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.