below. However, I recommend looking at the preso first (either in .pdf format or on SlideShare) and getting the kit source doc before reading the discussion notes.

Thanks again Lyle for capturing the audience comments. Here they are:

  • Come back with data to show the value of what happened during UX processes.
  • Be more of a teacher – share UX? techniques (aka “UX freeze-tag”).
  • Be flexible.
  • Triage projects early on – to discuss how UX can help.
  • Focus on convincing people who can be convinced.
  • Have an open-door policy on usability lab.
  • Create an internal blog with test highlight clips.
  • Conduct a quarterly UI workshop.
  • Stay relevant – you know if you’re relevant by # of people coming to you.
  • Focus on money/budget & key influencers in the organization.
  • UX has to manage a lot of different things at the same time.
  • “Customer Experience Bar Raiser Review Board”? – executives that help set UX direction.
  • Selfishly share the glory – co-present success stories with clients/partners.
  • Find a mentor/peer outside your organization to learn from, commiserate with and share with.
  • Find an aspirational (design/product) example – something that reflects what you’d like the UX to look like.

A Kit For Building UX Teams [preso pdf]? [kit doc]? ::? Paul Sherman

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My “Usability Or User Experience” Presentation From Big (D)esign 09

by Paul Sherman on June 14, 2009 · 1 comment

in Experience Strategy

I had a really good time presenting and watching others present at Big (D)esign 09 in Dallas two weeks ago. One highlight was getting to hear Norm Cox‘s keynote. My presentation was well-received from what I can tell. But I got so busy prepping for UPA2009 that I completely forgot to post my Big (D) presentation.

So, my presentation from Big (D)esign “Usability Or User Experience?” is now available here at my business site (ShermanUX, which I clearly don’t plug enough…). My co-presenter Kaaren Hanson is still working on getting her slides in shape for general consumption.

Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a post linking to my UPA 2009 presentation.

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Take The UPA’s 2009 UX Salary Survey

by Paul Sherman on April 13, 2009 · 8 comments

in Everything Else

Long-time readers may recall that I’m the project manager for the Usability Professionals’ Association User Experience Salary Survey. This will be the third time I’ve run the survey since 2005.

It’s the preeminent salary survey in our field. Many hiring managers depend on it and a number of industry analysts report on it.

I’m encouraging my readers to take the survey. There’s a lot in it for you. For one, non-members of UPA can download an all-comers version of the survey, and it’s still got loads of useful data. UPA members get a more extensive version of the survey, with lots more detailed analyses.

I just checked the survey site and we’re up to 1,350 responses, which means we’ll almost definitely exceed the response from 2007. Join the crowd, help out your field – and your career – and take the survey now.

Of course it’s going to take me and the volunteer crew a few weeks to crunch the data write the report, but it should be available by early June. Check back here or at the UPA site in a month to get your copy.

If you want to look at the previous survey, follow this link to download it from the UPA site.

The UPA 2009 UX Salary Survey ::? Usability Professionals’ Association

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Poor Service Design That Drove An Unneeded Support Call

by Paul Sherman on March 24, 2009 · 2 comments

in Everything Else


(Click picture to see full-sized)

This is a great example of how poor service design drove an unnecessary support call.

I received my TxTag toll tag in the mail, along with a TxTag starter kit. (TxTag is the Texas version of an EZPass toll tag thingy.)

I read through the welcome letter, looked at the card, and noticed something: the number on the tag did NOT match the number on the welcome letter. My first thought: oh crap, they sent me the wrong tag, and now someone else has MY tag..and is probably racking up toll charges with it!

Great, I thought. Now I have to call the Texas DoT and chase down a solution to this problem. So I picked up the phone, slogged through their barely-tolerable IVR, and finally got a human. When I explained my issue to the rep, he said that everything was actually fine.

It turns out that everyone is actually assigned a *tolltag* number and an *account* number…and even though they both start with a (very Bond-esque) 007, they do not have to match.

Well great…so I basically wasted about 20 minutes feeling like my account was screwed up and figuring out how to contact the agency, only to find out that their poor service design was at fault.

This is not the right way to kick off a relationship with a new customer.

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The User Experience Of Enterprise Software Matters, Part 2

by Paul Sherman on March 24, 2009 · 0 comments

My latest column at UXmatters was just posted. It’s part 2 of my December article “The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters.” Again, my main points are:

Organizations making enterprise-level technology selections often do an incomplete job of assessing the real-world effects of the new applications they impose on their staffs’ workflows and processes.

and:

The technology selection process typically neglects methods of evaluating the goodness of fit between the enterprise users’ processes, workflow, and needs, and the vendors’ solutions. Organizations could avoid many a rollout disaster simply by testing the usability of vendors’ solutions with employees during a trial phase.

In this part 2, I pick up where part 1′s “j’accuse” leaves off, and actually provide a framework for enterprise user experience practitioners to employ when trying to get involved in the assessment of enterprise software under consideration by their organization. Rather than recap it all here, I’ll just point you to the article.

The User Experience of Enterprise Software Matters ::? Paul Sherman

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UPA Accessibility Evaluation Certificate at Access U

by Paul Sherman on February 23, 2009 · 2 comments

I’m pleased to post about a little project that I have been helping with. The Usability Professionals’ Association is partnering with Knowbility, a non-profit US-based group that advocates for accessible technologies, to offer a “certificate” in web accessibility evaluation for user experience professionals.

Knowbility offers twice-per-year training in designing, building and evaluating web sites for accessibility. This year, Knowbility and UPA arrived at an agreement to essentially co-brand part of the training. UPA members (and non-members, for that matter) have the option to attend Knowbility’s Access U (at very reasonable prices) and request a UPA accessibility evaluation certificate for only an extra 150.00 USD. The course content for the accessibility evaluation certificate is unique to the certificate track, so it’s more than just “pay 150 for a piece of paper.”

Whitney Quesenbery (former UPA President) and Sharron Rush of Knowbility have been instrumental in getting this partnership off the ground and ensuring that the certificate traininig is extremely high quality. The advisory board is a “who’s who” of accessibility experts (I’ll post a link to the advisory board a bit later, just can’t find it now).

As a UPA board member – and current Director of Training – I’m very hopeful that this partnership will offer UPA members (and user experience practitioners as a whole) with high quality, low cost training opportunities.

I’ll be there this year taking the courses.

Here’s a blockquote blurb from Knowbility:

John Slatin Access U – May 11-13 2009
Join Knowbility at St. Edward’s University in Austin, Texas
Monday May 11th and Tuesday, May 12th, 2009
(with post-conference sessions on May 13th)

General Conference Registration is open. Class registration will open soon.

If you believe that the web should empower ALL people, if you need information about how to meet state and federal accessibility mandates, if you are a commercial web developer who wants to understand emerging best business practices of accessibility for the web, John Slatin Access U is the place to be in May.

What’s new at John Slatin Access U in 2009?
In addition to two-days of the best hands-on accessibility classes, you will hear keynote presentations, attend a captioned and audio described movie, participate in communities of practice sessions where you can share experiences, and meet hundreds of others who share your passion for accessible IT. From absolute beginners to advanced practitioners you can customize your learning to meet your specific needs. Some new options in 2009 include:

  • Usability Track with Certificate

Created for usability professionals who know how to test for usability and want to learn to test for accessibility. We are pleased to offer a set of classes to build the skills and knowledge you need to help your clients meet mandates and to help you conduct usability tests that include people with disabilities. Specific Courses with several electives are delivered within the two day basic conference period and an additional certificate fee applies.

  • Molly Holzschlag Track – HTML/CSS/Accessible Design Intensive

Spend three days with Molly Holzschlag learning HTML/XHTML and CSS for accessibility, SEO, and superior web site performance. If you have solid experience in CSS and need only the more advanced techniques, sign on for Day 3 as a post-conference only.

  • Post Conferences:

Derek Featherstone: Breaking New Ground: Designing for Accessibility in Emerging Technologies

Molly Holzschlag: Advanced CSS techniques

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#gdotd & #bdotd Twitter Hashtags

by Paul Sherman on January 7, 2009 · 0 comments

in Design

No, that’s not a typo or PHP code run amok. That’s the hashtag I’m fixin’ to use on Twitter to denote “Good Design of the Day” and “Bad Design of the Day” tweets that I, uh, tweet.

Y’know how I was using the “Questionable_Design” tag on Flickr so people could tag pictures of good/bad design? Yeah, it didn’t exactly catch fire and go viral. (Although it has been useful for me to classify design pics that I upload.)

So I’m giving Twitter hashtags a try. Feel free to join in the fun. Got an example of good design? Tweet it and add “#gdotd”. Bad design? Tweet it and add “#bdotd.”

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I Got Paid

by Paul Sherman on January 4, 2009 · 0 comments

in Everything Else

I feel like Steve Martin in “The Jerk“, when he gets his first royalty check. (Only mine is really more like 250, not 250K…) I just received the first royalty payment on Usability Success Stories, the book I put out in early 2007. Total: $437 USD.

I’m actually not disappointed. Quite frankly I’m surprised the book earns anything. Hey, it’s the first one. And if it did suddenly start selling like hotcakes (do those actually sell well?), I’d want some formal mechanism to share with the chapter contributors, as it was an edited volume (with three of the chapters by me).

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Software & Services Discounts For UPA Members

by Paul Sherman on December 30, 2008 · 0 comments

Since I’m still UPA President till tomorrow (and will be on the board till the end of next year), I think it’s fitting and appropriate that I mention UPA’s software and services discounts for current members.

Trent Mankelow, UPA’s Director of Member Services, did a great job negotiating a bundle of discounts on products and services that user experience professionals typically use. And there’s more coming. Here’s what’s available today:

  • $89 US discount on Axure RP Pro 5 for creating wireframes, prototypes and specifications for applications and web sites
  • 10% discount on a variety of eye tracking services and analysis software from Mangold International
  • 25% discount on Optimal Sort for online card sorting tool
  • 20% discount on the TechSmith Morae software bundle for conducting usability testing
  • 25% discount on any level of WebSort.net subscription for web-based card sorting

These discounts are available to all current UPA members. To get them, go to this page.

Props again to Trent for getting this program set up.

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US News Calls “Usability Experience Specialist” (?) A Best Career

by Paul Sherman on December 21, 2008 · 1 comment

in Everything Else

A little behind the curve, that’s me. John Rhodes of Webword and IMSimple sent along this link to a USN&WR article calling (sic) “Usability Experience Specialist” a best career for 2009.

So for those of you who – like me – got RIF‘ed this holiday season, this might bring you a bit of holiday cheer during this bleak Christmahanukkwanzaa.

(Incidentally, being RIF’ed was not unexpected on my part, and believe me I’m not feeling sorry for myself…I am starting my own practice.)

Best Careers 2009: Usability Experience Specialist :: US News and World Report

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Uselog: Fixed

by Paul Sherman on December 11, 2008 · 0 comments

The proprietor of uselog.com wrote to tell me that his site now works in Firefox and its derivatives. Good on him. I’ll add it to my blogroll.

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My User Friendly 2008 Kick-Off Presentation

by Paul Sherman on November 3, 2008 · 9 comments

Long time no post. Sorry. Been too busy obsessively following the U.S. election at www.FiveThirtyEight.com. If you’re a hardcore stats junkie, this is – or was, after Tuesday – the site for you.

Anyway, since my last post I traveled to Hong Kong and Shenzhen to take part in the User Friendly 2008 conference, put on by UPA China, a group of China-based UPA chapters.

As current UPA President I was asked to give the kick-off talk. I took the invitation as an opportunity to focus the audience on how far our discipline has come, and how far it has to go to be truly strategic in scope and reach.

You can download the presentation from this link or the one below.

User Experience: Drive Change, Become Strategic ::? Paul Sherman

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Voting and Usability Double-Shot

by Paul Sherman on July 25, 2008 · 1 comment

This week was a good week for usability and voting. The New York Times ran an editorial about the importance of usability testing when deploying new voting systems, and BusinessWeek.com reviewed the book “Design for Democracy” by Marcia Lausen. Marcia is one of the leaders of the AIGA’s Design For Democracy initiative.

Several people from my “home” professional association, the Usability Professionals’ Association, also participated in D4D. One of them is Whitney Quesenbery, who leads the UPA’s efforts in this area through the UPA’s “Usability In Civic Life” program.

A Lesson Not Learned :: New York Times
Design for Democracy Solves Election Problems :: BusinessWeek.com

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