Designing the User Experience at Autodesk

Method 20 of 100: The Magic Thing

100 User Experience (UX) Design and Evaluation Methods for Your Toolkit

by Chauncey Wilson

This is the 20th in a series of 100 short articles about UX design and evaluation methods. This entry focuses on the use of a prop called the “magic thing” that can serve as an ideation tool in the design of mobile, ambient, and ubiquitous systems.  

Method 20 of 100: The Magic Thing
In a 2000 article, Guilio and colleagues describe various role-playing techniques that support the ideation and concept development of mobile services and devices. In their research, they asked participants to carry a “magic thing” as they walked around different locales and use it “to imagine how a portable device could support [them] in a particular situation” (p. 199). The rationale was that the use of a prop might provoke some novel ideas that would not emerge sitting around a table doing traditional group brainstorming.  One common approach for this method would be to give people scenarios and then let them walk around a particular area like a city or building to imagine what kind of “magic” a portable device could provide.  One scenario might be to find a restaurant in a city that you have never visited before that serves a certain kind of food and is quiet.  Another simple scenario might be to envision software that would help you, a brand new employee, locate people with specific kinds of knowledge in a large office.  In the graphic below a magic thing is used to evoke ideas about how context-aware devices might help someone in a strange city.

According to different sources, Jeff Hawkins, one of the inventors of the PalmPilot PDA, carried a small block of wood about the size of the Palm device with him to help envision how the device might benefit him at work (e.g. to generate a to-do list or use a calendar) and at home (e.g. to create a shopping list). The block of wood was his “magic thing” and provided inspiration for a generation of mobile devices. 

Howard and his colleagues (2002)  described “endowed props” that are rough physical simulations of devices that can used in role-playing  The props can be used to provide some constraints on the ideas participants generate so the results are “plausible science” rather than science fiction. Howard et al. suggest endowing props with particular capabilities like speech recognition, one at a time, so as not to provide too much magic to the participants.

When to Use: 
You can use a magic thing to:

• Serve as a rough example of the form factor of proposed devices (e.g. a pen, tablet, phone, or clip-on device)
• Complement scenario creation exercises
• Add some fun and minimal constraints to role-playing studies
• Provide a triggering function for ideas

Procedure:
The two articles referenced below provide several variations on role-playing or scenario enactment that involve magic things or endowed props. Here is a simplified procedure adapted from Howard, et al.

1. The design/research team introduces the participants (the actors) to a scenario that they are to act out.  For example, the scenario might have you lost in a city like Rome after missing your tour bus.
2. The participants review the scenario with a member of the design team and personalize it to their own situation.
3. The participants act out a scenario without the magic thing.
4. The participants are given or choose a prop (their magic things).
5. They are told what magical powers it has (to start). For example, the magic thing knows where it is (e.g., has GPS) and has information about commercial establishments and ratings of service for many companies.
6. The participants and design team then engage in participatory role-playing where the magic thing can acquire new powers and lose old ones.  For example, you might start with a magic thing that is location aware with information about services and then add a magic power like augmented reality where you visualize information as an overlay over camera images.
7. The sessions are recorded and the ideas that emerge are captured and applied to a new round of role-playing that expands on promising ideas.  Here you take good ideas about how to build magic into a portable device and do a deeper level of role playing to get more specific ideas.

References:

Giulio Iacucci, Kari Kuutti, and Mervi Ranta. 2000. On the move with a magic thing: role playing in concept design of mobile services and devices. In Proceedings of the 3rd conference on Designing interactive systems: processes, practices, methods, and techniques (DIS '00), Daniel Boyarski and Wendy A. Kellogg (Eds.). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 193-202. DOI=10.1145/347642.347715.

Steve Howard, Jennie Carroll, John Murphy, and Jane Peck. 2002. Using 'endowed props' in scenario-based design. In Proceedings of the second Nordic conference on Human-computer interaction (NordiCHI '02). ACM, New York, NY, USA, 1-10. DOI=10.1145/572020.572022.

Notes from UX Camp DC

by Ryan Arnaudin

Recently I attended the UX Camp DC unconference. For those unfamiliar with unconference or BarCamp events, loosely this means that the agenda for the day is open and participant driven. Any attendee can hold a discussion, workshop, or talk on a topic of interest. I’d like to share some of the insights, tips, and takeaways from the sessions I attended.

The Mobile, Global, Digital Revolution

Hilding Anderson, Sapient Corporation

Most will agree: we live in a time of rapid change. Information abundance and the proliferation of digital tools and devices has been rapid, and often taken for granted.

Hilding argues that mobile is the next wave of change in the digital revolution. He drew similarities between this digital revolution and the industrial revolution:

• A painful [for some] restructuring of industries
• More competition as technology increases. Performance gaps get bigger. Existing corporations can be disrupted by startups.
• Out with the old, in with the new. Adapting is essential to survival.
• Luddites attempt to stall progress.

Takeaway: We are in the midst of digital and mobile revolutions. Familiarize yourself with the trends and implications to understand how this may impact your business or industry.

Designing for the Future You

Dana Chisnell

Dana challenged us to re-consider including age on personas. As demonstrated in an interactive session, age can tempt the designer to make assumptions and projections, or use stereotypes that may be invalid and could lead to a broken design.

Instead of age Dana suggests ranking personas from low to high on attitude, aptitude, and ability scales in relation to the technology. This will help you create and gage designs for your users without thinking about age.

Takeaway: If a particular piece of information does not help you design for your users and/or is prone to stereotypes and assumptions, don’t include it in personas. One suggestion: replace age with attitude, aptitude, and ability rankings.

VizThink

Dan Willis

CC BY-SA Todd Wickersty

Dan hit with an interactive and high energy session titled “VizThink”. Together we explored how visuals directly impact the details of a message by studying one of the masters – Dr. Suess. We also proved that anyone can sketch/draw and that it is an informative way to convey ideas.

Takeaway: Visuals provide both context and attitude to the content they accompany. Also, they engage your audience!

Critiquing Critique

Jared Spool

As designers we are familiar with having our work critiqued, and critiquing others’ work. By critiquing the personal websites of attendees we identified critique approaches that did and didn’t work, and Jared used this experience to offer further suggestions and insights.

A common pitfall was for the critique to become a group design session with everyone offering their opinions on how to design the site. Avoid this temptation! Critique is not design and should instead attempt to separate “what” from “how” and focus on the issues. Getting to the rationale is what is important; designers are good at coming up with designs on their own.

It will also take some pressure off the presenter to establish roles for the critique session. Jared recommends 'critic', 'presenter', 'facilitator', and 'recorder'.

Takeaway: Critique is about surfacing the problem, not generating solutions.

Remote Collaboration

Jason Wishard

As someone who works with colleagues around the world, I found this session to be a good reminder of what makes a remote team successful.

Team work:

• Stay social – make good use of email, Instant Messaging, Twitter
• Don’t be camera shy
• Have an “Open door” communication policy
• Transparency is king
• Communications must be actionable

Workspace:

• Task out your space
• Encourage focus - isolation and quiet

Virtual environment:

• Close/hide apps during calls and presentations
• Turn off notifications when appropriate
• Set status and expectations

Takeaway: Successful remote collaboration requires three pillars: a great team, an effective workspace, and a solid desktop environment.

Going out to Eat

Jimmy Chandler

Jimmy’s session drew analogies between operating a restaurant and designing software. Restaurateurs know emotions play heavily into their customer experience and are masters at exploiting this. There is a lot we can learn from them:

• Emotions change how we face and solve problems
• Emotions are critical to learning, curiosity, and creative thought
• Experience is more memorable than the product itself

Takeaway: Leverage customer emotion in the design of products and services.

Responsive Web Design

By Joshua Ledwell

Not long ago, designers optimized their websites for a single page width, and worried about supporting only two or three PC web browsers. How should web designers respond to today's world where mobile web devices are proliferating in dozens of different resolutions? In the fourth book from the A Book Apart collection, Ethan Marcotte outlines the Responsive Web Design approach that allows a website to embrace users' needs on any size display, all with the same underlying HTML.

Responsive web design involves implementing three components in a site's CSS files. Flexible grid layouts use percentage widths to maintain a page's proportions over small changes in resolution (like all the slightly different mobile screens out there). Next, fluid images scale to the containing layout. Finally, media queries rearrange page layouts on a macro level for classes of Internet devices such as phones, tablets, and PCs.

Together these techniques can make the web accessible and usable on almost any Internet device available. Examples of websites that have gone responsive include ThinkVitamin and the Boston Globe. However, the approach is not for everyone. Advertising-supported websites, for example, often are contractually prohibited from resizing or moving ad placements.

What sets this short book apart from a CSS manual is the author's empathy for traditional web designers grappling with the mobile web's ascendancy. Marcotte shows why mobile content should be different, and how to delight mobile users without coding an app or a separate mobile site. If you're a web designer or developer this book will have you thinking "mobile first!" on your next project.

 

Resources:

Book website: http://www.abookapart.com/products/responsive-web-design

Summary article: http://www.alistapart.com/articles/responsive-web-design/

Sample responsive website (pictured): http://responsivewebdesign.com/robot/

Nicely Done Steve Jobs

By Erin Bradner

In Spring 2010, there was an Apple bloom across Autodesk – iPads had sprouted up in conference rooms from San Francisco to Shanghai. Some appeared carefully wrapped in protective cases, some with diminutive keyboards. Many sat atop conference tables unadorned, barely weeks old, occupying the table space and mindshare previously occupied by Macbooks and PCs.

A second bloom happened later that spring when a new variety of iPhone… black, white and now glinting with stainless-steel…began dispersing into the iPhone ecosystem at Autodesk. And just last week I watched the Apple enthusiasts on our user experience team prairie dog across a bay of cubes to chatter excitedly about the iPhone 4 announcement. I also watched those same colleagues hush mournfully, the day Steve Jobs died.

This week I asked my colleagues to tell me how Steve Jobs, via Apple, has influenced design thinking at Autodesk. I’ve compiled some of the responses below. A common thread is that Jobs exerted influence on Autodesk through his courage to re-invent products and re-imagine entire industries. Designers and design leadership at Autodesk have drawn inspiration from his fanatical attention to detail, such as his ability to sell the minutiae of “cut, copy and paste” on the iPhone, and through his consistency in delivering powerful, beautiful technology. Here are their words:

 

“One comment of Steve Jobs that stuck with me was his advice to “Edit, always,” because while that is easy to say, it is inherently hard to do in business. Businesses are constantly bombarded by opportunities, competitive threats and customer demands and can naturally end up pursuing multiple priorities. Jobs strove to do a few things really well – a smaller set of products, a focused set of principles but then executing them completely.” – Amar Hanspal

"Steve Jobs was a believer of User Experience, not in the traditional practice of the trade but in its essence. He ultimately knew that building a great product was intertwined with the user – their needs and perceptions. He connected not just tasks, error rates, and usability but also emotion and passion to create a powerful legacy." – Julie Schiller

"Steve Jobs wanted to go beyond making products that are useful -- he wanted to make products that reach people on a deeper level, products that people fall in love with.  As someone who did 'fall' for Apple products, I know what that experience is like and strive to foster that feeling among users of Autodesk software. Steve Jobs (and his team at Apple) showed many UX professionals at Autodesk, myself included, what a good user experience feels like. This influences the user experience goals for our projects every day." – Edward De Guzman

“Unlike almost any other CEO out there, Steve Jobs had faith in the human experience as a business model. The experience of Apple’s design is what drove profit, not the other way around. He intuitively invested in something that no financial analyst could predict, but only measure afterwards.” – Alison Kather

 “Steve Jobs showed to the world how User Experience can make all the difference. His impact is profound as technology companies across the globe have changed their culture to make UX a priority over features and capabilities.” – Ananth Uggirala

“Steve Jobs and Apple’s designs are such a penultimate of achievement that anyone in a design oriented field cannot help but be inspired to follow suit. Their designs being centered on the individual, rather than the company or the project, have helped influence the next generation of design at Autodesk. When working on AutoCAD for Mac, Steve’s reality distortion field helped bring back excitement to an otherwise fairly mature brand.” - Rob Maguire

 

Autodesk is one of those tech companies whose design culture has evolved thanks to Steve Jobs. It is rare if a week goes by at Autodesk when one of Apple’s innovations isn’t used as a gold standard for user-friendly UI or loyalty-inspiring customer experience. Yesterday in a conference room filled with managers, interaction designers and researchers, we deconstructed the Genius Bar. The experience distilled down to three important elements:

1. It’s not a transaction, it’s a relationship: they don’t give you a number as you wait, they call your name instead.
2. They are empathetic: the Apple geniuses, not technicians, walk around a bar, not a desk, and stand next to you as they respectfully examine your dead phone or empathetically listen to your wireless networking woes.
3. They are empowered to exceed your expectations: they typically solve your problem plus give you something more, something unexpected… an iOS upgrade or even a new laptop.

The Genius Bar, iTunes, iPhone and Macbook each have their fanbase at Autodesk. This month AutoCAD for the Mac celebrates its 1-year birthday. Autodesk has a growing list of Mac and mobile apps for tinkers and seasoned professionals alike. We’ve both drawn inspiration from Apple and are delivering products in partnership with Apple. Our Mac and mobile products aren’t faultless. The products Steve Jobs helped create aren’t faultless either. And their user interfaces aren’t always as intuitive as some in our field might hope. Yet Apple products strike an emotional chord – they deliver experiences that are human, empathetic and that routinely exceed expectations. Nicely done, Steve Jobs.