Agustin asks...

Q:
I'm doing the design and development of a video game store that is about to open. I'm thinking on giving it the full UX/personality treatment and document it. 

How would you go about documenting the whole process? What would you absolutely include? What would you leave out?

By the way, I'm one of the owners of the store.

A:
First, congratulations on the store, sounds cool! Here are my thoughts regarding the documentation of your product review.

When documenting a process, I tend to lean toward over-documentation, that way you have a hearty record of as much detail as possible. I say this, though I tend to be pretty crappy at actually DOING this. ;)

When communicating or sharing the documentation you've gathered, edit it down to the most important points. There can be a lot of interesting or fascinating discoveries along the way. It might be great to pull a few key points where applying a personality caused some significant changes, and similarly, it would be great to see if/when/where rethinking things with a personality approach maybe did not change anything. I believe it's important to capture good things as well as things that maybe didn't work out. Learnings are important, both positive and negative.

For example, you may showcase where some of your UX micro-copy underwent rethinking/rewriting, in order to give it more personality. And by contrast, you may do a full review of your product and find that the wording for error messages should need to remain as they are in order to avoid confusion or diluting the seriousness of certain actions. 

Like we do with the products themselves, it is also incredibly useful to get feedback on your documentation. Ask some colleagues or potential users, friends, family, etc to review your documentation and talk about the pieces they found to be the most interesting, surprising or helpful.

There are tons of ways to document things, finding your own style could be a fun part of this whole activity. I have a friend (@thomasknoll) who’s just started a really cool thing, you may want to check out what he’s doing here for inspiration: Setting up a lab-notebook for a scientific-method approach to marketing

Keep me posted on what you do here! I'd love to watch it all unfold. :)

Ian asks...

Q:
How do you grow an awesome beard? I hear chicks like a good beard...

A:
Well, for this one, I’ll have to admit I have far less experience than I do with many of the other questions I get. But I did a little research and I have just the thing to answer your burning question, Mr. Klassen. Check this out: http://www.wikihow.com/Grow-a-Beard

And yes, it is true, many “chicks” do dig a good beard. ;)

Jeremy asks...

Q: 
What sort of advice do you have for an independent mobile app developer looking to switch to a product design/interaction design career?

A:
I love this question. As a product/design person who’s spent the last several months shifting into focus on writing and helping people reach their personal and professional goals, and self-proclaimed heart-follower, I couldn’t be more thrilled to offer a few thoughts. 

I’m going to take a leap and make an assumption that if you’re looking to switch career focus, it’s probably coming from some burning passion within. Right?

It’s of my nature to always ask and wonder the big ‘why’ about everything, and I have to make the disclaimer that I’m jumping right into an answer without really knowing your specific situation. I sure hope that’s what it is for you, though. A burning passion! Because I think that’s where it starts. Something in your guts that you believe in and love, and can’t stop thinking about. You want to make the world better somehow, through the tools people use. 

I think it’s important to be realistic to your current situation, whatever that may be.  All I mean by that is to take the leap of faith responsibly. Me, for example, I’m a single mom of two very young girls. I tend to take more calculated risks than if it were just me, solo. In the realm of me solo, I’d throw caution to the wind a heck of a lot more than I already do (which is actually kind-of a lot.) But at the same time, don’t be SO afraid to give up perceived “security” that you let it hold you back from reaching your goals. Dreams and happiness come from hard work, focus and taking some risks. You know your situation and I totally trust you'll make good healthy decisions that take you as far as you want to go in life.

Whether you are in the ‘just starting out’ or ‘been doing it a bit for a while’ category, my advice is fairly similar. If you’re already taking on work as a product/interaction designer, it’s really a matter of continuing to take more and more of that work on until you entirely shed the development work (if that is your bigger picture plan) and never look back. Your experience as a developer will bring so much value to your work and expertise as a product/interaction designer. Conversely, it can occasionally box-in your thinking, too. I was never a hardcore coder or anything but I have to admit, I struggled for a while back in my web design days (where I used to design and code my website projects) I often designed knowing I was going to have to code it later, and I’d occasionally shy away from pushing my own coding boundaries/abilities. DON’T DO THAT! 

If you’ve not yet started taking on work as a product/interaction designer, look for opportunities that will allow you to participate in this sort of work. That can be in terms of volunteering time with team members, co-workers or friends you know already doing this sort of work, learning all you can and actually jumping in to doing as much as you can, and sharing your work for feedback. Getting into the habit of gathering feedback early and often in this line of work really can’t be stressed upon enough. Read, study, learn, listen and most importantly (imho) observe. 

Another thing, if you’re interested in a little more reading, I wrote an article a few months back that talks a bit about the shift I’ve been going through this year and how I approached it. It’s almost due for an update but I may wait until year’s end to get on with that.

I’d really love to hear more about where you’re at in your process and to stay in touch about how it’s going. The struggles, the wins, the unexpected stories that shake out. Seriously, please keep me posted.

Hope this post has offered something useful to your journey. I wish you all the success in the world!

@ImINaBAR asks...

Q:
How do you test your ideas and then actual implementations of a UX redesign (and copy) or you just launch blindly? I'm specially interested when there's not a huge budget for UX.

A: 
Very few of the projects I’ve been involved with have actually had designated budget for pre-launch user testing or even research. But I think it would be a reach to say I’ve ever just launched a product “blindly.” As a UX practitioner, it is my responsibility to do my research, interview stakeholders, ask the right questions to understand what it is I’m trying to solve, identify a focused target user group, understand who “I” am (as a brand, product, etc.) and have a really defined idea of what it is I am asking of or trying to provide to the end user. If I’ve done my job well at any level, a “blind” guess is usually fairly well informed by all the steps it took to get to any realized idea. Getting something out that has been thoughtfully crafted will turn feedback very quickly, from which we learn, re-work and throw it out again. Sometimes the live product out in the real world IS the test, especially if we aren’t able to budget for user tests on prototypes or early concepts. There are a lot of quick and easy testing methods that can get you informed feedback, which typically include simply getting the idea away from you - the designer/developer - and getting it in front of people you can observe whether that’s a few people from another department down the hall or asking someone at another table during lunch if they have 5 minutes to look at a thing you’re working on, and tell you what they think. Beta testing is a real version of the product that openly solicits user feedback from a targeted group, this is an incredibly useful approach. 

All that said, it is hugely important to distinguish acute awareness between what I’ve just described and simply churning things out quickly that may be poorly executed or not well-thought. A responsible UX practitioner has done a lot of thinking, asking, researching and iterating to get to a point where anything released is not careless or blind. A careless release can risk creating a very negative experience that may scare people away from trusting you with a second chance, no matter how improved it may be down the road. 

You will always learn from watching ACTUAL humans interacting with your ideas and if you genuinely understand experience design, your initial launch really is far from blind. Budget or no budget, asking people around you for insight and feedback will give you a lot of information about the path you’re going down.

Hope this helps at some level. If you have more questions about specific UX methods (like card sorting, interviewing, site maps, sketches, etc.) we can definitely go further down those roads.

Thanks for your question!

Anonymous asks...

Q: 
Have you ever had to fire a client?

A:
Yes. I tend to refer to it as, "breaking up with a client." I'm not really sure that's semantically any more positive and I've not had to break up with clients many times, but yes I have had to. Breaking up with a client is not a fun experience for either party.

Here's a thing I've learned from it. 
A few days ago I posted a response to a question on 'micro-managey' clients which included a personal opinion statistic stating 9.9 times out of 10, if a client seems micro-managey, the problem is with us, not the client - thusly if WE improve our communication skills/efforts, we can significantly reduce the volume of not awesome clients. One thing I may not have mentioned is why  I stand by this statement - it definitely has to do with lessons learned from good and bad experiences, including breaking up with clients.

Working with clients for more than 17 years now in the capacity of design and having my fair share of turbulent stories to tell, I learned the importance of the vetting process. We owe it to ourselves and to our clients to ask the right questions up front and determine if there is going to be open and honest communication throughout the project and personality and ethics fit before any money changes hands or any contracts are signed. It's also important to note that "open and honest communication" does not mean that things are super awesome and rosy 100% of the time. You may disagree (frequently, even) but knowing you have open and honest communication helps ensure you will hash things out in a respectful manner and arrive at a place where there's understanding.

If you're taking on every project that comes through the door just because it fits in your calendar and/or pays something, or out of sheer need for work, these are fair but it's also fair to acknowledge this will definitely set that 'not-awesome client' statistic to a much higher frequency. Putting time into evaluating the relationship up front has GREATLY reduced client break-ups for me and has GREATLY improved mutual joy in the project all around. 

I hope you find some of this helpful. I'd love to hear what others have learned from the client break up process.