Sketchnoting – more than a fad

Sketchnoting is more than a fad; it’s more than just fun for the person doing it; it’s also an informative way to communicate. What is sketchnoting? Matthew Magain explains in the comic below (via Sketchnotearmy.com).

I had the pleasure of attending Veronica Erb‘s talk on Sketchnoting at IA Summit 2012, as did many others, which lead to a slew of them ending up online, like these sketchnotes by Daniel Stillman.

When I got home reviewed notes that other people put up, finding out about things I otherwise would have missed. I found this was a great way to catch up on sessions I didn’t attend, like this one by Dana Chisnell. I also found it helped recall sessions that I had really enjoyed. It was also a great way to share the info with colleagues back at home who didn’t attend the Summit.

Since then, I’ll often check out sketchnotes from conferences I would have liked to attend. Others have sent me awesome sketchnotes, my favorite of which is this one that Sage Cram shared on Twitter.

“Websites can’t poo!” from a talk by Gerry McGovern. See the full text notes here. Believe it or not, this has already proved a useful analogy with my clients. A bit crass for a large bureaucracy? Perhaps, but useful nonetheless.

I first learned (and tried) sketchnoting by watching this video of Eva-Lotta Lamm presenting at WebExpo 2010. However, despite what the experts say, my sketchnotes are still too crappy to share, still fun to do though! Perhaps why I gravitate to others’ funky & informative images.

P.S. For a fun way to make this part of your event, you can hire a pro to sketchnote. In Ottawa, consider the talented  Jennifer Shepherd from Living Tapestries. H/t to her for getting me hooked, despite never having met face-to-face.

What’s your favorite sketchnote/sketchnote website/talk about sketchnoting? Please share.

The debate is dead! Long live the debate.

The debate between who “owns” the Web – Information Technology or Communications – is dead.

Regardless of which unit in your organization is accountable (government-word for “owns”) for your website, the best results come from multidisciplinary teams working together.

You can’t have great Web content without great writers and useful content, and you can’t leverage  technology to serve it up to people when and where they want it, without knowledgeable techies.

Having worked at the intersection of IT and Comms most of my career I have seen myriad ways that organizations have chosen to structure the employees and groups who work on getting content and services online. One thing is for sure: I have yet to see an organizational structure that guarantees success.

What does seem to matter — regardless of who sits where or reports to whom — when you have knowledgeable, motivated staff who communicate with each other across boundaries to reflect, research, debate and problem solve; that’s the ideal structure. Clear roles, good planning, open communication, colleagues who trust and respect each other and having the right skills around the table all contribute to a successful Web project (and make for a great place to work I might add.)

Web outputs and processes should be managed across an organization in the same way that each team manages their own piece of HR, finance or other corporate functions.  For each of these areas, there are many people and groups that need to do at least one thing well to reach their objectives.

Of course there is more nuance than this short post implies. While I question the relevance of the IT/Comms debate, I encourage continued discussion about the internal factors that lead to a great website.

Does your organization have a great website? What’s your secret?

No excuse not to test

With all the usability testing software, services and books available, we no longer have any excuse not to do usability testing early and often. I went to a workshop with Nate Bolt, author of Remote Research, at IA Summit 2012 to find out how.  This is the second post (of as many as I can find the time to do) about what I learned at the Summit.

Getting up early after my first 24 hours in New Orleans was the hardest part.

The timing was great; I had a long list of things I needed to test back on my desk at work. Although there’s a list of possible tools on GCPEDIA, I wasn’t sure which one to use for what. I had limited time, no budget and was already overwhelmed before I’d begun.

Moderated testing results in the best insights. As you move away from moderated testing, the amount of insight you can glean from the data goes down.

Tools I’ve used

During the workshop, I had a chance to test out Usabilla.com, and since then my team has used Optimal Workshop‘s suite of products. We’ve also done tests with paper prototypes, which is quick and easy but doesn’t necessarily mimic the digital screen the content will eventually appear on.

I’ve also used TechSmith’s Morae and had a product demo of usertesting.com. IntuitionHQ’s blog is helpful whether you use that tool or not (I haven’t yet). I haven’t yet tried wufoo.com either, but one of the other workshop participants showed me the admin interface with all it’s fancy charts & graphs and I really want to try it. She was taking her iPad out to the campus where she worked and had students and teachers (her target audience) complete tests then breeze back into her office and review the results with her team to decide what changes to make to her site. Now that’s agile!

Here's a sample list of usability tools for each type of remote usability testing.

So, how can you choose a tool?

Tools like Usabilla.com and Chalkmark are basically only good for testing 1-step processes, where you can test simple wireframes or screen shots of live (or demo) pages. Loop11 and others that use live sites can test multi-step processes. The resulting data is easy to read and varies somewhat so I highly recommend a trial of as many tools as you can to make sure you get what you need out of it.

First off, let me say that none of these tools replaces moderated testing, which can be done remotely over the ‘net or sitting right beside someone. If you have the good fortune of having a real usability test lab, you can’t beat Morae for it’s ease of use or the functionality for processing data after testing.

The nice thing about doing testing remotely is that you can catch people as they are about to use your website in their native environment. In this way, it’s more like ethnographic research than usability testing. You can start by asking them what they were about to do, then watch them as they attempt to complete the task they came to do.

Obviously talking to people is ideal. If you have a live site, watch people complete their tasks on it. If you don't yet have a live site, you may need to use an image of a mock-up or prototype. Use raw data from your analytics platform to help prioritize what to test.

To demonstrate, Nate started the workshop by getting us to do a simple intercept survey from his website using ethn.io, then immediately calling a survey respondent on the phone to request participation in a quick usability test. Personally, I would find it a bit creepy if someone called me 1 minute after filling in a survey online, but he said that’s never been an issue.

Of course the technology failed in his demo, which is the same thing that happened to my team back in the office.  We wanted to send a link to the online test software to our colleagues, but we couldn’t access the platform from inside our network. Sigh.

There are also services available where you can use a company, like usertesting.com,  to review your website for you. They have a panel of users to choose from (by demographics such as age, location, income bracket or education) or you can recruit your own. The drawback here are that these are frequent web users, and unless you do the recruiting, they don’t necessarily map to your target audience. The output of the tool is quite thorough – hours and hours of video of people using your website. You can even pay the company to analyze the data for you.  In which case perhaps you’re better off doing your own moderated testing with real users. I haven’t yet taken the time to uncover whether there are privacy issues with collecting so much data about people but I imagine a well-worded consent form would be needed.

None of the tools I’ve used yet included the entire workflow of recruiting, screening potential participants, having them sign a consent form, testing then capturing follow-up information. You need to figure that out yourself before you get started.

Testing the test

Inge De Bleecker  did a presentation later in the week on crowdsourcing remote unmoderated usability testing highlighting the advantage of these hosted solutions. They are just plain cheap and easy. Some might consider that a drawback as it’s just as easy to misinterpret results and create skewed test plans if you don’t know what you’re doing.

During the workshop, we were given time to test out a number of tools and I tried Usabilla.com.  My test plan only consisted of one task but within minutes of sending the link to the test out over Twitter, about a quarter of the people got back to me that they messed up the test.  I should have tested the test. Oops. Even so, because so many people completed the test, I got enough data to confirm that the goal itself could be completed. I would definitely use this approach again, especially where I wanted to validate something I’d uncovered elsewhere with more people.

Within an hour I had registered for a demo, learned the tool, set up the test, recruit participants, get nearly 30 completed tests, and figure out how to view and analyze the results. A screenshot of the tool for the task I tested is shown below.

Even with feedback from participants that they 'messed up the test' I got enough data to show that the task could be completed.

Back at the office, we observed participants as they completed 4 tasks in Chalkmark on a laptop that we carried around to their workstations.  We asked them to talk aloud while they made their way through the tasks and made notes about what they said. The most useful part was hearing what they had to say.

Unfortunately, we weren’t able to analyze the results by audience segment within the software, even though the opening question was to self-identify by segments that matched our personas. Next time we’ll record whether or not each user successfully completed the task while we’re observing.

The bottom line

While none of these replace moderated testing with real users, they are, in my opinion:

1. Most useful when used with/in between moderated tests.
2. Useful for expanding the number of people tested for the same tasks tested in moderated tests.
3. Really good for simple tests or when comparing 2 options.
4. Better than not doing any testing at all.
5. Cheap, easy and an interesting way to learn about testing.

The hardest part

The hardest part of using any of these tools was coming up with the right questions. You don’t want to inadvertently skew your data by having a poor test method, for example, by ordering questions or choosing words in a way that influences the results.

The order of questions and specific words influence test results. A slide from Stephen Anderson's presentation showing a card from getmentalnotes.com.

I found it tough not to fall victim to my own assumptions but over time I think I’ll figure out how to build my hypotheses into my test plans without it pre-defining the outcome.

Designing services for citizens

This is the first of many posts emanating from IA Summit 2012, an amazing conference that I attended in New Orleans. Thanks to the wonderful speakers, organizers, volunteers and presenters, most of the presentations and a lot of participant-generated content is available all over the ‘net. I’ll be bringing together threads that spoke to me in a way I hope will be relevant and timely to my peers and colleagues.

The theme of this year’s conference, now in it’s 13th year, was designing for cross channel user experiences. Considering there were over 600 attendees from more than 20 countries, clearly this topic was attractive to more than those who consider themselves Information Architects (which is what “IA” stands for), myself included. I’ll get into that in this VERY LONG blog post. 

As you can see from their website, the IA Summit is described as

“the primary event for those redefining strategy and structure in support of cross-channel systems and user experiences.”

Which is exactly where I’m going to start.

What does “cross channel” mean?

A common discussion throughout the conference was around “defining the damn thing”. Which was usually said in reference to Information Architecture, but also of such phrases as User Experience, Cross Channel and Service Design. Many of the same terms were being used differently and/or interchangeably depending on who you were talking to, what field they had come up through to arrive at this point in time, and in what context.

Adam Ungstad, fellow Canadian, professional Information Architect and all round awesomesauce dude, described “cross channel” in his presentation on Better Cross Channel Experience through Metadata as requiring the user to go to different channels to have their needs met (slide 84).

Chris Risdon, a designer at Adaptive Path, clarified between cross-channel and “multi-channel” which he said is the “ability to have the same need met on different channels” in his presentation on Mapping the Experience (slide 83).

For example, I can pay my cell phone bill online, or I can go in the store, but I don’t need to do both to pay my bill; that’s a multi-channel service offering according to Risdon. Single channel means there’s only one way to complete your task. If the only way I could pay my phone bill was in the store, that would be a single channel service offering.

Peter Morville and Samantha Starmer did a day-long workshop exploring the topic in depth, which I followed online from the comfort of my hotel room 23 floors above them. Their presentation is below and my summary of it is just below that. You’ll have to keep reading to know what comes thereafter.

IA Summit Cross Channel Workshop

The definition they used of cross channel seems closer to that of Risdon’s use of the term “multi-channel”.  They spoke of services delivered “across time, touchpoints, devices and channels” (slide 84).  In their workshop, they presented 5 principles of a well designed cross-channel user experience: consistent, convenient, connected, contextual, a cross time (slide 118).

They recommended the book This is Service Design Thinking to learn more (slide 176) and spent the afternoon talking about how to use the tools that User Experience designers (slide 177) have been using to design online services for years. I’ve blogged about that recently and probably will again, at the risk of seeming obsessed with Peter Morville (it’s his work I love; I’m not a crazy stalker.)

To me, the theme, conversations, presentations and popularity of the conference re-iterated that it is no longer possible to consider a website on it’s own as an experience, service, product or touchpoint. A website is part of a larger eco-system in which people are inter-acting with your organization or brand.

In yahnyinlondon’s Flickr photostream I found a sketchnote from a talk by Oliver King. In it, User Experience is a term used to describe how we design (web) interfaces and Service Design looks at the delivery and organization behind those interactions. This certainly reflects my own history with the terms.

That said, what we’re seeing now is an expansion of the term User Experience to include all service touchpoints, not just online/the website. This may be due to the following facts:

• Everything is information.
• Users don’t distinguish product lines based on the channel or device they are delivered through.
• Many of our clients have ubiquitous access to the Internet through a proliferation of devices and are using them in contexts other than an ergonomic desk chair and 20 inch screen.

This may partly explain why IA Summit is not just for Information Architects. Information Architecture is converging with other disciplines who’s practitioners are interested in designing intentional experiences for their clients.

To wrap up, Peter and Samantha presented other considerations (slide 215) when designing services.

So, what’s the problem?

As you can see from their presentation, they started with a story of their own experience dealing with their insurance providers after getting into a car accident. The insurance company had clearly never considered their clients’ journey and designed for it; despite it being their core service offering. After months of phone calls, emails, letters, site visits and website visits, they still didn’t have their money back (service fail). Not only that, but I would be very surprised if they were still with that insurance company after this experience (death of the company).

Dealing with the company was worse than the accident.

Then, what’s the opportunity?

Since I wasn’t actually in the room I snuck off to the Ruby Slipper Cafe to soothe a slight hangover with (a not that) greasy bacon and egger. (As my colleague told me before I left “A day in New Orleans is 24 hours. You can sleep when you’re dead.” More on that in another post.)

As I sat there pondering how organizations could re-orient themselves to focus on their clients to avoid this horrible situation Samantha had to live through, a story appeared on CNN about the US Postal Service. According to the report, this government-owned agency was making it easier for companies to send junk mail. The context of the story was around how much everyone hates junk mail, and the reporters bantered about how they had already noticed an increase in the amount of it sitting on their kitchen tables.

Why would the US Postal Service increase the amount of unsolicited mail delivered to citizens when citizens clearly aren’t interested in receiving it? Doesn’t that seem like a lose-lose proposition?

Why? To stay in business.

Yes, that’s right, (big surprise!) people are not sending as much mail as they used to, so the US Postal Service is losing money. So much so that they risk going out of business. Rather than responding with changes to their service offerings; they are investing in technology that favours businesses over their citizens to make up for lost revenue. After all, that’s what they need to continue operating, right?

(In all fairness to my neighbours to the South; one of Canada Post’s core service offerings is “Direct Mail” which I assume means junk mail.)

It’s both strange and normal for me to see the US Postal Service clinging to the status quo.  When I think about my own human nature, and that of people around me, I  understand how hard it is to let go of something, especially when it’s what you’ve always done or when you’ve put your heart & soul into it.

However, from an organizational perspective, designing services that work for clinets regardless of time, place, device or channel is not just good business; it may be the difference between staying in business or not.

I would like to argue that changing demographics and expectations is an opportunity. It will force us to think differently about how we interact with people. And that, I believe, can be a catalyst for innovation. A buzz word I’m almost loathe to use without explaining what I mean, so here it is in a nutshell:

Now is the time to totally re-think the services we’re offering — what we’re offering; how we’re offering them; and how our organizations are structured to support them.

How are we going to do that?

Will it be intentionally orchestrated like Chris Risdon explained or will it be a haphazard series of mess-ups like Samantha’s experience dealing with her insurance company? Will we make decisions to force clients to deal with us only on certain channels that are convenient to us or will we leverage technology to ensure services are available when and where clients need them? Will we cling to the past or embrace change as an opportunity to stop (or reduce) services that are no longer useful?

I don’t know the answer to any of these questions for my own organization, but at least I feel more equipped with something I got at IA Summit: more tools in my toolkit.

Stay tuned for more about these tools (I promise to add more pictures!). Feel free to post specific requests in the comments.

5 pitfalls of collaboration

Despite our best intentions, working together is hard! It’s often harder than working on your own, but the results will be better if you figure out how to take advantage of everyone’s ideas.

Pitfall #1. Nobody’s in charge.

We’re used to organizing around a leader. It can feel sorta directionless when nobody is in charge. Sometimes nobody is and that’s ok. However, this arrangement should be intentional. Figure out how your group will resolve conflict and make decisions, before your faced with either. Will it be through discussion? Voting? Majority rules? Consensus? Write it down in a team charter. A team charter can make or break a group that prefers shared accountability.

Pitfall #2. Everyone thinks they are in charge.

Self-organized groups are often made up of strong, passionate, bright people. If nobody actually is the leader (and you like it this way) see point one. Otherwise, identify and agree on roles and responsibilities in advance so everyone comes to the group with the same understanding of who’s doing what.

Pitfall #3. Everyone wants to be in charge, but they don’t necessarily want to do any work.

Another messy one. One that can be prevented by clarifying the skills and work that each person brings to the project. Make that part of your on-boarding process for including new members.

Pitfall #4. The lifespan of the group outlives it’s usefulness.

It was while reading the numerous insights Clay Shirky has published that I first started thinking of organizations as porous. Always changing. Ephemeral. A good group knows when it’s time to close shop. Finish with grace. Lots of good things come to an end. It’s not a failure. Get some closure. It’s ok to move on.

Pitfall #5. The group folds before it finishes what it set out to do.

This is also not a failure. Maybe the time has not come for this idea; or maybe it’s an idea who’s time has not yet come. Document what you can and put it in a place where other people can find it. Like in the Policy Seed Bank on GCPEDIA.

Unless you actively try to avoid these pitfalls; you may fall into one of them. If anyone has advice for avoiding or handling them, please comment!

How Peter Morville changed my life

In my last post I wrote about the importance of words.

I actually set out to write about a handful of words that have meaning for me. Words that, through their introduction into my consiousness, changed my course of action. Some of these words came to me via Peter Morville. Which is how he, inadvertently and unknowingly, changed my life.

Of course the words themselves are only symbolic of concepts, so it’s the concepts that are meaningful. But hearing the words validated that other people were thinking

My journey through words

Language matters.

A friend who coaches football once told me when players say they can’t do something, he repeats what they said and adds the word “yet”. It was something he’d learned studying neuro-linguistic programming. Say these two sentence out loud and see how you feel:

“I can’t do that.”

“I can’t do that yet.”

Over time, players were doing things they hadn’t been able to do previously. They’d internalized the idea that it was only a matter of time before they were capable.

Getting buy-in for UX in government

An interview with Monica, UX Lead, GoC Department

Monica's tweet after a day spent at UXCampOttawa 2011. Would she really head into the office at 8pm on a Saturday? I didn't call to find out until Monday.

Me: I saw your tweet and I was curious — what part of UXCampOttawa got you so pumped?

Monica: The whole day was great but the surprising part for me was the unconference session on getting buy-in for UX in government. Three themes emerged from the session. These were:

1. Get buy-in with stakeholders – You’ll need a senior manager to champion your cause if your department is not yet using a user-centred design process. 

The experience of the experience: meta reviews in conference going

I admit it: I am a picky conference attendee. I want things to be easy. I don’t want to be told what to do nor do I want to have to make my own decisions.  I want to talk to people who are smarter than I am, but not so smart they make me feel dumb. I want to have fun but also have an enriching experience. Yes; I am one of *those* people who can rarely be pleased.

UXCampOttawa 2011, an annual volunteer-organized event for User Experience practitioners, fell into the right space between my extremes. I noticed every detail. So did many others, who commented on the – branding, flow, way finding tools and the quality of the speakers. Yesterday, I got to hear it all.

The main auditorium at uOttawa, host of UXCampOttawa (photo by RichLoen)

I also got to see it all. I had a chance to take it all in and really noticed a lot of improvements from last year, as well as things I liked a lot more than some of the other events I’ve been to. Here’s why I thought it was great.

First of all, value to cost was very high. Heck, I drank $40 worth of coffee and that was before I sat down to listen to an inspiring, engaging and informative keynote by Dana Chisnell from Usability Works.

UXCampOttawa here I come

I am super excited to be speaking at UXCampOttawa 2011. Also a wee bit nervous, since many attendees will be my peers for whom I have a lot of respect; colleagues who have mentored me over my short decade career working on government websites. I have learned my craft from these folks and continue to learn through work, play, conversation and collaboration with them.

Being part of the planning committee last year was so much fun. My respect for my committee colleagues  grew as we came together to organize a community-led event that