Think First (eBook)

My No-Nonsense Approach to Creating Successful Products, Memorable User Experiences + Very Happy Customers

Joe Natoli (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2015 | 1. Auflage
202 Seiten
Twofold LLC (Verlag)
978-0-9863448-1-7 (ISBN)

Infos

Creating an app, site or any product that succeeds - or sells - is most definitely a tall order. Designing anything for people is tough, because we're inherently complex and...well...messy. Which means that things like market share and ROI don't come easy. But time and effort spent finding the right problems to solve allows designers, developers and product teams to take quantum leaps forward in exceeding the expectations of everyone involved. In Think First, Joe Natoli shows you exactly how to do this, using lessons learned from his 26 years as a UX consultant to Fortune 100 and 500 organizations. You'll find proven principles, step-by-step methods and straightforward, jargon-free advice that can be applied to any kind of digital product. Think First proves that while people are indeed messy and complex, designing for them doesn't have to be. Here's what a few well-respected UX practitioners and authors had to say about Think First: 'A very practical guide to success in business.' - Dr. Don Norman, Director of the DesignLab, UC San Diego and Author of The Design of Everyday Things 'Think First is a practical guide to UX that makes sense of strategy and structure. Highly recommended!' - Peter Morville, Bestselling Author of Intertwingled 'For designers and developers, understanding strategy and UX is an increasingly necessary skill. Joe Natoli's Think First demystifies these foundational ideas in a very conversational, easy to read style.' - Ilise Benun, Founder of Marketing-Mentor.com and Author of 7+ Books Think First serves as a roadmap to building a solid foundation for UX that's strong enough to withstand any weather as projects move into design and coding.

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Creating an app, site or any product that succeeds - or sells - is most definitely a tall order. Designing anything for people is tough, because we're inherently complex and...well...messy. Which means that things like market share and ROI don't come easy. But time and effort spent finding the right problems to solve allows designers, developers and product teams to take quantum leaps forward in exceeding the expectations of everyone involved. In Think First, Joe Natoli shows you exactly how to do this, using lessons learned from his 26 years as a UX consultant to Fortune 100 and 500 organizations. You'll find proven principles, step-by-step methods and straightforward, jargon-free advice that can be applied to any kind of digital product. Think First proves that while people are indeed messy and complex, designing for them doesn't have to be. Author Joe Natoli explains why he believes Think First is unlike any other book on the subject of UX strategy and design: "e;I didn't want to write yet another book that covers the narrow, tactical pieces of the design process,"e; he says, "e;because great design and great UX are the result of multiple activities across multiple people, roles and disciplines. It's everybody's business. Think First walks you through everything that must be considered to create great UX - and gives you a roadmap to make it happen."e;Think First details Joe's no-nonsense approach to creating successful products, powerful user experiences and very happy customers. He share countless lessons learned from more than 26 years as a UX consultant to Fortune 500 and 100 organizations - including a few he's learned the hard way :-)Think First serves as a roadmap to building a solid foundation for UX that's strong enough to withstand any weather as projects move into design and coding. Here are just some of the things you'll learn:- Simple user research methods that anyone can perform - even if you've never done research of any kind. - The right questions to ask stakeholders and users at the outset of any (and every) project. - The 3 crucial questions you must ask of every client, every time. - How to tell the difference between what people say they need vs. what they really need. - A better, simpler way to generate meaningful UX requirements at the outset of the project. - How to figure out what features and functions will result in great UX and deliver value to both users and the business. - How to avoid scope creep and the never-ending project scenario.

Textauszug

CHAPTER 1

There’s No Success Without Strategy

Fail to Plan = Plan to Fail

Decisions that are made on the strategy plane, in particular, have a massive ripple effect all the way up the chain. If you screw up on the strategy plane, you’ll be paying for it repeatedly over the life of the project.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

Let’s say we have in-house UX, IT and Development teams working for a large financial services corporation, which we’ll call Acme. Acme is a $2 billion B-to-B enterprise serving 85% of the entire market of brokers, agents and resellers. These folks use the company’s web services portal to deliver information and provide analysis tools to their clients.

Now assume that there’s a specific data reporting/analytics feature the Acme CEO insists must be included. The data set is layered and extremely complex. The UX and IT folks research it and immediately realize they have to seriously re-adjust their design & build strategy. The database architects are raising massive red flags. Their report back essentially says:

“There’s no way we can build this within budget. It’s too complex, it’ll take five months longer than we have, there’s no way we can ensure the accuracy of the data and it will only work with one of the major web browsers.”

And the Product Manager, VP of Product Development or the CEO, one way or another, says “I don’t care. It has to be in there. Internet Explorer (IE) only.”

The team begins building, but along the way they realize that they need six additional programmers to pull it off within the timeframe allotted. And not just any programmers, top-shelf, paid-assassin type programmers. And they need a CSS whiz who can style all this complex data to make it understandable by normal human beings, because the out-of-the-box reporting module produces reports that even a PhD couldn’t decipher. They put in a hire request.

The plot thickens

The Acme CEO, and the executive team as a whole, says NO. Work with what you’ve got.

So the team does the only thing they can do, since it is physically impossible for them to bend the laws of time and space: they cut corners. Everywhere possible. And one of the first things that gets sacrificed is the time and budget allotted for designing what the reports look like onscreen.

Despite the corner-cutting, the project is three months late anyway (which everyone on the team knew and said it would be). Customers are getting antsy waiting for this big promised improvement and are beginning to seriously doubt the company’s ability to pull it off.

Fast-forward to launch: the product releases, and customers begin using it. And they are immediately, unanimously angry about several things:

1.  They don’t know what they’re looking at, what it means or how to act on it. The data presentation is so complex that they can’t understand any of it, much less use it as a basis for critical decision-making.

2.  It doesn’t work in their browser. In their businesses and with their end customers, the web browser used most is Firefox, followed closely by Google Chrome. Neither of which the reporting feature works properly in (as the team predicted).

3.  The numbers don’t always add up. The calculations are often incorrect, and the degree of correctness varies based on the type of report pulled. This is sensitive financial data, in some cases representing million-dollar investments. You can imagine why this is an issue.

This anger is so profuse and widespread that several of Acme’s customers don’t renew their contracts. That lost dollar amount is roughly equal to 34% of Acme’s yearly revenue, which, by the way, is measured in billions. With a B.

All of which makes what I said earlier well worth repeating, particularly for those of you who own businesses or are C-level decision makers:

If you screw up on the Strategy Plane, you’ll be paying for it repeatedly over the life of the project (and afterward as well).

The scenario I’ve just given you isn’t too far from hundreds of actual scenarios I’ve seen over the past two decades. I’ve had many a spirited discussion with Project Managers, Product Managers, VPs and CEOs over things they insist “just have to be done.” And I’ve lost plenty of those battles, believe me.

At the end of the day, it’s their decision, not mine. It’s their money and market share to lose. The only thing I can do is say “here’s how that’s going to play out” and hope it’s given some consideration. And that’s all you can do as well, if your role is that of a doer instead of a decider.

But if you have a choice – if it’s your app, your website, your system – the key to less stress, less suffering and a user experience that makes or saves you money starts with an “S.”

I’ve been privileged to work with some very big, wildly successful organizations over almost three decades, and I can tell you that the one thing they all have in common is this:

They spend a great deal of time, effort, resources and money on the Strategy Plane of UX.

As I’m sure you realize from my relentless (bordering on obsessive) hammering of this point in the intro, strategy has the most impact in terms of the success or failure of a product. As I illustrated, there’s a ripple effect that happens from the strategy part of the project onward. If you know what you’re building, if you know who you’re building it for, and you know why it’s going to be valuable to those folks (and conversely why it’s going to be valuable to you), success shall be yours.

As you progress through each plane of UX — from Information Architecture to Interaction Design to User Interface Design — that success goes with you, strengthening your efforts.

However, if you fail to consider all the aspects of product strategy, business strategy and user needs, those miscalculations will also follow you through every step of the process. You will find yourself extremely stressed out and very, very frustrated.

What’s more, you’ll have created something that people will probably not find very useful.

So now that I’m sure you’ll never, ever forget how intensely important strategy is, I’m going to talk a little about the creation and application of strategy.

Strategy Starts with Research

All good strategy starts with research. Why? Because we don’t know everything there is to know about any given problem, or industry, or product, or the people that we’re hopefully trying to reach. No matter how long you may have worked in a particular industry or even for a particular client, I guarantee you there is, with every new project, a laundry list as long as your arm of very significant things that you don’t know.

Research Rule #1

As such, my first rule of research is this: assume you know nothing. Let go of every preconception you have; they will only serve to alter your perception of what you’re hearing. Objectivity is not impossible; it’s actually little more than learned behavior that comes from discipline.

For example, even when a client is telling me something I think I already know, I never say “right, I’m aware of that.” Instead, I assume there’s some part of that story that hasn’t been told yet. I assume that either (a) no one has asked them about these things or (b) no one shut their mouths long enough to actually listen to the whole story.

In addition, context changes constantly — especially after I’ve asked them a number of questions that almost always nudge them into thinking about things they haven’t previously. So more often than not, those additional details come out when I remain patient and listen.

And those details are almost always damn important.

If I interrupt and indicate this was already covered, those additional details are never spoken. So follow rule number one and assume you know nothing.

Research Rule #2

And if you ever find yourself doubting rule number one, remember rule number two:

Shut up and listen.

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Produkt-Details

• Erscheint lt. Verlag: 5.10.2015
• Sprache: englisch
• Themenwelt: Mathematik / Informatik ► Informatik ► Web / Internet
• ISBN-10: 0-9863448-1-8 / 0986344818
• ISBN-13: 978-0-9863448-1-7 / 9780986344817