Design Like a Lady. Code Like a Geek.

Find Out Why – You Don’t Know C.R.A.P. about UX & UI

Lindsay — Tue, 02 Aug 2011 02:11:09 +0000

Stop banging your head against the wall, asking the wrong questions of your users and processing the feedback incorrectly; learn how to get ahead of the curve by designing better experiences and interfaces for your applications! I am very excited to announce that this month I will be teaching a beginner’s class on User Experience and User Interface Design as part of the NY-based startup SkillShare’s launch in Philadelphia!

Who: Yours Truly (View My Portfolio for Credentials)

What: Learn practical UX & UI skills to user on your future projects.

Where: CitySpace, 2200 Walnut Street in Philly

When: August 23rd, from 7:00PM – 8:30PM

Why? Because the future of application development is in the experience and you only get one chance to make a first impression! It’s not just a matter of redesigning your Web 1.0 (alternating colored rows in a table, yuck!) app by implementing the flashiest new jQuery plugin (Woohoo, the form slides in from the left!!), it’s about picking the right design for the right use, and converting visitors to real users.

If that’s not enough, all proceeds go to the local Philly organization TechGirlz, dedicated to training the next generation of female technologists.

>> Register now for the course!

Let’s Start a Learning Revolution

Thinking About It?

I would like to hear from you if you cannot make the class (so I can schedule Take 2) OR if you want to take the class AND have questions about what you will learn OR have specific goals for the class that you would like to share with me. SkillShare is all about teaching and learning, as well as building a community, so please contact me in the comments or via email (lindsaytabas [at] gmail [dot] com).

Take a Gander At…

Women in Science Fair

Lindsay — Thu, 12 May 2011 19:54:18 +0000

This week I presented at Cheltenham Elementary School’s Women in Science Fair as the first ever “computer” participant in the fair’s history. I decided to teach the children the basic design principles – C.R.A.P. – though I had to rearrange the letters – P.A.R.C – to take into consideration my K-5th grade audience. So we learned about Proximity, Alignment, Repetition and Contrast by assembling a poster about Toy City.

To prepare for the fair, I used stencils, spray paint and markers to create an interactive poster board. In the center, I put the pieces of information for the Toy City website on velcro so the children could move the information around and see the results spatially on the board.

The day began with the Kindergarteners who, we all agreed, were too young to grasp the “science” part of the fair. They did understand the mission given to them by their teachers: Get at least 6 sign-offs from the different tables indicating you visited. It probably wasn’t until the 3rd graders that the students really started to grasp the concepts of layout and design. I think this is a big take-away for anyone else out there keen on teaching design to younger children.

The typical conversation with each student went this way. After approaching, I would say:

Lindsay: Hi there, do you like to play with computers?

Student: YES!

Lindsay: What do you like to do on computers?

Student: Play gaa-a-ames!

Lindsay: Oh what kind of games?

Student: [INSERT SOME GAME I DON'T KNOW]

Lindsay: Well do you want to play a game today?

Student: Yes!

Lindsay: We’re going to design a website! Have you ever done that?

Student:

Lindsay: Well let’s design a website for ToyCity, the BEST Playground & Toy store in Philadelphia. Before we begin, lets organize the information into groups (prompt them to organize all the pieces on the table. pieces that were similar were also in the same color).

The groups of information were: Name of the Store, Taglines, Products & Availability. I walked them through each one, pointing out principles of alignment and repetition. I found Contrast was almost negligible in this exercise.

I think the highlight of the morning was the one 4th grader who, when asked what he likes to do most on the computer, answered enthusiastically, “Search facts on Wikipedia!” And when I asked him if he wanted to design a website, he cooed extra excitedly “I’ve always wanted to do that!” Unfortunately, his teacher chirped for all her students less than 20 seconds into the exercise.

Here’s the full slideshow of photos:

15 Countries & 6 Continents

Lindsay — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 13:52:33 +0000

From February 2010 – February 2011, I traveled to 14 Countries and 6 Continents, plus resided in the USA. Does that qualify me for an award? Maybe I should check out the URDB for that: Most countries visited in a single year!

I’m doing some housecleaning on my lap-top, upgraded the OS to 10.6, got a bigger hard-drive (500GB) and boosted the memory (4GB). This means I can start collecting all the 16GB SD cards from my trips and create a fresh new iPhoto Library organization, coagulating everything together into one large masterpiece. I just wanted to use the word “coagulating”, did you catch that?

I found these icons already on one of my hard-drives so I’m ticking one for each country, like a virtual backpack with a patch for each. In no particular order:

Missing: Cambodia & Swaziland

My Top 10 (UX/UI/IX) Design Principles

Lindsay — Wed, 23 Feb 2011 19:04:35 +0000

No one would ever want to design an interface like the HCFA, but I had to because it was what the user wanted. I couldn't be stubborn, I had to admit I was not a user, I had to come to a 360 degree understanding, and realize that I could not change what the users do.

Last week, I posted my tips for being an effective designer in a lean environment. This week, while perusing the UX topic on Quora, I noticed someone posted a question “What are the top 3 commandments of Web UX?“. It reminded me that I had started a Top 10 list last year and never got around to publishing it. So here you go, my Top 10 Design Principles.

Build something that supports what people do, not changes how they do it. I do not believe I have to expound on this one.
Training is not an excuse for poor design. I wrote a blog post on this topic last year. If you ever hear a teammate say “Oh, but we can train the users how to do this” then your product’s design is going in the wrong direction.
The users are always right, but they never know what they need. Listen to your users, they have vast wealths of information about their problems and what they would like to see fixed. But software designers, they are not. If a user tells you the solution, ask them first to describe the problem. Once, a non-profit explained to me that they needed users to sign-up with their website so they could RSVP to events and download a member registration form. I could have spent hours developing a multi-user system, but instead I asked them more about their event planning and how one become a member of their organization. It turns out Eventbrite could handle their events, and they were fine with the form being publicly available.
I am not the user. My teammates are not the users. The customer is not always the user. This is fairly simple. The users are the users, and they have to be able to use what you design and build for them.
Empathize with the users’ problems and end goals. If after discovery, you don’t feel like you are burdened by their problems too, you’re not going to design a world class product and the solution they need.
Don’t settle until you have a 360 degree view of the problem. If you do not have a full grasp of the entire service system, something like accounting or managerial over site will come bite you in the behind when you’re about to launch. ”Oh, the solution cannot work like that, you did not take into account XYZ.” Oh, well no one told me about XYZ. That’s not their fault, you should have asked.
Your Design should be C.R.A.P.-y : In my first semester in HCI, the first homework assignment was to redesign posters by the C.R.A.P. principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity. Here’s a nice post about C.R.A.P.
Friends don’t let friends design alone (i.e. share your designs with others). It took me at least my first semester at the School of Information to go from an objective, standards-based engineer (things were fairly black and white), to a designer that fully grasped the subjectivity that is the human language and opinion. Pull in your team members, it’s part of operating in a lean environment anyways.
Stubborness is the worst trait of a designer. If a user or co-worker critics your design, take the feedback and go back to the drawing board. It took me 4 iterations to get a 10-key form right, but the users love it.
If something is difficult to do, people will not do it (ref) Also, fairly simple. It also goes very well with a sentiment I have been building that goes like, “If people don’t already do it, just because you make it easier, doesn’t mean they are going to start.” This goes well with #1.For example, providing easy social media tools to niche populations. If they’re not already talking and sharing naturally, they probably won’t talk and share just because you build them a custom app.

The UX Designer’s Downward Dog: Designing in a Lean Environment

Lindsay — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:35:39 +0000

Don Norman said once in a lecture at the I-School that if the HCI people aren’t part of the product planning, then their value is actually lost (*paraphrased). Possibly, in the past year or two, the importance of user experience (UX) design is rising to its appropriate place in entrepreneurship circles and startup teams.

As a community, we are realizing a trained designer with a diverse skill set goes beyond the placement of buttons and the creation of CSS sprites. We UX designers now come prepackaged with the features to help inform the product roadmap (if not manage the product), work closely with software developers, and contribute to sales calls and client visits. We are a diverse breed because at the crux of our skills is not only the know how to make things look pretty and function properly, but the ability to empathize with our users’ problems and to understand people.

Today, I found myself writing an essay-of-a-response to an interesting blog article from Cooper, a design and strategy firm in San Francisco. Tim McCoy wrote in “Lean UX, Product Stewardship, and Integrated Teams” how UX designers are finding their place in start-ups, flexing their diverse skill set, and effectively contributing to lean development team. I had a few pieces to contribute that went beyond the maximum permissible (in my opinion) characters of a good comment, so here I share with you.

McCoy posits that traditional UX methodologies were developed in waterfall environments, which we can all agree upon because almost everything regarding software development began in the waterfall environment.

In the past decade of my education and career, user-centered design rose to the challenge of modern software development techniques by being inherently iterative. Research, design, develop (Lo-Fi Testing), research, design, develop (Hi-Fi Testing), research, design, develop (Alpha/Beta). My design project from the iSchool (circa 2006), LightsOn, made it to 3 iterations before the final project was due; we only had to test with 3-4 potential users each time. As I left graduate school, it seemed we were ready for agile environments, but developers and engineers were not ready for us.

It’s a combination of multiple facets that has prepared us for this meeting point where:

The users have a stronger voice, demanding better experience
There are enough designers to meet the call of duty
The developers and engineers understand where their skills end and a designer’s begins

So what can we designers do to improve our downward dog, be agile and flexible, and meet the demands of a fast moving software development team? In response to McCoy, I detail a few techniques that I use to apply myself effectively to my teams:

Involve developers and engineers in your process: Your teammates are more likely to value your user personas and user feedback if you actually explain to them who the users are. Some of my teammates have told me they really don’t care, “just get me the requirements”, while others have joined me in developing activity diagrams, data requirements and new design ideas.
Become a partner in design: In line with #1, if an interaction or data requirement is outside of your expertise, it’s a great way to involve the developers and engineers in your work. Ask, “Is this interaction even possible? Can we implement it this way?” Explain why it has to be done that way, and negotiate a solution. Be partners in design. The worst thing for you to do is to design a new feature, hand it to a developer, and, then find out the implementation is technically impossible. You just wasted a week, and probably another.
Test with anyone, at first: In one project, I put together a simple lo-fi prototype to test the intuitiveness of a new feature’s interaction. I met with one of our sales representatives for 1-hour; the meeting revealed a list of design changes, as well as new ideas given her experience with the product. You don’t necessarily need a representative from your user community to get valuable usability feedback.
Ignore LOUD users: The worst thing a company can do is adhere to the complaints and demands of a few loud users. A business-side employee pushed through a new feature that permanently locked text notes because one client did not trust his employees to make edits. It was a PR disaster. We rolled back that change in less than 24 hours, took 1 month to rethink and research, then relaunch.
Cultivate a strong relationship with Customer Support and Community Leaders: It’s really simple. The people on the phones everyday with the users know why the users want the changes they have requested. They are always my first step when researching a new feature request.
Learn the Basics of Objected-Oriented Programming and Database Structures: My 4-5 semesters between undergraduate and graduate school did not make me a trained software developer, but understanding 0…* relationships and class diagrams, as well as being able to speak in “if”, “else”, “while” and “for” gave me the tools to walk the bridge to my teammates’ side of the chasm.
Take a Tip from Business Development: When you start a new business, you value your first few customers more than any others. You never raise their fees and you service their requests in a timely matter. They repay you in recommendations and referrals. Do the same with a handful of users that you keep in touch with. Politely call them with questions about new features and bugs; it’s cheaper than running community-wide surveys and less intensive than deploying poorly designed features and processing all of the complaints.
Teach Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics: I’m a firm believer in Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Heuristics and the Heuristic Evaluation. After running a project with 90% of my coworkers with my last employer, we all shared a common language to discuss new product features.
Develop a Style Guide: Marketing and Advertising departments have style guides for the way the company logo can be used, so you should maintain one for the way the software should function. It maintains consistency, and becomes the de facto guide for any developer left to their own design-devices. They detail the shape, size and color of buttons, whether a link should open in a new window versus the existing window, and how the navigation system should function across all levels of the site hierarchy.
Finally, be well rounded. What makes me good as a designer is that I have tried a little of everything: I’ve pressed send on marketing e-mail campaigns, designed logos, built websites, and met with customers to up-sell them on products. Designing is my core skill, but in an agile environment, I can fill in on any team that is lacking a particular talent.

McCoy posted a slide deck that addresses even more ideas for integrating with a lean environment:

Lean UX, Product Stewardship & Integrated Teams

View more presentations from Tim McCoy.

My First Retirement (is over)

Lindsay — Sun, 12 Dec 2010 22:24:35 +0000

So begins the pre-requisite disclaimer from a guilty writer, hanging their head low as they admit to their absence. It’s been a while. Needless to say, I’ve been busy. I have legitimate reasons for leaving this space blank for so long. One of which is that “Subject to Change” was such a great post to share, and a high note from which to depart.

Last fall I announced my departure from the work force. My voluntarily membership into the unemployed. It wasn’t that simple. From my point of view, I didn’t just leave. I asymptotically departed, giving 6 weeks notice, and then contracting for about two months on a part-time basis. I wanted to make sure the project I had tirelessly worked on for 8 months was in good hands with the software development team. It was. I received this message from my previous boss in July, almost 8 months after I left:

[Our clients] announced today that they consider [the project] to be stable and into maintenance.One year and four months in labor and now a really massive and awesome system has breached the birth canal.

You were more than instrumental and I am very proud, very grateful and very moved by your work and participation.

Now, if only I could get him to add that to my LinkedIn profile!

The real point of this post is to point you to the project that I carried on, and still must finish, while I was traveling this year. I set out to learn some new things this past year, one of which was video editing and film making. I first built a “video” subdomain here but then realized the project was bigger than that and deserved its own location. My First Retirement became a long running joke as I tried to explain to others what I was doing with 2010. Maybe it was a piece of sarcasm to deflect the real reasons (they may be clear here and here) I was defying societal norms and taking these risks. I have no difficulty going into the details but, as Seth Godin wrote yesterday,

“The answer is simple…is always more effective a response than, ‘well, it’s complicated.’”

So I retired this year because I wanted to and had the means to support myself through it. That’s the simple answer. Here were the opening credits for your enjoyment:

My First Retirement from LindsayT on Vimeo.

My reality now, one year and one month after departing my full time job is that I am working, and employable. My first retirement is officially over.

There are so many rewarding feelings I recorded during this entire journey, but one of the most rewarding feelings was to invalidate the fear I had that I would be unemployed looking for work for months after returning to the US.

One could extrapolate from many stories and chain of events that the pursuit-of-video played a role in the transition I underwent from retired to employed. Regardless, I have three men in my life that took a chance to hire me after so much time off. I hope they don’t regret it, and I hope they know how appreciative I am for the opportunities I have been afforded.

Earn Enough Miles for an Around the World Trip Ticket

Lindsay — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 01:04:08 +0000

My sister once told me that I was extremely well rounded, and no one could take that away from me. With that, I like to use Second Thoughts to display this wide range of expertise, from the ridiculous to real, from tacos to design, from technical to personal.

In this article, I’m going to outline briefly how I managed to purchase my around the world trip ticket 100% on miles (+ a fee for airport taxes) with Continental Airlines. It took just over a year and a half, at least two long flights for vacation and multiple cross country flights, but I pulled it off. Here’s how:

Pick an airline alliance and always fly with that alliance. I chose Continental Airlines in the Winter of 2007. At that time Continental was part of the Sky Team Alliance, but as of October 2009 it is part of the Star Alliance. It included Delta, Northwest, Air France, Korean Air, and Copa, to name a few. (As a backup to #1, make sure you have an account with each alliance. Continental is now with the Star Alliance. I opened up a Delta SkyMiles account just in case I continued to fly with Sky Team partners. )
With #1, remember to give the airline your account # for every flight. That’s how you collect the miles in the first place! You only need one account number per alliance. With the SkyTeam, if I fly Air France, I give them my Delta SkyMiles account, with Star Alliance, if I fly US Airways, I give them my Continental One Pass number.
If you forget to give your account # for the flight, keep the boarding pass to redeem the points/miles later. As long as you have your boarding pass, the process to redeem your points/miles is quite simple. Just send in your boarding pass (make a copy for your records) to your airline (in my case Continental) with a note explaining the situation and including your account information.
Apply for a credit card with the primary airline with whom you are collecting miles. Again, my primary airline was (and still is) Continental Airlines. I took out my first credit card with them and Chase in December 2007. You earn bonus miles for opening a credit card, and in some cases, for making your first purchase. Most airline cards have a yearly fee (ex: $85) and a fairly high APR (ex: 13.89%), so only charge each month what you can pay off by your payment due date. The point here is to charge as much of your normal expenses as possible, paying off the balance in full each month to avoid fees. This way you maximize the amount of miles you earn each month.
Use your airline credit card to purchase flights for double miles. Very simple rule.
Take advantage of opportunities to earn miles from partner programs. My previous employer and client had me stay at Sheraton’s whenever I was on -site and conveniently, Continental had a partnership with Starwood Resorts, whereby my Starwood Points converted to Continental Miles. I lost out on points with the hotel system, but gained big in airline miles, which was what I wanted.

Most people ask how many miles the flight cost – 140,000 – and how much the flight would have cost in dollars – roughly $3500. The general rule of thumb is to hack off the last two zeros of miles quote to get an idea of how much the ticket would cost in dollars. There’s a $1 for every 100 miles. Not a great ratio, but with that conversion, I was able to travel around the world for $1400 while my traveling partner traveled for ~$3500.

Note: This is not a sponsored article.

Interested in seeing more of my trip? Visit www.myfirstretirement.com

Subject to Change

Lindsay — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 04:24:48 +0000

While in Southern California this past week, I made my way over to Hennesy + Ingalls in Santa Monica at the behest of my friend Nate. The store is packed with books on creativity, architecture, graphic design and photography; basically it was amazing!

There, we picked up Adaptive Path‘s “Subject to Change: Creating Great Products and Services for an Uncertain World.” This was the first time I had a chance to hold the book in my hands and check out the bibliography in the back. Lo and behold, there was my name (along with the primary author, Professor Bob Glushko from Berkeley’s School of Information) for a paper I helped author called “Bridging the Front Stage and Back Stage of Service Design”. To be honest, it was pretty amazing to see the citation, and my name in print. It’s also great to know that someone else read what I had to say on a topic, and found it thought-provoking enough to share it with others in their own publications.

Here are a couple of pictures Nate took to capture my “moment”!

I’m Leaving My Job Because I’m Going…

Lindsay — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 23:27:34 +0000

Today is my last full-time day at work. I’m leaving my job because I’m going…

…with my friend Lauren:

Here’s our itinerary…

If you feel like meeting us along the way let me know! And, if my flights look a little cooky to you, it’s because I got the entire ticket with airline miles from Continental’s One Pass Program; the miles were much easier to earn than I expected. The only leg I didn’t get on miles, that is not included in this itinerary snapshot, is the 3 week trip to South Africa for FIFA World Cup.

I’m going back to Philadelphia for the winter, to hibernate on my parent’s couch and to work on other projects that I’ve always wanted to devote more time and attention to, until I leave for this big and amazing trip of 2010. In the meantime, you can peruse my collection of travel pictures from previous treks.

As always, stay tuned…

Welcome to the WildWest: When Women Take on Tech Because They Want To

Lindsay — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 17:03:05 +0000

A day does not go by when I don’t hear about an event from the numerous “we support women in technology” groups: Girls in Tech, Women 2.0, Bay Area Girl Geek Dinner and Shes Geeky. All of these groups have merit, and all have a target audience, from software developers to marketing analysts. I’ve certainly benefited from these organizations, participating in Women 2.0′s Business Plan Competition back in 2008, attending a plethora of Girls in Tech events about journalism, business development, and so forth, and going to the Shes Geeky conference at the beginning of this year down in the Peninsula. I’ve been lucky to meet some amazing women which include intense athletes, creative and insightful product managers, and even friends that help me out with reservations to Chez Panisse!

A portion of the dialogue that is pervasive in these types of groups is dedicated to asking the question to ad nauseum “Why are there not enough women in technology?” The women that are in tech are quick to point out that most conferences are dominated by men, mostly white, and that few of these conferences feature any women speakers at all. Day in, and day out, the conversation and complaints flood my twitter stream and my RSS feed to so much annoyance that I’m almost tempted to start spending my free time speaking at conferences (which I’ve done), or organizing a survey to better understand why women in tech do not attend conferences or try to speak at them on their own volition. Just to make the noise go away. It’s not that I don’t believe there are valid concerns, it’s that I find the conversation is tired, and somewhat generational.

In the pop culture of the online world, it seems that women in technology fall into three roles which I can relate to Save by the Bell characters. The Kelly Kapowskis use their sex appeal to attract the tech geek guy to pay attention to them without knowing a lick of what they’re talking about. The Lisa Turtles are the peppy chicks that “overcompensate by pushing their ‘geekery’ on everyone” (quote), displaying a mastery of social media but not of the separation of the application and presentation layers (you dig?). And, the Jesse Spanos are quite qualified women of tech, who also sound like feminists ranting everyday that women are somehow being purposefully left out of the tech equation.

I don’t buy into it. And neither does my friend Amy Ziari.

Last August Amy approached me at a Girls in Tech event (we thank you for that GIT!), tired as well of the same old conversation, with an idea to create a video series featuring women in technology who talk about what they are interested in. Not to prove to anyone that we’re competent, or that we’re “geeky just like you!”, but to let our audience draw their own conclusions. We didn’t want to be Kelly, Lisa or Jesse, we wanted to be ourselves, comfortable with our role in the industry, with our peers (male, female, black, white, hispanic or asian), and what we find interesting.

In mid September we teamed up with Camille Ricketts of Venture Beat to put together the pilot episode of the WildWest show. We hoped to put together more episodes, but time passed, and now I’m leaving soon to take off on an excellent adventure (I’ve alluded to this trip, but have yet to post details). So enjoy this first episode, where we interview Joey Mucha from Sprout and talk about some of our biggest tech snafus! Also, visit the website – www.wildwestshow.tv - to learn more.

Credits to Amy for doing all the video editing!