Jack Holmes

Gamification of the coffee round (at Bunnyfoot)

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:35:49 +0100

Gamification of the coffee round (at Bunnyfoot)

Favorite Saturday afternoon activity

Sat, 18 May 2013 17:14:50 +0100

Favorite Saturday afternoon activity

How complicated can Office 2013 make pasting some text in Excel?...

Fri, 10 May 2013 09:07:59 +0100

How complicated can Office 2013 make pasting some text in Excel? 14 options. 14! (at Bunnyfoot)

Not much work will be happening this afternoon. (at Bunnyfoot)

Wed, 17 Apr 2013 13:50:33 +0100

Not much work will be happening this afternoon. (at Bunnyfoot)

404 Spring not found! (at Bunnyfoot)

Tue, 26 Mar 2013 17:14:17 +0000

404 Spring not found! (at Bunnyfoot)

Drew Angry Birds on a blackboard then instagramed it.

Sun, 10 Mar 2013 19:03:09 +0000

Drew Angry Birds on a blackboard then instagramed it.

Log on (at Parents house)

Tue, 01 Jan 2013 19:13:23 +0000

Log on (at Parents house)

Hey Jack, I loved your breakdown of mobile input types and how they're used. I was wondering what they look like on Android, Windows 8 mobile devices, and blackberry. I assume they're not all supported as cleanly as they are on safari, but do you know how each input would look? Thanks! -Chris

Mon, 31 Dec 2012 15:06:42 +0000

Hi Chris, sorry for the late reply I was on holiday. I’ve been meaning add this information to the site for a while. Had a quick look around the internet and couldn’t really find any up-to-date images for you :( There seem to be a lot of sites saying things like date picker aren’t available on Android, but it is - I’ve seen it! Will try and get more information and images on that site in the New Year. Cheers Jack

UX lessons from ice-cream

Thu, 08 Nov 2012 23:38:00 +0000

In response to a tweet from @jansru, commenting on the ludicrously of some of these ‘What we can learn about UX from <some random thing>’ posts that are flying around the internet. (Here’s a sample if you’ve been living under a rock and not noticed them. UX lessons from: a car, Jay-Z, children, James Bond, fencing.) What will they come up with next? UX lessons from ice-cream? Challenge accepted.

What can we learn about UX from ice-cream?

Adaptive design - you’ll notice the ice-creams you can buy from a petrol station vary to the ice-creams you can buy at the beach. Service station ice-creams are designed to be eaten with little concentration, just one hand and have wrapping designed to avoid mess. Therefore allowing customers to easily eat them whilst driving. For instance Calippos and Cornettos At the beach however you’ll find ice-creams designed for enjoyment. For instance 99s. They’re difficult to eat without making a mess and require concentration but eating one feels like much more of an occasion Thinking about the type of ice-cream you buy in supermarkets, this has been designed for use in the home. Customers can scoop portions and distribute in bowls, making sharing as convent as possible. What does this teach us? Design products based on where the user is, when they’re using it and what they really need at that time. You’d never find a 99 machine in a service station.

Understand how customers use your products - supermarkets sell cartons of ice-cream with three flavours in. This product likely came about because some research was done that found customers were buying multiple cartons of different flavoured ice-cream and serving a scoop of each flavour as a dessert. The three flavoured ice-cream completely suits this customer requirement and customers are happy to pay a premium. Hence teaching us to use analytics and user research to understand how people actually use products and adapt the design to better support them.

Set expectation - thinking about those ice-cream chests, the selection of ice-creams is shown on sign with pictures and prices. Customers can see the range and price of each product before opening the cold chest and finding the ice-cream they want to buy. This teaches us, that before we ask users to make a commitment, signup, purchase we should set their expectations of what they can expect on the other side.

Location - let’s have a think about ice-cream vans. You’ll always find them by beaches, outside schools, driving around housing estates. Basically they park themselves wherever the people are and where people expect to find them. What does this teach us? Put stuff where people expect it to be so they can easily find it. Signin buttons on the top right corner of the website, reviews below product details.

There are probably more, feel free to tweet me and I’ll add them.

That’s what we can learn about UX from ice-cream.

I’m not a fan of online surveys. When this participant was...

Fri, 19 Oct 2012 16:03:00 +0100

I’m not a fan of online surveys. When this participant was asked why he couldn’t find what he was looking for he sums up why.

Only a mention by Jack Dorsey.

Thu, 18 Oct 2012 00:06:58 +0100

Only a mention by Jack Dorsey.

Introducing Smart App Banners. A little thing I made to try and...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 00:14:00 +0100

Introducing Smart App Banners. A little thing I made to try and promote their use and demonstratie how easy they are to impediment. Also show the cool things you can do with them and how they’re making users’ transitions from mobile web into apps a little more elegant.

Topics I'd like barred from UX events

Tue, 09 Oct 2012 21:46:32 +0100

I’ve been in this industry a very short while, but after The Great UX Debate this evening I’ve come to a bit of a realisation. All the UX events at the moment seem to have the same topics, being talked about by the same people over and over. Sometimes there’s a bit of disagreement but it’s usually around understanding of the question rather than the topic. I doubt I’m alone in thinking it would be nice to have a bit of variety.

So here’s a list of topics I’d like to see barred from UX events:

- What is UX
- What do / should UX people do
- Should UX people code
- Are wireframes dead
- Moaning about cowboys
- Moaning about recruiters
- Responsive design
- Portfolios
- Will UX be around in 10 years

I’m sure there are more, please send them my way and I’ll add them.

Don’t get me wrong I have masses of respect for the organisers of these events and the big name speakers who talk at them. A bit of variety wouldn’t go amiss though.

UX research on tour

Wed, 19 Sep 2012 23:23:59 +0100

I was watching an episode of Grand Designs this evening and a pretty revolutionary method of building a house was adopted. You’ve all seen houses where parts of the house are built in a factory and then shipped to site where they’re all put together. These guys took a different approach to this. They built a factory into a shipping container, sent it to site and then built all the house parts on site. No doubt saving thousands on transport costs.

The developers took a traditional manufacturing process of building the product in a factory and then shipping to customer and spun it on its head. If you have an easy to package factory it’s a “how did I not think of that” moment.

How can we apply this to UX?

This week I worked on my first design project that benefited from on-site stakeholder interviews. I knew this would be a powerful asset in the research and it allowed for some seriously brilliant product development - as I predicted. I was however surprised by the reaction from real users when we tested the site. I’d clearly underestimated how much value these interviews could add and how much users appreciated the features developed souley due to stake holder interviews.

The Grand Designs episode got me thinking though. Stakeholder interviews are great, but they happen and then we go off work out what they mean and start work on the design. Wouldn’t it be awesome though if we could get stake holder input much more easily and much more regularly. Logistically at the moment that couldn’t happen, it would be far too time consuming and cost far too much.

But what if we could?

What if instead of sitting in our office we took the entire UX process on tour? What if there was a way we could take the entire process and do it on the move, traveling around talking to users constantly. Seems very impractical. But is it?

Here’s how we could make that happen.

First off, buy a coach or bus and we’re going to need to do a bit of modification. Essentially what we want is a fully-fledged UX studio on wheels. We could have a couple of testing labs on the lower deck and maybe a meeting room.. The top floor would have all the desks, whiteboards, sticky notes and all the other bits we’d need to our job.

Then we can take the bus and start our tour. Maybe starting in the client office car park, run interviews and workshops to gather requirements. Maybe spend a few days here. Then we’d get on the move, working as we drive. Arriving at various locations around the country or continent. Coming into contact with users all the time, so we can pop downstairs, quick bit of on street recruitment and we can quickly run through ideas, concepts and prototypes with real users. Then move on to a different location in search of a different customer groups or to help understand user requirement variations through geography.

Lets apply this concept to a real project.

Imagine you’re commissioned to develop a new site for a cinema. It needs to show all the films, allow bookings and all that normal stuff. We jump on the UX bus and ride over to the clients’ office. We run some research there and then move on. As we drive we do some work, and then park up outside a cinema. We’re talking to cinema goers getting some seriously valuable research work done. We’ll then go in search of more potential customers, maybe parking up at a school, office block, town center to talk with more people. As we travel we’ll get on with some work developing ideas, putting together quick prototypes.

Anyway you get the idea.

Clearly it’s not going to work for all projects and wont fit all budgets, but could be a unique method to gather valuable research.

Crap Facebook apps are great for mobile web

Wed, 12 Sep 2012 00:18:00 +0100

I caught the Zuckerburg interview from TechCrunch Disrupt this evening and mobile was pretty much the only topic. Ignoring all the Facebook Phone nonsense some interesting insight into apps was gained. But you can read about that anywhere right now.

One statistic which really got me thinking:

More people use Facebook on mobile web than they do on iOS and Android apps combined.

That’s not a new stat, but for the first time I started thinking about why. It aligns with the patterns I’ve been seeing from user testing where time after time we’re being told people don’t use apps. They just use the browser, even without a mobile website.

What’s causing this behaviour?

The top app downloaded on any app store is Facebook. It’s probably the first app a “normal person” downloads when they get their shiny new smartphone. Why? Because it’s the site they use the most and they want access to it on their phone. People are entering into a fairly un-know territory so it’s only natural for them to download something familiar. They’d also be forgiven for thinking that Facebook will build one of the best apps, because, well they’re Facebook.

They’ve created their iTunes or Google account and eagerly await whilst the app downloads. Finally it does and they have to log in. Beyond this point they’re greeted with a world of slowness, confusion, annoyance and are generally left with a feeling of great disappointment.

They brought this fancy phone to run apps and the Facebook app is crap. You can understand then why they never bother downloading any more apps. “If the Facebook app is crap, they must all be crap” is a statement I wouldn’t be surprised runs through the majority of “normal people”.

What happens next?

They try a more familiar route, this time opening the web browser and punching in facebook.com. They log in and WOW, “this is much more what I was expecting”. It’s fast, easy and just works. “I can spy on all my school friends, see who’s just been dumped and browse the embarrassing photos from last nights work party”. Zuckerburg admitted himself mobile web is a far superior experience to the native apps.

You’d be understanding therefore if the person never opened the app or downloaded another app ever again. With Facebook working well in the browser, the next thing they look up whether it be a film, train ticket, weather will be in mobile web browser. They’re now comfortable using the browser, they understand it and have no need to bother with apps.

This is great.

If this hypothesis is accurate, it means there’s probably a whole group of people with no desire to ever use an app again. Everything they want to do on mobile they will do in mobile web browsers because that’s what they’re used to and they like it.

As more sites develop intuitive mobile web experiences this behaviour will hopefully spread, with more and more people seeing the clear benefits of the browser over having hundreds of apps. When their friends get a smartphone they’ll advise them to steer clear of apps and just use the browser.

Hooray.

So close, I can nearly touch them. (Taken with Instagram at...

Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:10:58 +0100

So close, I can nearly touch them. (Taken with Instagram at London 2012 Aquatics Centre)

Mobile Input Types

Mon, 03 Sep 2012 14:55:00 +0100

Introducing mobileinputtypes.com - a handy resource with the many input types which work particularly well on mobile.

Why’d you make this? A question no-one has asked but I’m going to answer anyway.

First out the gate, input type isn’t really that important on desktop, the user will never tell the difference. This has led to developers being a bit lazy and just setting the input type to text on everything. On mobile however the input type can seriously pull down how the user perceives the experience of your product.

As a UX person clients are consisatntly after the ‘quick wins’. What they mean by this is what can we do to make our product better without spending any money. This practice is often referred to as turd polishing. Changing the input type is literally a few letters of code which can drastically make a task which was 8 or 9 taps drop to just 2 or 3.

Finally, I see so many people getting it wrong. Just the other day I was finding train times on the Olympic mobile site and I had to choose a time. Taping the time picker then redirected me to a new page with a radio button list. Facepalm.

Whether you’re a developer, designer, product dude or whoever, just remember how much using the right input type can improve the experience.

Some creative genius right there (Taken with Instagram at...

Sat, 01 Sep 2012 18:19:49 +0100

Some creative genius right there (Taken with Instagram at Olympic Stadium)

User testing and disabilities

Thu, 30 Aug 2012 00:48:00 +0100

It’s the Paralympic Opening Ceremony tonight, so seemed like a good time to pen some thoughts around user testing and disabilities. First off I’m very junior, it may be that all the stuff I talk about is being done by the majority of folks and it’s just managed to pass me by. I’m not coming to any solid conclusions here, it’s more a basis for discussion.

Having thought about it, I then did a bit of research and just so we’re all on the same page, there are four types of disabilities:

Visual - ability to see or process visual information
Motor - ability to operate a mouse or keyboard
Auditory - ability to hear or process acoustic information
Cognitive - mental ability in areas such as reading, memory, attention

Accessibility testing and evaluations are something I know are widely offered, but they are very often a separate service requiring specialist knowledge and techniques. I believe we have two people capable of doing full accessibility testing, that’s less than 10% of the consulting staff. As such, a hefty additional price tag comes with traditional accessibility testing, which means it’s often over looked by clients. The only time it’s ever really referenced is if the client has specifically asked for it.

Is this right? Should accessibility testing be reserved for those willing to specifically commission and pay for it? Or should we be incorporating it into every usability test we do? In the same way we get a mix of gender, should we be getting a mix of able and disabled participants?

Sounds a bit extreme doesn’t it. I thought so too. Following a bit more looking into it, I discovered a surprising statistic from the Office for National Statistics:

1 in 5 working age adults are affected by a disability

Well this changes everything. Suddenly a small 6 person usability study which doesn’t include a participant with a disability doesn’t accurately represent the general population.

After a bit more looking into it I discovered the BBCs user testing guidelines. They specifically state:

Any user testing with 6-8 participants must include 1-2 participants with a disability.

They’re not hiding disabilities behind expensive accessibility testing, they tackel it head on with every single study they do. I strongly believe we should all be following that lead. By ignoring any form of accessibility considerations we’re essentially excluding 1/5 of adults from any study. Arguably making them invalid.

I’ve seen a number of sites which I knew would cause all kinds of accessibility issues. From low contrast text, to input methods which screen readers wouldn’t have a clue at how to interpret. Yet these issues will probably end up being a couple of sentences hidden somewhere in the report. Why? Because the client didn’t specifically ask for it. They asked for us to review one journey and according to that 1/5 statistic, we ignored most of the problems that 1/5 users will be experiencing. That’s just wrong.

As usability experts, it’s our job to change this and move accessibility testing from being something a few clients specifically ask for to something which is included in all testing as standard. It’s not even mentioned, just done. That’s a long way off, but we can’t keep ignoring the issue and burying our heads in the sand.

In my opinion we need to start educating clients on the amount of people using their services with disabilities and the steps they need to be taking to improve the experience for this large group of people. In the same way if a client came to you saying they don’t want a mobile site for no good reason, it’s part of our job to educate them on why people will be using their site on mobile devices and how improving the mobile experience wil aid their customers. The same principle should be applied to accessibility testing and including disabled participants in user testing.

As I said at the beginning, I’m still very new to all this, if you’ve got your own opinion or have a way of including accessibility testing at your organisation please get in touch. I need to learn more about this myself.

"Jack has always started with the assumption that whatever we’re doing cannot be right. He is..."

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 17:22:17 +0100

“Jack has always started with the assumption that whatever we’re doing cannot be right. He is not always wrong!”

- Got a testimonial today, definitely my favorite to date.