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UX Overview Q & A

So, jose, if you're good with it, we're gonna do a little bit of q and a. I got a couple of questions out there from folks watching out there in the world on the internet, and if anybody in our studio has some just questions regarding some of the content that we just covered, some general stuff feel free. Um, jose, how many users is sufficient for usability testing? Doesn't really great question, and I'm a big fan of three, but I'll give you a concrete example. We did eight users one time with a client meaning the definition, and then I took all eight and I looked at all the shared attributes and I consolidated them into four, um types, eh? Because I have a hard time managing everything in my head be, it gets really confusing to talk about eight users, so for and five is like a maximum for me, three is my best, my favorite number, it's all about being able to manage everything. You're really like this one from nikki sanchez and nikki sanchez as a u x person. How do you know when to sto...

p iterating on the ideas, the prototyping, the testing and the cycle? When is good good enough gang, nicky that's a hard one well, interesting. I learned that when I made the transition from agency and helping clients to starting my own thing, the best thing you can possibly do us a u x person start your own thing, I don't care how you do it started shopify card and so like, I don't know something because you'll learn, like what it takes to understand what customers want and what it takes for them to actually do a purchase or like an action and when to stop and start it's almost like, you know, I don't know what the good metaphor is, but when you really feel like you wield control over the decisions of the experience, because keep in mind and experiences a middle air between you and a person the minute that you feel that the changes you make to that layer are affecting the other person it's where when you know it's working, how many iterations it could take a lot of generations, I mean, jeez, I've been iterating the school stuff for for three and a half years now, over and over and over again, and sometimes it's just a very nuanced difference between the one and the other, but in a professional setting budget will dictate how many times we operate in a startup money will dictate that, and the fidelity between how well you define it and how well you ah how will you defined it at the beginning and how well you know and how good your guesses are will dictate how fewer this process will help you do fewer if you're doing too many you're doing something potentially wrong great good answer all right let's go to the in studio audience does anybody have any general questions? Yeah yeah so we talked about defining users yes and then tailoring that did the user experience design depending on for example their demographics or for example it's suppose we narrow down a segment let's suppose millennials so we know how to really translate their needs what if you have a broader audience not just a specific segment? How can yu effect? There is no broader audience there is no such a thing there is one person eric there's you there's anna there's perry you guys are not a collective audience I'm targeting an individual person like if I know them by a name, you'll notice that when we do the customer profiles we give him a name, we give them a type of customer I hate it when people say we're targeting millennials between, you know, twenty five and thirty five we're interested in yoga travel and having a job holy crap that is way too broad and it just described every millennial I know including me and I'm not a millennium because I don't have a job right but they're all commonalities know you want to design for one person like you're talking to them you're designing for them if you're not doing that you're doing it wrong this is not a good answer very passionate answer but it's the truth I've never seen it work any other way tino yeah sa have a question you were talking about business goals earlier in the in the presentation and you mentioned three you mentioned revenue you mentioned kind of branding is awareness awareness and then efficiency operations so when you're speaking to a business are all three can they say all three of them are my goal or those categories for goals they're not necessarily you can consolidate all three and just do one list okay? Because for prayer experience I have clients etc yeah I want more revenue I want to be I want to my brand to be more you know more people to know about you know about it and we want to work one of you exactly. So is there as as a u x designer is my responsibility to narrow that down for them like what's your priority which could to put question this is a huge one by the way the big issue is that designers are not involved with the business usually we have no business in the business technically so one thing you'll notice about everything that I am about and I am doing is that I believe that the rule of the designers changing and underneath all this, you know, a u x and teaching business two designers there's a secret agenda that I'm not going to show you what I'm about to share with you. So I guess it's not secret, and it said the role of the designer and business is more and more important today in the twenty first century for a couple reasons one it's an imperative if we don't have empathy and we don't redesign everything that we're doing as human beings, we're pretty much going to die, so that is excellent, and we're all pretty already I'm going to do that, but let's try to make the distance between then and now or now and then a little better. So the designer who we wield the power to make anything product designed transportation design engineers, architects, et cetera. We should be in control of the process, facilitating that process, but we don't have a business school so that's an issue. So these tools that we're sharing and teaching do simplify that, um, and they're not that hard, you need to be able to enroll your client, your stakeholders in allowing you to do that so that's, why you have to say, well, it's an experiment now you want to get into specifics in those categories not just you of course everybody was make more money and you know do that but let's get specific how so what are the revenue kind of mechanics? What are the awareness mechanics you want to get into really grant as granular as you can with them personally to ask permission to let you do it and second you need to be able to get granular with it and sorry that I included the whole big meta kind of secret agenda into it but that's a important part for you to know I'm just following up on that conversation let me put an example out where I find the you know the dichotomy and then tell me if there's ever a secondary process that you throwing to solve it you know we're stuck in the business goals were trying to establish some balance between I want to acquire customers and I want the customers I have to have a good time better time ma'am I'm stuck in a budget constrained environment only got a certain amount of money I gotta pick the priorities to go after and in the room to have that discussion can be both brand detrimental hey let's forget the whole experience then let's just get a lot of customers in that's what the investors want yeah so do you ever have a process where you take it off line because it can get detrimental to the actual people in the room yeah, so that's ah, that you're talking about a nuance there when it comes to the mechanics of ah management you know, you have friending you could have the board I've had the board in the in the room. Andi, I'm a designer, so with the board member really even gonna listen to me, they look like whatever you make it pretty like sit over there and look pretty and I'm sitting there going um the ceo have been one agenda, the cto having another one being monetization one is having a genuine product let's say, um it's a hard one. So your question is, do you have any mechanics? Look at the end of the day is putting it testing it, and if you can't afford to build it, tested an abstraction meaning, tested it in prototype form and get proof that it is what it works. One great example from the lean startup is thies got, which is a book by eric reese. These two guys, we're starting a food delivery service, stood in front of a supermarket with a clipboard and ask people, you know, could they order there? Can they buy their food for them until they found a person who would actually allow them and then they modeled the process? So what? What I find difficult in those situations where there's power struggles at the end of the day, it comes down to equity and who has more power to make the decision one flow, but the the question you're asking of what tools I use first, I started with this, so that comes up less because there was no contention during the prioritization second is quick releases, so that goes into the issue of agile and really jittery release is most people don't like to release early because I wanted to be perfect, they're wanted and that's, you know, it's really about releasing a lot and fast, and at the end of the day, I had said, but those things get solved and mitigated by the people how, how mature, enlightened and flowy can they being? You know, how well does a team flow? There's no other way, my network? I don't know it was that good, or that was a weird answer. Situationally is probably your comment and then finding the characters and personalities and way to be able to approach watch a lot of spy movies, and olivia pope, you'll know what to do, yeah, tell human engineering. So, you know way we work together we weigh had many people doing a team of people doing a lot of things that you're talking about, and especially when you work with big clients that it takes you know, six hundred fifty seven hundred million dollars to do the strategy you have, you know, specialists and different kind of components of the process to ultimately together create a solution. You know, I also work in an environment now where we have disciplines, but we do it collectively really quick and fast to deliver a solution. So and what? You just talked about andi and the role of a designer? How much does this designer do all of those things versus do you have a team in the world of startups and others? Do you have a team of people? Or is this just one person doing everything that's a really good question? Because there's aptitude there's rolls and then there's band with meaning, how many people do you have and how much can they do? Um, what I've seen out there is that so cross training is really cool, so I'll give you an example of a startup in portland called scratch it on. They just change your name and I remember too what? But when they started early on, I actually instead of being the designer for them for the u x, which I did help them later on first I trained them all. I trained them all in this and I trained them all an agile sales guy there are only five guys a developer who's one of the founders the ceo who was more of a kind of number sky but also pretty pretty good manager um unturned design in turn and another person so it was about five people and I trained all of them toe all be able to do this and prioritization, which is what chris has been asking about s o they all were working within a framework that was outside of their roles, so as rules change and as people were added it came back, so now they're a year into it there they're at a really good clip of revenue they're about to get their siri's ah a funding so I'm going back tomorrow to portland to actually redo this same process facilitate with a bigger team, so to answer your question as how much a designer plays in this role it's always going to depend on their skill level? Very few I run into the issue that a lot of designers don't have the ability that I have to be super obnoxious and get in front of people and I started doing that at razorfish I am horrible it sitting down and doing the work I had a pretty good job, you know when I do it but sitting me down is hard, so I took the leadership and more like circus director job at razorfish even when I was there so try to find some really obnoxious designers all off is really good at it um it's hard it's hard there isn't enough people with this knowledge in our industry and that's one of the reasons I'm doing this to be honest with you you probably might not find somebody who can do all the different things that I'm talking about unlikely hopefully some of the people that come out of these courses and that we share this with or who watching at home will be able to but keep in mind this is the future so if you're watching it you're listening to my voice and you are asking what's my role as a designer you are not the butt of the process you are not like the last person who touches it or like the pretty maker you are part of a neg zeca tive team and and should play that role perry along those lines putting your sales had on for a second what what promises do you make to the start up that you're selling two unicorns and rainbows no I actually bank really dire like I say they like you because you're gonna fail because nine out of ten startups fail I can show you how not to fail and shit I can share my experience on what works and what doesn't from all the start up that I had worked or we can do it your way choose all right your way good luck I'm not being an ass. I'm not saying like you've gotta work my way or not. I'm just saying, look, the things that you think are going to make you succeed are unlikely going to be the things that make you succeed. I haven't seen one start up that succeeds that it isn't about complete flow and letting go the product it's, not about the product if you think it's about the product that's rough it's all about the process in under which you create fidelity between the understanding of the user and what you put out and at what speed, you could do it ahead of your funding that's a trick that's like uh oh that's, a tricky one, right? But that's the truth there's no other way to do it. If you do product, product, product, product us, even this where we are sitting here today was built. The same way I'm talking about was built by just doing at iterating, doing at iterating and doing that in iterating it doing it, generating