uxbymay

[uxbymay]

I'm sure most UXers are familiar with Samuel Hulick (https://www.useronboard.com/contact/), who does some amazing teardowns and really gets you into a UX mindset in a simple, visually-appealing way! 

This teardown took a look at the Oregon SNAP website, where users can apply for food stamps. Samuel writes,"Right now, somewhere between 1/6 and 1/5 of households in the US are collecting food stamps, a safety net service affecting nearly 50 million lives. How is this service being delivered to those with the least of means?" 

Throughout this user onboarding process, the user is bombarded with pages of small text and repetitive prompts. Walking through the site through this teardown really makes it clear that this site was not created with the ease of use in mind. Instead, the web pages are littered with disclaimers and confusing links to other documents. 

This teardown really stood out to me because SNAP benefits are such crucial benefits needed by a bunch of my own current clients and millions of other people across the country. For poorer households close to the poverty line, food stamps are indispensable. State governments can do more to make such services easier to apply for and access. 

[uxbymay]

Making Icons in Adobe XD!

Took some time today to practice some Adobe XD with a great step-by-step tutorial from Smashing Magazine. 

Here are the results! 

[uxbymay]

I do love me some Pixar! And this article really made me smile as it weaved UX and Pixar storytelling tips together. Part of what really interested me in UX in the first place was the importance of telling audiences a story - why is improving this service or tool important? What do its users have to gain from an upgraded interface? Anyway, some interesting notes I'm gonna put right here for fun...

Tell-Show-Tell Structure

"First you Tell them what’s about to unfold, tell them you understand your user and what the user needs and wants to get done.

Then you Show them how it happens.

And finally to wrap up, you Tell them why they should care. What’s at stake if the job doesn’t get done."

So simple, but so effective in gaining and maintaining the attention of the audience. Hoping to implement this structure in my own presentations in the future!

Begin with the End in Mind

This may sound counterintuitive for the UX space, since we're supposed to be taking many of our cues from study participants, but said in a different way, it’s important to regularly remind oneself of the initial objective. The article states, "This approach creates a sounding board for us to reassess the validity of our decisions as change appears and we are forced to iterate our story and adjust the scope."

I can totally see how a research question could expand or shrink as user data is gathered, but I guess there's a limit to how much it should really change right?

A Hero/Heroine to Root for

I thought this one was real cute and also highly important in UX. In this sense, Pixar may have the easier job. A talking clownfish might make a more palatable hero to root for than a handful of personas represented by stock images lol

"If customer success is the end goal, what makes you care for this character as you read their persona?" Indeed! What makes you care? Money? Increased user base? I imagine in the real world stakeholders play a large role in answering this question.

ANYWAY! Really liked this article lol

[uxbymay]

Pilot

My first mini-project was based on a super simple question: How can the process of purchasing airline tickets be improved? 

Idea

I approached three people (yes, very small sample space just for practice!) to interview them on recent experiences purchasing airline tickets and used their feedback to come up with three ways to redesign key aspects of the purchasing process. 

Research - User Interviews

During these brief interviews (15-20 minutes?), I mainly used some simple prompts I borrowed from other case studies online, catered to this topic of interest: 

When and where do you go to purchase airline tickets?

What are your main objectives when purchasing airline tickets?

Are there any pain points during your experiences purchasing airline tickets? 

What’s an idea you have to improve the experience?

Synthesis - Seasoned Traveler Persona

From these three participants, the “Seasoned Traveler” persona was born! This person just wants the cheapest flights for all parties involved in a specified time frame and with the least inconvenience. 

Three Redesign Ideas

My redesign ideas were based very directly on the information I got from my three participants. 

Multiple Origin Flight Comparison

One participant noted that she has friends living in different cities across the country, and they go on trips together regularly - all flying to the same destination from different origins! That said, everyone's on a budget and her friends are happy to compromise with dates if it means the trip becomes more economical for others within the group. With this added comparison feature, it's easy to identify the best option for everyone without scheduling long video chats to discuss travel dates!

Added Credit Card Point Payment Type

More than one participant in my tiny study mentioned the added inconvenience of paying with credit card points, especially when travel buddies don't have the same point systems! This redesign element would allow users to purchase flights using any type of credit card points they have.

Airport Crowd Notification

An inconvenience all airline travelers face is airport crowds. This redesign idea would provide travelers with insight into the airport crowd to expect before a flight option. For example, users booking flights around the holidays would get the added notification that certain flight times would draw large crowds at the airport. If the Seasoned Traveler decided that he or she did not want to deal with long security lines, another flight could be chosen instead.

Feedback

I also asked two participants for their feedback about these redesign ideas. In general, they responded positively to them and gave me more food for thought on how to improve on these ideas.

Closing Thoughts and Takeaways

This was admittedly a simple UX exercise run mainly for myself. In the future, I hope for a larger sample size and to demonstrate the redesign elements in a more sophisticated way. In the above visuals and the slides I put together for this project, lack of experience really shows with my attempts to wireframe (if you can call it that lol) in PowerPoint. Hopefully they got the points across anyway!

Next Steps

Reading UX case studies in my spare time! And trying to learn Adobe XD since Sketch and InVision are for Macs only (sad). Hmm... A good MacOS emulator may be in order. 

[uxbymay]

Really interesting article on customer-journey mapping! 

Some notes for myself...

Customer-journey maps show the steps that someone goes through in order to accomplish a goal. These maps can be created using any of the following methods:

Customer or User Interviews - Ask users about their experience

Field Studies - Direct observation of users completing task at hand 

Diary Studies - Usually for long-term studies during which users are asked to log certain actions taken to achieve goal

Competitive Analysis - Discover users’ use of competitor sites or apps and have them discuss the experience (Bonus: allows for research input when there’s no existing user base!)

Very cool stuff. Hope I get to try these all out someday! In the meantime, back to the grind lol

[uxbymay]

Hello world!

TLDR - Check out my UX stuff here! :D 

Hi! Thanks for checking out my Tumblr! 

This little blog here is dedicated to my trials and tribulations of breaking into the UX space. I imagine it will end up being partially portfolio of cool projects I dip and dab into and partially random UX articles and things I come across and reblog in the meantime. We’ll see how it goes!

A little background on me: majored in computer science in college and then did grad school in counseling. Some people think that’s quite a big leap - and so did I! But when I learned more about user experience stuff and these fancy new HCI degrees kids are doing, it stopped feeling that way. It kind of clicked that with the amount of technology we have in our lives these days, it’s only natural to start closing that gap between tech and psychology. 

Ever since I finished grad school in 2015, I’ve been working as a substance abuse counselor in an outpatient program. It’s been super rewarding and I love my clients and the work I get to do with them. But in that time, I’ve noticed major gaps in the services generally provided to our disadvantaged populations. One that speaks deeply to me is the lack of effective, client-centered digital services we have available to underprivileged citizens in need of support from the public sector. Some days, I spend all day just connecting clients to services in their own communities. 

Why is that part of my job not yet obsolete? We have so many dating apps that base results on the location of real, moving humans. Why is it so hard to create apps or websites that can tell my Medicaid clients (most of whom have smartphones too!) where the closest insurance-accepting psychiatrist/job training/housing specialist is? We need a Zocdoc for the masses!

But I digress...

If we’re shooting for the stars here, I’d love to use my own clinical skills to gain insights from this population on how best to develop digital services for them. Not sure I’ll get there, but uh, it’s all out here now I guess heh...

That said, I welcome any and all feedback, especially constructive criticism! I’m here to grow and learn from those more experienced than I am (and that’s a lot of people)! 

Oh, and feel free to add me on LinkedIn (for professional stuff) or Instagram (for memes)!