Ruminating on User Journey Maps

Creating user journey maps is an integral part of any UX or design thinking process. There are many ways in which you can create a user journey map. The links below would serve as guidance on the different approaches one can take to illustrate customer journey maps.

http://www.joycehostyn.com/blog/2010/03/22/visualizing-the-customer-experience-using-customer-experience-journey-maps/

I liked the sample journey maps created by Lego and Starbucks.

• Before creating a user journey map, you have to define personas - based on customer segmentation and personality types. 
• Then identify the customer experience journeys that you want to illustrate for each persona - e.g. transactional process of buying a car insurance, lifetime journey for an insurance customer, etc. 
• Each journey is then broken down into various stages or phases that the customer goes through.
• For each step, identify the customer emotions (e.g. positive, negative, neutral) and think on improving the customer experience - making it a 'wow' moment. 

Joyce also has a great presentation on SlideShare that shows many examples of customer journey maps and how they can be used to create superior customer experiences. My personal favourite was the below example that was a simple yet powerful tool to create wow moments for your customers.

There is another great blog post by ThoughWorks on facilitating collaborative design workshops.

UX vs. UI

Found the following good articles that lay out the difference between UX and UI.

http://www.onextrapixel.com/2014/04/24/the-gap-between-ui-and-ux-design-know-the-difference/
http://www.helloerik.com/ux-is-not-ui

Snippet from the article -
"The intrigue is that a UX can exist and work very effectively having a poor UI. For example, you can have an application with a stunning design that is hairy to use (good UI, bad UX). You can also have an application that has a poor look and feel, but is very intuitive to use (poor UI, good UX)."

I have always been a fan of sketching and we often brainstorm on the whiteboard. The following link highlights the importance of sketching - http://uxmovement.com/wireframes/why-its-important-to-sketch-before-you-wireframe/

You can also download printer-friendly grid-based templates for mobile sketches - http://uxmovement.com/products/wireframe-sheets-sketch-your-user-interface-to-life/

List of Prototyping tools

Found a good list of prototyping tools on cooper.com.

Liked the way they have compared the tools on various parameters :)

Ruminating on the UX Design Process

Centerline has published a neat infographic illustrating the UX design process. While there are a  lot of UX related infographics on the net, I liked the simplicity and clear thought process of this one :)

When we create compelling user experiences for our customers, we follow a similar process.

1. Gain a deeper understanding of the customer and the industry segment the customer operates in. Who are their end-customers? What is the market positioning of their product? 
2. Based on customer segmentation, create personas and user journey maps. 
3. Create a high level information architecture. 
4. Create low fidelity prototypes (mockups) using Visio, PowerPoint, etc.
5. After review, create high fidelity dynamic prototypes using tools such as iRise, Axure, etc. Work with Visual/Graphic Designers during this phase. 
6. Once the application is developed, do a usability test using tools such as TechSmith Morae. Create a feedback loop for UX changes that gets incorporated in the next agile release. 
7. Make sure that your UX team and Web/Mobile Analytics teams are working in tandem to resolve all UX concerns and improve the customer experience. 

Ruminating on Section 508 Accessibility standards

In the UX world, you would often come across the phrases such as "compliance with Section 508". So what exactly is Section 508 and how does it relate to User Experience?

"Section 508" is actually an amendment to the Workforce Rehabilitation Act of 1973 and was signed into a law in 1998. This law mandates that all IT assets developed by or purchased by the Federal Agencies be accessible by people with disabilities. The law has stated web guidelines that should be followed while designing and developing websites.

It is important to note that Section 508 does not directly apply to private sector web sites or to public sites which are not U.S. Federal agency sites. But there are other forces at play, that may force a organization to make their websites accessible. The ADA (Americans with Disabilities Act) that was passed way back in 1990 prohibits any organization to discriminate on the basis of disability.
The following link reveals examples of law suites filed for violation of ADA - http://www.law360.com/articles/513033/doj-focuses-on-ada-compliance-in-the-digital-age

Beyond the legal regulations, there are also open initiatives aimed at improving the accessibility of websites. W3C has an initiative named "Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI)" that lays down standards and guidelines for accessibility. There is also a standard for content authoring called - "Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG)".

The following sites provide good reading material on Accessibility -

• http://webaim.org/standards/508/checklist
• http://www.jimthatcher.com/webcourse1.htm
• http://www.ada.gov/
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/tutorials/
• http://www.w3.org/WAI/WCAG20/quickref/

Jotting down the high level guidelines that should be followed for accessibility.

1. A text equivalent for every non-text element shall be provided (e.g., via "alt", "longdesc", or in element content).
2. Equivalent alternatives for any multimedia presentation shall be synchronized with the presentation. For e.g.  synchronized captions.
3. Web pages shall be designed so that all information conveyed with color is also available without color, for example from context or markup. Color is not used solely to convey important information. Ensure that foreground and background color combinations provide sufficient contrast when viewed by someone having color deficits or when viewed on a black and white screen. 
4. Documents shall be organized so they are readable without requiring an associated style sheet. If style-sheets are turned off, the document should still be readable. 
5. Client-side image maps are used instead of server-side image maps. Appropriate alternative text is provided for the image as well as each hot spot area.
6. Data tables have column and/or row headers appropriately identified (using the element).
7. Pages shall be designed to avoid causing the screen to flicker with a frequency greater than 2 Hz and lower than 55 Hz. No element on the page flashes at a rate of 2 to 55 cycles per second, thus reducing the risk of optically-induced seizures.
8. When electronic forms are designed to be completed on-line, the form shall allow people using assistive technology to access the information, field elements, and functionality required for completion and submission of the form, including all directions and cues.
9. When a timed response is required, the user shall be alerted and given sufficient time to indicate more time is required.

Ruminating on Information Architecture

Information Architecture is both an art and science of organizing and structuring your content in such a way that it is very intuitive for the end-user to navigate. As such, Information Architecture is a subset of the User Experience Design field.

The output of Information Architecture is typically a set of wire-frames that depicts that design. It may also define a taxonomy to classify information (e.g. content, products), using a tree-structure hierarchy.
Other outputs for IA include site maps, annotated page layouts, page templates, personas, storyboards.

To put it in other words, IA answers the following questions:

• How do you categorize and structure information?
• How do you label information? e.g.  'Contact Us' label would hold all details on contact info.
• How users navigate through information?
• How users search for information?

And content cannot be structured in isolation, but depends on the 'users' and 'context', as depicted in this Venn diagram in the famous book by Rosenfeld and Morville.

Jotting down a few links on IA that are worth a perusal.

http://www.theguardian.com/help/insideguardian/2010/feb/02/what-is-information-architecture
http://boxesandarrows.com/category/design-principles/
http://docstore.mik.ua/orelly/web2/infoarch/index.htm
http://www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_whatisinfoarch