Sometimes it happens that I’m aware of an idea or concept, but I never put much thought to it. Until suddenly it hits me is that I start to ponder on it. It happened to me while trying to draft a post and for some reason I remembered the following dialog from the movie “The Social Network”:

Eduardo Saverin: So when will it be finished?
Mark Zuckerberg: It won’t be finished. That’s the point. The way fashion’s never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: What?
Mark Zuckerberg: Fashion, fashion is never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: You’re talking about fashion? Really, you?
Mark Zuckerberg: I’m talking about the idea of it. And I’m saying that it’s never finished.
Eduardo Saverin: Okay. But they manage to make money selling pants.

What Mark is talking about is not something new, but for some reason I never gave it much thought until now. So, my (almost) epiphany: any web venture or project needs to start as soon as we can. In addition (and not less important) we never have to finish it. The moment it is done, then is dead.

Why?

Constant experimenting, leads to constant evolution of an idea,  which leads to constant change. For some reason people fear or resist to change, but love to see it in others. Evermore, are delighted when they see new things or experiment new things in our environments.

Remember when you had a new toy and then you found something new and forgot about it. The Internet is the same: is a collections of toys, which embrace our inner child, by providing us with a new one every 20 minutes.

Let embrace the inner child and run wild.

“Sin Nombre” is the title of the independent movie, written and directed to Cary Fukunaga. His approach to writing and directing was that caught my attention some months ago and thought it will be usefull to apply in  User eXperience (UX) design. First lets see what the movie is about, here is the synopsis:

After murdering his gang’s leader, a teenager joins a family of Honduran immigrants making the dangerous journey across Mexico to the United States, avoiding a fellow gang member who has been sent to kill him along the way. [Source Yahoo Movies]

Fukunaga’s approach was to do research before starting to film anything. He travel with illegal immigrants in trains, talked to gang members or “mareros” (the local term for this type of gangs) and even had two ex-mareros help him with the slang and way of expressing.

The movie has been acclaimed internationally and is very well done. One of the strongest attributes is attention to detail (which leads to some strong scenes), high pace and scenery. Things Fukunaga couldn’t have figured out without the research.

In the case of software, research is needed if we want to provide a pleasant UX experience to our customers.

Most of the time we create software to solve a problem. If we follow Fukunaga as example, we should not just interview the people the suffer the problem, but “ride the train” with them. In other words, let them take you through that moment in life where they suffer the problem. If we continue with the movie theme then we can conclude that:

story boards are to sketches as filming is to programming.

UX design is about continuous improvement.

We have done the research, now we need to determine if our conclusions are correct. So, we need make a rough sketch of the software and show it around the future customers or users. Then after some feedback, lets redraw the sketches with more detail. We continue doing so, until we have something that we can take to the next level.

The next level is to build the core of the software. This means that we only include those features and functionality that is the least needed to solve the problem. Once we have a good core, then the rest of the features will be easier to add. In addition it will keep things simple, which will save some resources. But more important it will give you a application that some of your customers can try and give you feedback on.

It is always about continuous improvement through research and attention to details, unlike movies there is no final version.

I get a call around 6:00 pm on Friday. I’m at work and is a friend, he wanted to know if I’m interested in going with him to a Romanian Rock Concert. He had a extra ticket (so for me is for free), even if I felt tiered and had just 2 hours to get there, I thought: “why not”.

My friend, called me twice to see where I was, he wanted me to be there on time. I found it odd, since its a rock concert, who cares if I’m late, there is always a opening band. When I got there quarter past 8 pm, I see him dressed nicely, making a big fuss of not making any noise and that they had started. At this point I’m lost, thinking “what is the deal here?”. Then we enter the balcony, and while taking a glimpse at the stage and the people in their seats (of the Sodra Teatern in Stockholm) : I see four persons on stage, three with Violins and one with a Cello. I had misunderstood, it was a Romanian Quartet Concert, not Romanian Rock Concert.

Let me tell you, that the experience was mind blowing. First my favorite instrument to listen too, is the violin. In addition, I recently got the album of Yo Yo Ma’s playing Bach Suites (1 to 6) on the Cello. Finally, it was interpretation of folk music, occasionally adding some visual elements on the screen. It was great stuff, I couldn’t ask for more.

All this got me to thinking, that be best experiences come when you don’t have any expectations. In my case, I didn’t expect nothing, I didn’t have any time to even get the wrong expectations ( me thinking it was a Rock Concert). And there I was delighted, thankful and with a experience to remember.

We will always have expectations of things to come or people that we will meet. We have expectations when you take a trip, go abroad to study, go to watch a movie movies, buy a new laptop or when we go for a date. We know something is coming, we can’t resist the uncertainty of not knowing nothing, so we start to research and form ideas on the head of what the experience will be (comparing to previous ones). In some cases we might live experience before the event has happened.

Expectations are like a ball with holes. When we start to have them, the ball starts to form, however it can NOT be completed because to be filled, we have to live the event or use the product we bought. So, there we are with a ball with holes, waiting for them to be filled when we reach that moment. Sometimes we get what we expected, sometimes they exceeded or all wholes are not filled, so we need more time. In other occasion we are disappointed . Our disappointments come when we are presented with something different, that doesn’t meet or fit the ball we created. It actually could be because it sucked, however (especially with people and places) we forget to see the big picture or form a new ball, which permits us to have a different experience.

(Source)

Expectations are part of our life and are difficult not to have them. However managing expectations is key aspect, not just in how we experience life but in business and management. Everybody has expectations of the products we launch, the service we provide or how our employees perform. Sometimes those expectations are linked to money, meaning that for X amount of money we EXPECT a return equivalent to X. And then is when things get more complicated, because how do you measure a return, when expectations may blur the way you see things.

As a consumer or a producer, as a manager or a employee, most of the time we don’t have the option of having no expectations, instead we have to manage them and align them in a way that everybody understand what is coming and what is not. However in life that is another story as The Ink Spots say in one of their songs: “The best things in life are free”. Should I expect everything that is free to be the best?

Wireframes are drawings of website, used to illustrate: how a web application will function, what will be the content and how the visitor will navigate. They are not used to illustrate the look and feel (graphic design) of a site. When designing web applications first, comes the functionality and then the graphics. Main reason: graphics are dependent on the structure and functionality site, not the other way around. Graphics are only eye candy, so a nice looking site is useless when the visitor doesn’t know what to do. Also the graphic design can narrow down the possibilities in the usability design of the site and we don’t want to constraint that.

Why?

Think clothing, the activity you wish to do, decides what you will wear, not the other way around. If you want to work out, you wear clothing that is designed for it. You don’t wear a suit to play basketball or for your karate class (only if you are Chuck Norris). To avoid this: first think usability, then choose the eye candy that best fits.

There are many kind of software that can be used to create wireframes i.e Visio, Visual Studio, Adobe Illustrator, Dreamweaver. The challenge with using this tools, is that people tend to focus on colors, cleanness, effects, etc. and not the usability, functionalities and goals of the site. The best thing, don’t use any of these tools and just sketch the wireframe using paper and pencil.

Ask any developer that used visual studio (or similar programming) IDE to develop a prototype with the intention of showing functionality. Most will tell you that the customer, will focus on the look and think that it will be ready in a week. If you have ever shown a client a Visual Studio “prototype”, where your draw the software, using the visual controls, the developer will be stress by comments like “oh .. this button doesn’t do nothing”, while the he is thinking “of coarse man, this is just to see if I understood what you wanted”. It will be worst if there is some navigational functionality in the “software prototype”.

Another reason you shouldn’t use this tools, is that you may start to focus on how it looks, if colors match and they it looks nice. The irony is that you know is just a to show functionally! However sometimes is just irresistible.  So, if you use a paper and pencil there will be a good chance it will look like done by a first grader, and then is when you will get the real feedback.

So, as the image bellow says: “The better it looks, the more narrow the feedback”.

Image source: head rush and thanks to Jakob from www.jensplan.se for the tip on the image.

Next post, I will talk about a program (Balsamiq Mockups) that is used to make wireframe mockups that look like done with paper and pencil. The idea of using such tool is that you can iterate faster and save time, still it could have the same effect, as the tools mention above. And as a bonus, I will tell you how to save and convert the mockups into images, without buying the license.