How many times have you gone to a website, clicked on a link to view a file–say, a company’s brochure–and then sat staring at your screen for several seconds waiting for something to happen? Once a day? Once a week? Several times per month? More often than you have fingers and toes?

And how long did it take you to realize that, instead of the file displaying in your browser, it downloaded to your computer? Did you wind up clicking on the document link several times before that realization dawned on you?

Unfortunately, more often than not (and sometimes by reputable companies), we are forced into downloading documents. Sure, web programmers and webmasters can argue that it’s more convenient because it skips the step of making users look at the file and then figure out how to save it to disk for later access. This is bad for two main reasons. First, you’re assuming your file will be valuable to users before they’ve had a chance to determine that. In past user tests that I’ve conducted most people wanted to see the file before they downloaded it. This way they know if they really need to take up space on their hard drive storing your file. Can you honestly say you know what criteria your users have when evaluating whether to immediately download your document? Do you know if your document content even meets those criteria?

Bottom line: Let the user determine if your file is important enough to download by giving them the opportunity to view it in their browser first.

Second, forcing a file download on users can cause anxiety. Some users might have security concerns when downloading files, such as work computers not permitting file downloads, or concern about malicious content included with a download. Also, some users don’t know how to find downloaded files on their computers. This lack of familiarity with one’s own computer is something that cannot be entirely accounted for by programmers or designers, and it is a phenomenon that cuts across Apple and Microsoft platforms. In response to this some browsers have done a lot to make it easier to access downloads. For instance, the newest version of Safari on OS 10.7 uses visual cues to let users know a file is being downloaded and where they can access their downloads. But not all browsers use such cues.

Bottom line: You don’t know what a user can do when it comes to downloading files, so let them see the document in their browser.

Of course, this article stems only from testing I have done. Others out there might have observed something different, with the differences arising from the type of website presenting the downloadable document to the purpose for needing the document. (In fact I have had discussions with people in favor of forcing document downloads on users and they have made some excellent points.) So again, this article is only my $0.02.

Classic…and true!

UPDATE TO ARTICLE: I just found a new article on IGN detailing augmented reality in Sony’s NGP, Sony NGP: Augmented Reality Done Right. It talks, very clearly, about the limitations of AR on the Nintendo 3DS and what Sony has learned from that, and how they’ve improved upon integrating augmented reality in their new handheld.

While killing time between facilitating sessions, I ventured over to the Playstation Blog. They have an older article there (read: April 2011) I just found that details the history of augmented reality in Sony gaming products: From EyeToy to NGP: PlayStation’s Augmented Reality Legacy.

One particular quote from the article really stood out to me: “There’s a popular misconception that augmented reality is just “kid’s stuff,” but with more than eight years of experience under our belt, we’ve found there’s a wide variety of compelling and cool AR experiences that everyone can enjoy.”

This statement left me wondering: How much of this misconception stems from a lack of understanding, and how much of it stems from hardware not supporting the technology? Thinking about it, I’d have to say that the latter fostered the former. Augmented reality was really made popular first on mobile devices, but until things like gyroscopes were included in phones, augmented reality was a bit sluggish and buggy. These recent advancements in mobile devices has led to augmented reality becoming quite a useful tool. For example, over the past two years several cities in France started incorporating augmented reality into tourism and transportation information related to their cities. In Denmark there were companies developing apps for smartphones that leveraged augmented reality for similar purposes. And in the US, you can use apps to learn more about well-known landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty.

Sadly, not many people know about how great augmented reality is–even those who think of themselves as ‘techy’ have limited awareness of augmented reality. Essentially, augmented reality allows people to receive an overlay of information on the screen of their device that is relevant to their current location. In many wayfinding apps, users receive information about nearby landmarks or restaurants they have previously indicated interest in finding. That is an extremely useful, and grown up, way of using augmented reality. However, in keeping with the perception that augmented reality is part of kids’ toys, the next major item to incorporate it that got a fair amount of attention is the Nintendo 3DS.  As the proud owner of an aqua 3DS, I can tell you it’s pretty nifty. I think that,  given the purpose of the device and the hardware limitations, Nintendo did a fine job working in 3D and augmented reality as major features. But, the augmented reality feature is limited to built-in games (‘face raiders’), and AR cards that users can place on a flat surface to play minigames and boss battles with really angry dragons. And–as an added bonus–one man even tatooed an AR card on his arm and can get images to pop out of it using his 3DS. So there’s a little bit of added mileage onto augmented reality there. That being said, augmented reality is not the feature that is most-talked about by consumers or that is being played up by Nintendo–they’re all talking about the 3D image capability.

I would certainly like to see more awareness of apps like ‘AR USA’ by presslite, even though I know that walking around and using your phone as a viewfinder is a good way of slamming into things or getting robbed. (Read: People won’t do it.) But I think a very nice use of it would be in the form of in-store shopping assistants that direct you to sales by department or brand. Some retailers out there are already developing things like this, and having done research on different consumer segments, I think it would definitely appeal to the younger, more wired crowd as well as men (in general). Younger consumers have always been a group willing to try out the newest nifty tech feature offered by businesses, and men (who tend to be harder to entice to shop in stores) might find such apps can take the boring out of a shopping session.

These are all just part of my $0.02. Next I’ll likely be wondering about applying augmented reality to things like finding in-game secrets (L.A. Noire with augmented reality to guide you to clues? Meh.), or use in large financial institutions for quick updates on trends.

Monday…Another week, another observation…

Something I’ve noticed while working with technology is that remaining a moving target is a good thing. Take Apple, for example. Back in the day when the iPod was all the rage (despite that awful, awful clickwheel), other manufacturers immediately jumped in the ring with their portable MP3 player offerings, like Samsung, Rio, and Microsoft. So, by virtue of being first to market, Apple exposed the consumer want/need for portable MP3 players and also the weaknesses of the iPod for exploitation by competitors. But then Apple evolved the iPod product line–nano, shuffle, touch–all of these came over the following years accompanied by general improvements in hardware and advances in the programming languages used to support the devices’ functionality.

Basically, as the lineup of Apple products evolved so did the customer’s experience. This happened on two levels. First, there was just the validation that came with owning an Apple product. By owning an Apple portable music player, you were seen as someone who was in on the latest-and-greatest technology. And as a result you were someone who probably became a bit more fluent in the changing interaction language of portable devices that Apple was driving. The interactions that came with these devices were the second part of the evolved experience. These interactions were more physical. So, instead of interacting with menus through some thingy you probably couldn’t name on the outside of the device, you were randomizing song order by shaking your device or directly tapping the item on your device’s screen. Such interactions were novel, cool, and gave users an increased perception of control over their device.

The combination of how Apple played into the perception of their customers and the way they evolved their products made them stand out even more from their competitors. In fact, it even made some of their competitors look silly by comparison. And now, everyone is trying to do what Apple did. Some companies are doing a good job of evolving their devices to compete with Apple, but they are lacking in how they validate perceptions of their users. Other companies have done a great job of offering a good user experience and creating a validated perception of their users. For example, think of owners of Android-based phones vs. iPhone owners. Both groups of owners can claim pretty decent user experiences (depending on what they do with their device). Both definitely perceive themselves in certain ways, and the companies that market their products to each base do what they can to support those perceptions. As a result, there is some pretty heavy competition between Android and iOS. But between other mobile phones and them? Not so much.

I’m going to be curious in the coming months to see which companies it begins to hit home that good user–customer–experience can set competitors apart.

Given my lack of posts recently, I have to confess: I got tired of working hard. So, I decided to play lots and lots of videogames. The brief moments I bothered to read something interesting, I unearthed this little article: Halo, Call of Duty, and the Male Brain.

This article makes a connection between the long-standing fascination with killing/blowing things up and being male. And since it is a moderately serious article appearing on IGN–the greatest gaming website in my opinion–it’s definitely worth the 5 minutes spent taking a break. (But shameless plug for IGN aside, this is a fairly interesting article.)

Something I’ve noticed that has gone unchanged all of my years as a UX person is that, when it comes to product development & UX, companies want to know what their users are currently doing. That’s fine–companies need to be aware of the current user experience. And it’s even more fine if the company knows that what their users are currently doing is what they need to be doing, but in many instances I’ve not found that to be the case. So, much of my work has been helping companies to band aid their existing user experiences rather than innovate to repair or improve.

But it is a bit difficult getting companies to understand that, while it’s fine to constantly tinker with things here or there in an effort to fix what’s broken when it comes up, attention needs to be paid to the development of experiences based around what people need to do. Often times asking people the question, “Is this what your customer needs to do at this point?” is met with, “Well, that’s what we let them do currently.” And the discussion from that point goes on to how to develop the same experience in a new package. If I dig further to understand why the current experience is what it is, I usually find that little or no research has been done around actual tasks. So, many times I see companies creating processes based around “We know someone wants to buy a kitchen cart.” But there is no consideration to how people think about certain activites and when they need to perform those activities.

The other sad–and frustrating–thing I have found is, companies are not leveraging their researchers appropriately. Most of the time the researchers are relegated to a lab environment where the methodology is canned: Limited activities are performed with restricted outputs. This gets old and useless very quick. Allowing UX researchers to study what users need is an integral part of product development as, not only will it lead to the creation of a better user experience when all is said and done, but it also saves the company money in the long term by cutting down on nitpicky fixes that cost man hours and development dollars.

Alas, it is that last point that is the hardest to communicate despite being the most important. But it is one worth insisting upon communicating to others. It not only benefits the company overall, but it also keeps the UX team relevant within the organization.

Most people who know me well as a professional are aware of my addiction to Harvard Business Review. To many of my colleagues and previous clients, why I like HBR is a mystery. Well, it should be a mystery no more: Experience Co-creation.

Yes, UXers, HBR does have articles related to UX that you will find interesting. What I like about this particular article is how personally relevant it is for me. I’m currently working as a researcher at a company that has recently hired a VP of Customer Experience. At first, I wasn’t sure what that would mean–customer experience is a fairly nebulous term to me. What is a ‘customer’ varies by industry, but where I do my work it can mean someone in a store, someone online, someone on a mobile phone, someone on a telephone, or a business person trying to create a relationship. So ‘customer experience’, by extension, is going to cover a very wide set of activities. Given such a large scope, how can one person possibly have any impact?

Well, the HBR article linked above proposes the concept of experience co-creation. For those of us who have been around for a while, that terms sounds similar to the dreaded concept of bringing users in and including them in actual design sessions. My past experience with that has shown me business is not a fan of such a process, and neither are some researchers. However, after working closely with organizations (read: Not as an offsite vendor), I’m inclined to think there are some merits. Especially in this day and age where technology is making brick-and-mortar locations less relevant, why not find a way to engage directly with your actual customers?

Honestly, recruiters can find people similar to your customers–maybe even people who are actual customers. However, you know for certain that someone in your store or on your website is an actual or prospective customer, and that makes them ideal for such co-creation processes. So why not grab them? Why not find out what you do currently that made them stop in or purchase from you? Why not find out why they didn’t purchase from you, and what would have tilted the scale in your favor? It’s these people that need to be addressed if companies want to improve their experiences.

And honestly, if you want to revolutionize your designs, wouldn’t that be a good way to gauge just how far you can push your new ideas? Or, to gain perspective on different pathways of development?

Often times, UX teams are the baseball bats used by business and design teams to batter one another into submission. This is natural: UX research makes it a point to call out the good and the bad in a design, and other teams will hang on these findings to use them as ammunition against one another. At some point this is not the only kind of attention you want to be getting as it makes a UX team seem limited. Whether or not a team can move beyond that depends partly on the team and partly on the environment in which it operates. My personal experience has shown that the more restrictive a UX team lead is, the more likely a UX team is to be perceived as ‘limited’. (And in some instances, the more likely it is that team members are bored and unhappy.)

For instance, offering only design commentary is limiting because the UX team isn’t helping to solve the problems–or even encouraging solving the problems. Offering only design commentary is similar to being a trained monkey: You test a design, report the test results, and give the results to the project team. But what happens after that? What benefit does the UX team offer beyond “10 out of 12 users did X when on Y page?” Not a lot. The next time anyone will think of the UX team after that will be when they need to “prove” or “disprove” something to some other group in the organization. And after a while, project teams will begin to learn that certain things don’t work while certain others do–thereby making the UX team less useful.

So what’s my point here? My point is this: MAKE PROJECT TEAMS THINK. It’s very easy to report what you see in a study, and maybe occasionally point out some vague suggestion for improvement. However, it’s more interesting to start discussions around adapting designs to advancing technology, or revolutionizing existing designs by presenting common tasks in novel ways. As UXers, we should have some basic understanding of recent technological advancements, and be able to talk about what those advancements mean for design and user behavior. We should be fostering innovation if we want to get attention.

Yet this seems to be frowned upon by some team leads. To someone like me, who has worn the hats of information architect, interaction designer, and researcher, this is puzzling and frustrating. UXers should be strong in one particular area, but competent in others if they are to be truly effective as UX people. And demonstrating the ability to work with some reasonable competency in multiple areas–and speak intelligently about each area–is a way to gain the attention and respect of other teams. It’s a way of remaining relevant.

How is that bad?

Wired has an awesome article today about nerve-electronic hybrids: Nerve-Electronic Hybrid Could Meld Mind and Machine.

At first when I saw the above article’s title, I thought Toyota had managed to take the Prius to a whole new level. Thankfully I was wrong, as this article signals something that can be so much more beneficial to mankind than being directly wired to a vehicle. It could actually be used to refine prosthetics, even more so than this: Bionic breakthrough: The prosthetic arm that amputees control with their MIND.

If our scientists can actually create such amazing technology as mind-controlled prosthetics, nerve-electronic hybrids, and gaze-controlled interactions…Why are so many interfaces out there plagued with usability issues? Have we not learned enough about the human mind and its capabilities to design usable and useful interfaces? The platforms on which we create have moved–quite successfully–beyond the point-and-click interfaces most of us grew up using, meaning that as UX specialists we can create more intuitive interaction paradigms for users. And with advancements in programming languages (creation of HTML 5, jQuery updates), there is no reason why designers and programmers alike can’t support bringing new interactions to life.

So, why do I keep seeing silly things like fancy search tools with too many clicks and inappropriately spaced buttons, links, and checkboxes on modern websites? It makes no sense.

From Wired: Robot Nurses Are Less Weird When They Don’t Talk.

Growing up, I always thought Rosie from the Jetsons was the coolest thing ever: She spoke, she sassed, she cleaned–absolutely awesome. Well, with all the advancements in robotics we’ve not only hit the Rosie level, we’ve surpassed it. Robots are now being used to assist nurses, which is definitely an interesting concept. As the author of the article points out, the general population knows robots through assembly lines and automated processes, and also through popular media. (Skynet, anyone?) So, the concept of using robots in a healthcare environment is quite a jump.

Now, from a technical standpoint, this is great. The fact that robots have advanced to a point where researchers are ready to try them out in a healthcare environment is amazing. And to think about the work that could be done studying how medical staff learns to work with a robotic addition to their team screams publication.

However, what about patients? Well, the cited article actually relates the results of a study on patient acceptance of a robotic nurse. There were 2 conditions in this study worth noting: Speaking robot nurse, and silent robot nurse. In both conditions, participants were to receive a soothing stroke simulating a gentle cleaning gesture that would typically be performed by a real nurse. The research team hypothesized that participants would be more accepting of the robot nurse when it spoke to them, informing them of its intent to clean them. Interestingly, the opposite was true: Participants were less unsettled by the robot nurse when it DIDN’T speak to them.

I have to admit, from my perspective I’m actually surprised there was a difference between scenarios. A healthcare setting is very intimate and occasionally emotionally charged, so it is necessary for there to be some level of trust between patient and caregiver if the patient is to even let the medical staff perform their duties. This trust is built not only on regard for expertise, but also on empathy. Robots are not only poorly understood by the general public, but they aren’t exactly known for their ability to emotionally bond with humans. Hence, my surprise.

That being said, I do think there is a definite chance for integrating robots into healthcare at such a personal level. I imagine that there actually is a group of patients out there who will naturally find such a thing curious and exciting and will be open to having a robot nurse assist during a healthcare visit. And of course as such incorporation becomes more and more common, it will seem more and more normal for younger patients that robots are a part of their visits to a hospital or clinic. I can see this be a problematic thing for the elderly, the paranoid, the technophobe, and the poorly educated. (For reasons I’m sure we can all intuit from my descriptions.)

It will be interesting to me to see how the acceptance level changes as the robots become more anthropomorphic. If the results of this study can be replicated by other researchers, then I would venture to say that the more human-like these robot nurses begin to look, the creepier it will seem if there are any robot ‘tells’ signaling to patients that their nurse is made of metal. So by my prediction, the success of a robot in the healthcare setting–at least in terms of being accepted by patients–is an all or nothing prospect. The robot will have to appear completely human in form, response, and voice or patients will fully reject it.

Wonder what anyone else thinks about this…