Interview: Yukiko

Hello again, everyone! While I make preparations for my next big post, I thought I'd share an interview I did with Yuki. Not only is Yuki a fantastic designer with many years of experience, she is also the head of a local UX Book Club and a fellow member of the local Usability Professional's Association (if you have a branch of this association in your area, I strongly encourage you to join!)

1. What are the first things you think of when first seeing a website?

When I see a website... I like simple and clean designs. That's probably the first thing I see. I don't always check websites' creativity, or efficiency. I just want to feel what kind of website it is. And then.. It depends on what there is. If it's a shopping site, like Amazon, of course I'm going to start seeing the functionality, if it's easy to search things. I have a tendency of finding faults, you know.

2. Can you talk about those [faults]? Can you remember any specific instances of them?

Amazon. The search function is terrible. If I'm looking for, say... Women's outdoor jackets. On the list, they start listing some of the men's stuff because it's related to it, or because someone who bought this product
bought the men's product. But I'm not looking for a man's jacket. So it's very weird... Another thing is, if they have options for the different colors- every color probably has different prices, but when I move the cursor over the color, it changes the price sometimes.. You have to click it to see the prices. The problem is, it's not consistent.

3. What kind of design failures do you see most often?

 Usually consistency, or not knowing how to get to where I want to go in a website.

4. What kinds of developments would you like to see in usability (or technology) in the future?

I guess like, more easy mockup tools? Because there are more interactions, whatever design we're working on... It's always about the interactions, be it websites, iPhone apps, whatever. So instead of just making a visual layer in Photoshop, you could have more advanced... or even, Photoshop could have the function. It should be easier.

5. How would you say your experiences in Japan have influenced how you look at design today?

 To me, it's been changing, but in Japan, we are a bit more... efficient, visual people. So we always have some kind of pictures, or even... Let's say, a cooking book. When you go to find a cooking book, it's all text. Not even a picture of it. With Japanese cookbooks, every step is pictured. Not always, but usually. When trying to cook things [with American cookbooks], I found so many books that don't have pictures for every step, and sometimes even the final product.. They don't have pictures. Only text. How can I use it? I'm probably more used to visual objects- like website buttons, or charts, or even cartoons. [The Japanese] always have visual things. I feel like we feel the need for visual representations more.

Color: An Infographic

 I hope all of my United States readers had a Happy Thanksgiving! I certainly did, but without internet I was unable to post what I wanted to. Which is a shame, because I had intended to make this post last Wednesday... I guess even the best laid plans do go astray sometimes.

Color is an incredibly important factor when creating any design, but it's hard to decide on which colors are truly "usable" without knowing some background information. I've put a lot of work into this infographic over the past week and a half or so in hopes that I will be able to explain some of the more important aspects to think about when choosing colors for your design. So without any further ado, here it is! (sorry it's kind of huge)

Reviewing Personas and Scenarios

Sorry for the delay, I've been quite overwhelmed with life lately! Last time I posted, I received some feedback that I had perhaps not been clear enough with my wording, so I'll try to clarify exactly what I meant as well as add some new information I've found.

User Profiles are sets of user data, gathered through polling your users directly. This is the data you will be using in order to create your personas.

Personas are, shall we say, your "average" user- taking the ages, genders, and other relevant information about your users from your set of user profiles, your persona's attributes are decided through averaging. For instance, if your users are predominantly male, your persona should be, too. And if your users are typically middle aged, the age of your persona should be a number that reflects that fact. (If you don't have any research on your users, try and guess who your biggest userbase is going to be.)

Scenarios, or what engineering students might recognize more easily as use cases, are lists of steps your persona must do when trying to reach a particular goal. Writing out these steps might seem tedious, but

There are two reasons for which personas are created:

- In order to empathize with your users; by creating a persona with a name and face, you can put yourself in their shoes much more easily than by simply addressing a user. Naming personas is mostly only necessary when you anticipate a need for several personae, but it also makes them seem more human- and the more human they are, the more easily you will be able to empathize with them.

-To be used in Scenarios. This is important because you need to be able to imagine yourself as someone else as they explore your design.

Here are some examples that I've created for the website I'm creating for myself-

Jessica Daly is a 28 year old recruiter who spends her time looking at the portfolios of recent college graduates and tries to place them in jobs that suit them. She is an experienced web designer as well, and navigates the internet with ease.

Scenario: Looking at Portfolios
Jessica has been directed to Elle's personal website through a business card, and is interested in looking at the most recent work in her portfolio.
1. Jessica loads up Elle's website and sees simple navigation on the side as well as a navigation bar at the top. She clicks on the link that says "Portfolio".
2. A new page, similar to the first but with images for content, appears. There are several thumbnails arranged clearly by year, and the most recent images are placed at the top. Jessica clicks the first thumbnail from the left.
3. The thumbnail expands to show a larger resolution image of the thumbnail. Now intending to exit, Jessica clicks the X at the top right hand corner of the image's border and closes the expanded image.

Simple, right? But I've gotten a lot of the rough facts laid down by working through it this way. By working it out like this, I now know how I want to have my portfolio page laid out, without even drawing it- and I also know that since my target audience is mostly recruiters, I should probably have my portfolio as one of the first links on my page.