Notes from the Spring 2008 uCamp in Saint Paul
The uCamp was attended by about 30 people, with representation from most of the projects at the conference, particularly Kuali Student, Fluid, Sakai, Fedora, and uPortal.
Lightning Talks
We began the uCamp with a set of lightning talks. While some of the talks were pre-planned, we took the approach of simply asking for volunteers from the assembled, rather than working to a schedule. This served as an ice-breaker and led us into more focused discussions later in the proceedings.
These notes an edited transcription of material recorded by Cindy Nahm and Paul Zablosky. They are somewhat fragmentary, but should serve as an aid to the memories of those present at the uCamp.
- Leo Fernig The next 6 months of Kuali Student's needs: Need input and expertise of User Experience. KS has two sides to it, student facing and inward facing - administrators and faculty working with student records.
- Security (security administrators to setup and manage permissions)
- Expose code through configuration interfaces for admin to e.g. create business rules through interface.
- Workflow - 2 sided (Admin side to define workflow and the way workflow surfaces to the day to day work)
- Dictionary Services: setting up labels, code/decode tables, process control tables (highly specialized screens for highly specialized administrators)
- Gary Thompson Why I love marketing: Marketing is absolutely necessary with user interactions. People are social and word of mouth is very much a part of our information exchange. We desire to feel joy and satisfaction. We work together and how we do things and work is intertwined together. With marketing, there are things that taint it like greed. There is a perception that marketing is bad - that the motive behind marketing is bad - a drive to get money which leads to deceptions. All of our projects have a form of marketing in them whether we pay attention it to not. Marketing in itself is neutral and we should market our project, service, product etc. We should be promoting the good things we have to meet people's goals.
- Eli Cochrane Marketing - Visual Delight and Beauty: User Experience has been dismissed in the past as painting pretty pixels. It's more than that but pretty pixels cannot be dismissed as it plays a an important role.
Sakai - labels and inputs were not aligned. The perception was that it is not usable. The labels were aligned with no changes to the functionality or accessibility but the perception that it was suddenly improved, and people found it usable. We are such visual creatures, that if a product doesn't look good, we feel it lacks quality. Don't forget pretty pixels. - Jutta Treviranus: Teaching users to fiddle with the interface: When we watch a carpenter laying out his tools, making a workspace of his own, we get a sense of a person feeling competent in the his work, and happy about performing a task. By letting people customize, we let them feel more competent to do the task and we also improve accessibility. Accessibility is a process of optimizing for the individual. Within Fluid, the challenge is to have the user fiddle with the interface. We run a painting class and the painters arrange their brushes, materials etc. in a way they are comfortable working. People feel more confident in working. As they move from tool to tool, they can arrange the user environment they can make their own and make comfortable and tailored to their own use. It is important to communicate that it is okay to customize, to adjust the user interface.
- Tom O'Brien I love Google: Things like Google help people connect with the application in a way that is familiar, comforting and interesting rather than just simply utilitarian. There is a strong and important element of whimsy in Google, with its Easter eggs, and occasion-oriented imagery. This sort of thing needs to be engaging and not simply noisy embellishment.
- Tim Heidinger Kuali Student – Some Some of the things we are currently dealing with:
- Customization
- Portal vs standalone
- Support multiple language
How much control can we exert over the application anymore? Historically, this has been our user interface. Perhaps this is not the right way of thinking.
- Leo Fernig Regarding Jutta and Tim's comments: There are serious technical problem with regards to the support of customization. Colin Clark It's necessary to strike a balance between customization and fast functionality.
- Allison Bloodworth How many people refer to guidelines and best practice?: Design Patterns enable us to apply best practices to user interface design. Fluid project has created an open source design library. First meeting will be on Wednesday, May 7 at 3:00pm PDT. See http://www.uidesignpatterns.org
- Wil Johnson Customization right down to the elements: We're not rolling out a system where folks can download and start using the system out of the box. For the most part, the student system will be customizable. If an institution adds multiple fields, it will have to appear in a way that scales, that lines up, that looks nice but we don't know what number or what those fields will be. Those fields also have a validation layer associated with them. The UI will need to reconfigure itself in an intelligent manner.
- Gary Thompson Making Design Decisions: There are two critical pieces, user research and user testing. Really easy to solve the problem by yourself / for yourself. Ask "who are the people that will be using this interface?" Get the indications from the users whether or not they will want it customized and then go back to the users and have them test it to see if it works for them.
Presentations and Discussion
Erin Yu User Testing: the Quick n' Dirty Way:
What is user testing? It's watching users trying to use the software. Test with users before design. Test comparable applications / components and test it on yourself. Start early. Do it often and iterate. How to prep for it? Prepare a background questionnaire. Prototypes & Tasks. Usability questionnaire - after the testing gather additional feedback. If you run out of time, just do the prototype and tasks.
What do you need for user testing? Facilitator / Note taker / prototypes / 3-5 users / incentive. Jakob Nielsen suggests 5 users is "good enough" Theoretically, 15 users will solve the issues. If you can, spend this budget on three tests with 5 users each.
Consider: "The importance of recruiting representative users is overrated" - Steve Krug.
Tips for Sitting down with users
- Provide context
- Encourage them to think out loud
- Try not to introduce bias
Allison Bloodworth and Rachel Hollowgrass Using Personas to Create User-centered Designs
Allison Bloodworth and Erin Yu Use Cases in the Fluid Project
Doris Yen and James Dudek Evolution of Use Cases in Kuali Student