3 posts tagged “usability”
Timo Veikkola, senior future specialist at Nokia, has just written an article for usability magazine uiGarden to expand on his vision of our future - already alluded to during his presentation at the PSFK conference just a few weeks ago.
“Many shifts in society and their influences on the behaviors, values and attitudes of people are often slight and may be overlooked. Through consumer trend analysis, ethnography, and contextual inquiry we are able to forecast the emergence of new behaviors and conceptual visions. The natural progression of society and people will always offer new frontiers. One thing that we can be certain of is that things always are in a state of change. Understanding that the pendulum can only swing to a certain degree before it must, by laws of physics, swing in its opposite direction, we can anticipate the future. Development has always played a natural role in the evolution of people and thus we have an invaluable position to influence that direction in its most human and natural way.”
Timo Veikkola is a senior futures specialist within Nokia. Based in the design team, and an anthropologist by training, his job involves observing human behavior and lifestyles in order to identify signals and new trends. His observations inform and influence Nokia’s design team. His work takes him all over the world from Europe to the US, Latin America and Asia. He is Canadian by nationality, and currently lives in London, UK.
Okay, I know I am little late on this but I decided to give it a shout out anyway. Google has recently updated a new version of Google Docs & Spreadsheets. While the update really only truly affects to the document browsing page it adds a substantial amount of usability to the entire application. The visual overhaul is good and shows that, once again, Google isn’t afraid to roll out disruptive changes in an effort to enhance user experience (as it did with Analytics).
Here's a comparison of the new and old Google docs:
I consider myself growing in an education climate where I am mostly told what I am expected to do. Things are laid out pretty well for me and all I have to do is probably conclude them. I might be wrong but I thought that most of the research processes I went through in high school are mostly taught hastily without a proper explanation on the goal of researching. I found myself researching for the sake of completing a particular folio. And for me, at that point of time, researching also meant plagiarizing.
The goal of researching your audience is to let you step into the shoes of the real user/consumer of your product or application. It gives you tremendous insights in how people interact with let say, their electronic gadgets, the way they use a certain software and etc. It basically improves your instincts for what will work and what won’t. Research creates experience and with experience, comes informed decisions.
The following are three research methods I often use. I call them IOU.
- Interviews - A great way to find out user feedback
- Observation with relevant inquiry - Observing how people do/use things
- Usability testing - This is where you iron out possible bad experiences.
These methods are widely used by researchers to gather relevant data. Try them all and see how they can be of good use to you.
