Interaction

I am turning in my dissertation in exactly one week’s time. I’m taking a short break to write this post, not because I can, but because I just can’t concentrate on revising my project right now. And I was thinking to myself, maybe this isn’t a good time to be blogging about the course you’re going to be assessed on – but actually, this is about as real as it gets.

Just leave me alone

At this moment, I realize that all the effort I’m putting into this MSc project is going into polishing my ideas – i.e. writing a literary piece that’s able to stand on its own. And while I absolutely agree that bad writing sucks and that we should all strive to communicate things clearly, half of me wants to just give up and do something else – like, personas or wireframes or jQuery.

For one, I actually prefer to build stuff and see things work. And instead on being assessed on how well I’m able to design solutions, I’m being graded on how well I communicate my research ideas based on the work that I’ve invested in the project. It could be worse, I suppose – but it’s a little frustrating.

Sucking as a Designer

You don’t need an MSc in order to build things. But that’s not why I decided to take up this course. I did it because I was tired of convincing people that they need to build things better for people, rather than just building things so that it functions well. So, in a way, my goal was to learn how to convince people about building things better.

But halfway through the course, I realized that I wasn’t getting any better at convincing people about how to build things better. Instead, I was learning to convince myself about how to build things better.

So, really the MSc basically opened a can of worms for me – it showed me just how bad a designer/developer I really was, because I was focusing so much on solving the problem, rather than implementing the solution.

The Sobering Irony of Academia

The question is – did I really need to go down this path to know that? Did the course make a difference in my life? Would it have been better for me just to focus on building stuff and pick things up as I go along?

I think the answer is yes/yes/no, and maybe it’s because I took the road less travelled and I know of no other route. Firstly, all that effort I put into the course forced me to reflect on my abilities and goals, and I think I wouldn’t have realized there were much better ways to implement solutions without truly assessing myself critically.

It’s ironic that this still doesn’t guarantee that I’ll be able to build better things. But at least I should be a lot more sensitive about building worse things. So, maybe that’s what I’m really being assessed about – my ability to judge and reason about good design, which is more than just writing up a good project.

But mark my words, though – I’m going to park Word aside for some *proper* hands-on stuff when I’m finally done with this.

boon :: Aug.27.2009 :: uclic :: No Comments »

This is a plug for a study I am doing for my MSc dissertation.

If you are a healthy London-based person (preferrably male) aged between 40 and 65 who makes use of the Internet regularly, I would like you to participate in a Diary Study which will help me understand more about internet search behaviour involving non-personal images.

This study will involve the following:

1. an interview at the beginning of the diary study, which explains what the study is about and what you need to do
2. the diary study period, in which you log when you perform an image-related internet activity (approximately 2 weeks)
3. an interview at the end of the diary study period to understand more about specific tasks that are of interest

In return, you will be imbursed with a £40 voucher from a vendor of your choice.

If you are interested in participating, just drop a comment in the box below, and I’ll get in touch with you shortly.

photo credit: MKKnop

boon :: Jun.12.2009 :: uclic :: 2 Comments »

A List Apart recently published several articles about Web Education, spelling out the inherent difficulties for students to come out prepared for jobs in the web industry. While I can surely sympathize with that, myself being a practitioner for several years, I can also see how academic institutions struggle to reconcile pressure from the perspectives of research, teaching, and learning.

Contrast this to simply “learning on the job”, there’s a huge amount of tacit knowledge that you can acquire in a relatively short period of time, but only if the conditions are right. Surely, in industry, you do it every single day. But in class, it’s quite hard to teach that to students who haven’t quite grasped what it’s like to work on websites or other interactive systems on a daily basis.

The Interaction between Academia and Industry

The HCI program at UCL tries very hard to give students a good flavor of not just the academic and theoretical side of things, but the practical side as well. And because of its strong background in psychology and computer science, there may be a tendency to think they lack the kind of practicalities designers live by on a daily  basis – but the people who run the program understand this and design does have its place in the program.

Certainly, in the academic community for HCI, design is seen as a black box – as though some kind of magic takes place whenever you design a website. But there’s a whole lot that goes on in the design process. And I’m glad to be given the opportunity to not just learn the skills that are required, but to see the history of both industry and academic trends evolving over the years, which tells you a lot about the different perspectives of the industry, which is probably why we have so many terms for practitioners (e.g. information architect, usability engineer, interface designer, etc.).

However, there has been significant contributions and conversations from both sides. Norman and Nielsen have a long history in the HCI community, whose works are often cited. On the other hand, you have folks like Alan Cooper and Steve Krug who are more known in industry.

Straight from the Horse’s Mouth

One of the things that UCLIC has done from the very beginning (back when it was more strongly associated with Human Factors and Ergonomics), was to have people from industry come in and give their perspectives of what the ‘real world’ is like. It’s an optional session and we don’t get slapped for not coming in, but it’s such a good way to hear so many different perspectives from people in industry.

We’ve had ergonomists who’ve done work on air traffic control centers, information architects who have done work on massive knowledge systems and even simple sites for financial institutions, interaction designers and user experience researchers from Microsoft and Google, all-rounders from small design companies like Clearleft, usability practitioners who do work on game testing…

It’s just amazing to see the spectrum and application of HCI in industry.

They come in different shapes and sizes

Although this sounds like a plug for the program that I’m attending, I really don’t know what other programs are like. I certainly considered a more design-focussed program like the ones offered at the University of the Arts, London or Savannah College of Art and Design. Even my alma matter, the University of Kansas, has begun offering modules in interaction design. But since my background is deeply technical, I went for something more HCI-based, and hoped that it would give me some exposure regarding design (it has).

I appreciated that the different terms (IA, UxD, UX researcher, etc.) meant something specific, even if one person seemed to be doing all of them. An information architect may be doing usability work, but not the other way around sometimes. Also, if you’re a designer, you’re not always equipped to do good qualitative research about user behavior, even though it may be extremely helpful to your work – while anthropologists do this every day. Engineers have insight to how technolgy works, but psychologists are needed to show how the mind works.

It’s during the practice seminars that I got the sense that I don’t have to box myself in a particular category, but that it’s just learning to use my skills and presenting them appropriately to whoever is consuming my services – and to embrace the constantly changing nature of the field.

boon :: Mar.05.2009 :: design, education, uclic, user experience :: 2 Comments »

I am drowning in a sea of stuff! Is it me, or is there just too much information out there about UxD, IxD, IA, human factors, etc. I haven’t even done my first proper wireframe sketch. Maybe I just need to back off for awhile and give myself some tiny projects to focus on, until I get the hang of the tricks of the trade – aka. sketching, prototyping, powerpoint presenting, design, etc.

The more stuff I learn, the more I realize how much I don’t know, the more paralyzed I feel about doing design. It’s worse than having writer’s block. It’s like claiming to know something I absolutely have no clue about, or having all that information in the head and not being able to make sense of it.

I’m learning though. Like, I found post-it notes to be really useful in coming up with rich pictures (something we learnt in Organizational Informatics) and other relational diagrams. I recently used them to produce a diagram describing the various roles, artefacts and relationships at the London Underground. This was produced from textual descriptions of the relationships, but it’s easier to see it visually.

I’m also in the process of downloading tons of podcasts, some of which I can never recall later, but it gives me comfort knowing that it’s there and and I know what Gerry Gaffney sounds like, and what he does, and the same goes for Jared Spool.

I’ve also been twitter-ing a lot, and following the messages posted by some relatively active UX folks. the amount of traffic and information that I get from that is also, overwhelming. I tell myself that being in the conversation pays off, because it somehow comes back to you. Even though I have little understanding of whether ‘leading’ and ‘line-height’ can be used interchangeably, I’m sure it’ll come useful in the future. Note to self: finish the “Stop stealing sheep” book.

And talk about BOOKS! There are so many books to read. I’m now halfway through Buxton’s Sketching book (design), Becker’s Tricks book (sociology/anthropology), and Fogg’s Persuasive Tech book. Not to mention Cooper’s Inmates book which I take on the tube whenever I go to Ikea.

I hope this is just a phase, and that it’ll pass. For now, I may be a subject for sensemaking.

boon :: Feb.05.2009 :: books, uclic :: No Comments »

I’ve learnt a lot over term one, but that has also left me with a lot of questions.

Here are some general things that I can recall at the top of my head (it’s been a long week)…

• Bringing practice and academia together isn’t easy and can lead to contrived situations where we have to imagine what it’s like to do things in the corporate world
• There are over 100 usability evaluation methods, and I’m assuming these are mostly from the HCI research community – I don’t think all of them are applied in the working world
• A solid grounding in theory does help a lot in practice, but maybe too much theory isn’t good
• There’s a lot of emphasis on the UK HCI-ergonomics industries, but what about abroad? I believe there’s a sizable community in Asia (Hong Kong, India, etc.), and I don’t feel the impact of the US-based UX industry here in the UK.
• It’s always important to attend practice seminars, where people from industry give talks and students get to engage in exercises that illustrate take away lessons (e.g. perform costing for a project proposal)
• Joining the UPA as a student member and attending their events have been beneficial and insightful for me

Growing pains

Someone once said that the more you learn, the more you realize how much you don’t know – and I think that’s really true. There’s so much stuff to learn and it’s impossible to cover it all within a span of one year. And at the same time, good usability doesn’t come instantly and builds on good practice and experience (and hence experienced usability practioners get paid much more).

I regret not spending enough time to read. It’s one of the things on my priority list for the holidays, and I need to cover at least 10 books back to back, really fast – both for the course and for my usability interest. I put my name down for the London UX bookclub, and I’m hoping to join the inaugural meeting slated for February ‘09.

Usability isn’t always = to innovation

Taking stock of my experiences over the last few months, I explicitly remember how Cooper’s “About Face 3″ was really the turning point for me. But even before that when I was starting out with BT 3 years ago, there was a lot of hype and talk about innovation (not just in BT, but everywhere).

For some reason, I had considered usability and innovation somewhat synonymous, and I realize it’s not always the case. There have been times where our lecturers made it clear to us that innovation, while commercially beneficial, isn’t always a direct application of HCI or ergonomics.

And I think this is what makes “the industry” look quite chaotic at times, because there are so many people coming at this from so many different places. There’s never ‘one right answer’, and as usability/ux/hci/ergonomics people, we’re always having to say, ‘it depends‘.

And I think that UCLIC has done the right thing to emphasize on the learning process, or something they call “reflection” (which Kevin Cheng also observed about UCLIC about a few years ago, albeit somewhat negatively).

More to come…

I’m not quite done with the term just yet, lest I decide to pack my bags and go for a long holiday. Two papers are due January, and there’s tons to catching up to do. One of the papers involve evaluating usability evaluation methods (yes, evaluation methods that get evaluated) in measuring visitors’ experiences of a Zoo website, which I think will be fun.

boon :: Dec.14.2008 :: interaction design, uclic :: 2 Comments »

We had a field trip to Serco Usability Labs today. We were hosted by Andrew Swartz, who was very friendly and helpful in talking to us about the company and giving us a brief overview of the lab and even getting us involved in some usability activities.

It was great that they brought out a whole table full of snacks – grapes, corn chips, mini pretzels, twinkies,… the works. We were sheepishly holding ourselves back while Andrew was talking us through the slides, but we had our fill during the minute break though.

We didn’t get to visit the offices, which were located upstairs. We hung around the reception area and were brought to one of the testing labs, which is quite a comfy room with a large TV screen and a computer inside. The place was set up well for observation, with a huge glass window-mirror to the observation room.

This lab was a lot more customer-facing than the BT lab I visited a few years back. I just remember walking through a series of store rooms in a building in Adastral Park, before I got to the nicely decorated BT usability labs. The Serco one was conveniently located just after the reception room past a set of doors.

Although we were there for over 2 hours, it didn’t feel all that long. I was surprised at how fast time passed, and it could’ve been the fault of the snacks but Andrew did a really good job of grabbing our interest and creating some good interactions in the room.

We got a feel of how it’s like to do a usability test when a few of us tried walking through introductions for users who come into the labs. I volunteered to facilitate one of the sessions with a ‘fake’ user, who was one of the Serco staff, and it went really well and we had good things to talk about. My classmates heard me say “this sucks” from the observation room, which is really funny. I felt like I was being observed more than playing the part of the observer (of the user).

One key thing that was repeated a lot was to avoid our tendency to help the user during the think-aloud process, which I thought was a valid point to make, because the user does seem like they need help a lot sometimes. But facilitation requires a kind of real-time observation and curiousity, and sort of being in two places at once – an observer as well as a host.

If this is a taste of what the usability industry is like, then I am sold. I absolutely love interacting with users and learning how they make use of systems, and being part of the process of providing solutions that can help both companies and users build better products.

boon :: Oct.28.2008 :: uclic, usability :: No Comments »

I’m only about a month into the UCLIC program, but I thought I’d pen (key?) down my overall impressions about it first, and come back later to fill in the blanks. The whole point is that postgraduate education is quite often a very personal choice, and that students often choose based on very different factors.

How I got here

So, I’ll explain a bit about how I got here. When I started off half a year ago, I wasn’t quite sure I wanted to do this. My plan was to get some UK exposure, more specifically in London. I had been applying to a few British companies to see if they would sponsor my relocation, but it became increasingly difficult. I was also presently working with a large British company, but hopes of getting relocated within the company was bleak.

I started thinking about doing a Masters when I went to a UK education fair organized by the British council. Not many universities were offering programs related to usability, human-computer interaction, interaction design or innovation. The few who did were Middlesex and City University, and I do not know why UCL was not represented on that day. I knew very little of UK universities.

My initial research on City’s program got me excited, but upon further research I found out that UCL was offering a very similar program, albeit at almost twice the price. This was when it started becoming hazy for me. How different was City’s program compared to the offered at UCLIC?

Up till now, this is one question I cannot answer completely. There is great lack of information regarding this field in the UK, and I suppose the US fares a little better but I didn’t want to go back to the States.

City University HCI vs UCLIC HCI-E

On the surface, City U’s HCI program focusses more on the working man’s objectives. It offers a whole set of modules focussed on very professional objectives such as requirements gathering, systems specification, multimedia, with less focus on theoretical or analytical parts of the subject (design theory, cognition, etc.)

UCLIC’s HCI-E program offers more breadth – allowing you to evaluate a variety of different aspects in order to draw good conclusions on a particular HCI or E (for Ergonomics) related problem. The inclusion of Ergonomics implies that UCLIC is not just about web usability. In fact, this year they’ve introduced a module on Affective Computing, which takes a look at computing from the aspect of emotion.

I chose UCL because I needed more from the analytical and reflective parts than I did from the practical and professional parts. At the same time, UCL being ranked 9th in the world meant I had some bragging rights, if at all.

The UCLIC Way

UCLIC takes a very pragmatic approach in getting you bridge the gap between theory and practice, and students are assessed on how well they fare on this. I’m required to do about as much self-study as class time, and class time is divided into 50% teaching time and 50% practicals. The self-directed reading encourages investment in topics of interest, maturity, reflection, and creativity.

I don’t get the sense that I’m being isolated from what’s happening in the “real world”. Every Thursday evening, a member from the HCI or Ergonomics industry will spend an hour with us talking about their work and get the class involved with small industry-related activities, which help to give us a flavor of what it’s like.

2 weeks ago, Gigi Demming (ex-UCLIC) from Amberlight made us work out a usability consulting proposal based on a budget and some price indicators (how much it costs for a consultant, test users, etc.). I felt it was useful, even though I was dead tired by the end of the day.

The folks here

UCLIC is made up of strong academics and practitioners who teach. Some of the lecturers are quite established in their respective fields both academically and professionally, so it’s good to be able to draw from those experiences. The class is also made up of a very diverse crowd (gender, practice, background, nationality), and it makes things more well-rounded. It’s fun when we go out for a pint or two.

We get to do field trips like visits to the Serco usability centre and attend the Ergonomics Society Conference for Students. They made us volunteer for class representation, so some of us help plan social activities like visits to museums and so on. It feels like a good place to be.

ex-UCLIC

I must thank my friend, Alex Baxevanis, who helped answer a lot of the questions I had before coming here. UCLIC is quite well represented in the HCI industry here in the UK, and that gives me a bit of confidence that the program is quite well established. Even my ex-employer sung praises for it.

Quite a few UCLIC-ers set up blogs (e.g. http://www.usabilitytank.com) and are quite active on Facebook. It’s quite a community, really.

boon :: Oct.18.2008 :: uclic :: No Comments »