Space: What's it doing to your research?

There is a nice article over at Scientific America about how humans interact with and react to the build environment. I thought it was a nice reminder of for those of us who spend our days designing digital environments that what we create, though not wood and drywall are spaces that people spend time in but what I found really interesting was on of the experiments they discus.

" In 2007 Joan Meyers-Levy, a professor of marketing at the University of Minnesota, reported that the height of a room’s ceiling affects how people think. She randomly assigned 100 people to a room with either an eight- or 10-foot ceiling and asked participants to group sports from a 10-item list into categories of their own choice. The people who completed the task in the room with taller ceilings came up with more abstract categories, such as “challenging” sports or sports they would like to play, than did those in rooms with shorter ceilings, who offered more concrete groupings, such as the number of participants on a team. Because her earlier work had indicated that elevated ceilings make people feel physically less constrained, the investigator posits that higher ceilings encourage people to think more freely, which may lead them to make more abstract connections. The sense of confinement prompted by low ceilings, on the other hand, may inspire a more detailed, statistical outlook—which might be preferable under some circumstances"

Wow. I'm pretty cognizant of the impact of environment on how you feel and your ability to think. Personally I'm extremely effected by it, I've even had to leave a couple jobs due to the environment. Reading this article has me thinking about the research I have conducted and how I will conduct it in the future. I also love that they use a card sort! (great validation for the method).

futureshape

Here are some thoughts:

1. Is it possible that the answers a user gives in the lab could differ enough from the answers they would give at home in front of their own computers, as to make the data false or at least misleading? I'm not just thinking about the difference between ethnographic or contextual inquiry research, I'm thinking about the lab experience might actually change the way people think they think about something. Just as the tall ceiling affected the subject of this research.

2. How does the experience of conducting an interview over the phone effect the data. When you are on a call your mind almost creates a "mental room" that that the conversation is happening in. If the connection is bad, the volume is uncomfortable or the voice of the interviewer reminds you of someone you know, the environment of that call could effect the data. As a researcher over the phone you have no way to know what the interviewee is experiencing so you can't help to adjust the environment.

Full disclosure on this thought: I'm not really a fan of the phone interview, so I'd selfishly like to learn anything that could help me convince stakeholders to spend money on in person research.

3. All of the research labs I have seen have a similar layout and feel. What if this typical research environment has been effecting the results of research in a particular way all this time. What if sitting in a room with a one-way mirror causes you to answer questions with less intensity then you actually feel or causes you to prefer blue over green? Hummm....

North

We All Need a Window Seat!

This isn't particular to UX but a great topic to bring up when selecting a new location for your office or are planing to rearrange or remodel your current space.

"In addition to ceiling height, the view afforded by a building may influence intellect—in particular, an occupant’s ability to concentrate. Although gazing out a window suggests distraction, it turns out that views of natural settings, such as a garden, field or forest, actually improve focus." "They found that kids who experienced the greatest increase in greenness as a result of the move also made the most gains on a standard test of attention." "In their analysis of more than 10,000 fifth-grade students in 71 Georgia elementary schools, Tanner and his colleagues found that students in classrooms with unrestricted views of at least 50 feet outside the window, including gardens, mountains and other natural elements, had higher scores on tests of vocabulary, language arts and math than did students without such expansive vistas or whose classrooms primarily overlooked roads, parking lots and other urban fixtures."

This stuff just gets me going. I believe we all deserve a nourishing environment to spend our time in, whether we understand or realize the impact or not, but unfortunately many people aren't as lucky as many of us in our beautiful agency offices. This may have to be my next philanthropic project.....


Go read the whole article, I'm sure you will find ten other points that could be applied to our work. I'd love to hear them:)

FAQ: More than a link in the footer

BBC FAQ

While doing some looking around after I made the discovery in my last post about the lack of Author pages on Amazon I came across the BBC's FAQ page. Couple things struck me about the page.

1. Their FAQ is pretty good.

We should all think a bit more about FAQ's and how we can make them useful and work on behalf of the site goals and the health of the Brand.

I like that they give a quick list of the answers available below. I like that the answers appear to have some good thought behind them. FAQ's often leave you with more questions then they answer or use it as a place to dump content that has no other place to live. They seem to really want to address reader's questions not just lower the calls to customer service.

2. Loving their very open approach to adding a new feature to the site.

They have taken the opportunity to explain to the readers that they are trying something new and they ask for feedback.

We can't ignore that the websites we design are places that people care about, take time out of their day to visit and often become an intimate part of their life. Being transparent and open about the innovations of the site shows a great amount of respect for the people who care enough to come back day after day. And if you decide the new stuff isn't going to work it might not be as hard for the users to take since they have been with you all along.

3. The Topics pages are a great idea. Hope it works out.

So much news is being produced everyday. It comes and goes. Great content is pushed down the page till it disappears. News organization should take the time to catalog and curate the best most desired content.

Natural mapping - Noah Iliinsky

I'd like to start sharing interesting articles and blog posts, but I don't necessarily need to comment on them except to say, "Nice thinking" So this is my new format. Click the image to read the full text.

If you only have one day......

One of the great quotes in the UX world is " Do a usablity test now!" -Mike Kuniavsky, Observing the User Experience

I hear these words in my head often and what I think's at the heart of this statement for me is that we aren't always going to have the most perfectly written contract that allows lots of time and money to perform exhaustive research or set up week long usability tests but that doesn't mean that we can't find anyway possible to to bring the perspective of the users into the conversation and have this perspective influence the project.

The other night I was asked by a younger practitioner how she could best use the one day she had been given to perform research. This one day was to be the following day and the audience was specific enough that using her coworkers or friends wouldn't be much of a help.

This is what I told her.

"What you really need to do is find a way to bring the user perspective into the conversation. This is can be done in a lot of ways, many of which you don't have time or resources for.

The two things I would do tomorrow is.

1. Define the users. You have to state out loud and clearly who the project is attempting to serve. Use all of the materials from the client, review the RFP and SOW, talk to anyone you know who has knowledge of the industry, do some online research, get on the phone with the people at the buisness who are closest to the users (customer service, human resources, sales people, etc.)

Then write it up, create a chart, draw a picture. This document will bring the user into the design and strategy conversation, allowing everyone to refer to each group when defining functions and needs. This document may also be super contaversal. This is great. If people get up in arms and start arguing about who the users are and what thier needs and motivations are then you've done your job. You might actually get some money and time to do real research!

2. Do a competitive review and heuristic evaluation of the competitors and other players in the user's ecosystem. Understanding how other companies are communicating to the same users can leverage the work already done in this particular industry. Taking the time to mapout and review all the other places the users are participating in and what these environments are like can tell you a lot about the expectations of the users.

You can also use this work to start conversations about the structure and functionality of the site, by showing examples from competitors sites."

What advice would you have given?


One last thing, I can't mention Ecosystem without pointing you toward this:

from Web Social Architecture article: A Conceptual Map of the Social Web

This does a great job of opening your mind to all of the influences and exfluences* a user may have. This is focused on social media, but is there anything else anymore?

*yes. i made this word up. it means all the things the user spends time putting out in the world. this probably warrents a blog post of it's own.