We have a fairly simple theory here at Experience Solutions; if a design doesn’t work, it’s usually because the designer’s motivation and passion was lacking. We use the term ‘designer’ fairly loosely here. It may be an individual designer working on a website, a small team of architects working on a building, or a whole project team working on a completely new product or service for a company.

Whatever the definition the role of designer is critical to the success of the project. The difference between a passionate, highly motivated design team can be enormous compared to a jaded, restless, and unmotivated team. To help identify what type of designers you’re working with we’ve identified 3 types of designer motivation;

Motivation 1 – Maintaining security – If a designer is motivated because of job security alone you are likely to have problems. He or she will work competently for fear of losing their job, that next promotion or their next big pay cheque. This is a common motivation for design work, and more often than not, designers will create solutions because they are told to and paid to, and not because they want to.

Motivation 2 – Social acceptance & recognition – Some designers are motivated more by social acceptance. If they design something which is funky, cool or cutting edge, they’ll gain the respect of their peers. They may win awards or get a nice feature in an industry magazine. Sadly, the way design school works tends to encourage this behaviour. The constant sought after approval from tutors and peers through peer reviews and critiques means that student designers become accustomed to designing for designers. It’s the way the industry works too, it’s full of self-appreciative back slapping with awards, magazines and websites where other people gush about the latest and greatest.

Motivation 3 – Passion to stimulate change – Then there are those who design because of their passion for change. They see something wrong with the world and they believe it should be better. They dream of a better website, product or service, one that really works for the people using it, one that really solves the problem. These people really believe in what they do and their solutions come from the heart.

Passion is the key to successful design

It’s clear who you would want to design your project. So, how can you find someone who’s a passionate designer?

Spotting someone among the designer crowd should be fairly easy. When you’re looking through designer’s portfolios and discussing the job with them it’s a good idea to look at how they present previous jobs. Do they outline the problem they were solving, or do they just focus on the design they came up with? Do they talk about why they worked on the project, or do they prefer to quickly move on to the next job in their portfolio? Ask them about their biggest challenges and achievements and if you get the feeling that it’s all about awards, or a lack of real passion for what they were doing, you’ll know. Passion is hard to fake and you’ll know when you see it. It’s in the eyes, the tone of voice, and in the little details offered to you that you didn’t ask for.

But, what if you’re not in a position to select a new designer? Or you’ve found a designer who was passionate on different kinds of projects to this one. Well, the honest truth is that you might not be able to get them passionate about something that doesn’t flick their switch. Some people just won’t get excited by the project and they won’t be able to get fully behind it. Let’s face it, designing some services are much more exciting than others. They may well still be professional, but you might not get the added boost of passion that will make the difference behind an OK project and a great one. However, there are some things you can do to stimulate the passion in your designers:

1) Clearly define the problem

It sounds obvious, but you may not have set out clearly the purpose for the project. If you have to, write out a clear mission statement and clearly explain the reason why the problem exists. It can be really useful to get people to engage using a powerful story. For a really good read on how to use stories to influence this book ‘The Story Factor’ is excellent

2) Show them the bigger picture

Broaden the scope and show them how this project is connected to the wider picture. What else is reliant on this project working? What is reliant on that? Where do their efforts fit into it all? Although the project may not inspire them, the bigger picture might connect with them more.

3) Show them why it matters

Use real people wherever you can to show them why the problem exists. Get the end users of the system to demonstrate the issues or to talk to them in person about what they need and why it doesn’t work for them now. Help them see the people who will benefit and the real end result of their efforts.

4) Inspire them

Show them great examples of other solutions already in existence. Talk about why these work, give them details of how the solution works and what impact it has had. If you can’t find any directly relevant that’s ok, you can choose some from a different industry. The key here is to show your passion for good design to stimulate theirs too.

5) Talk about the future

Talk to them about what will happen when the project is a success. Vividly describe what a successful project looks like and talk to them about where they might get involved later down the line. If this project doesn’t excite them, but working on the bigger issue does, then they should be able to connect and see past the short term.

Don’t wait for them to ‘get passionate’, help them find it

Designers who really believe in the problem they are trying to solve are motivated to make a positive difference. It’s clear that your project needs as many of these people as you can get. Designers who are focused on security or peer recognition are driven to produce work which will not fully deliver for the people who need to use the solution. There are some clear ways to spot designers who are truly passionate, but there are also ways to stimulate the passion in those that don’t yet have it. Primarily, they need to fully understand the problem before they’ll properly engage in the solution. So don’t rely on others to find their own passion, help them understand the bigger picture to stimulate their passion.

About Damian Rees

Damian has worked as a usability and user experience consultant for over 13 years. He has worked in senior roles within companies like the BBC and National Air Traffic Services where he has researched and designed for users in a variety of different contexts including web applications, voice recognition, and air traffic control interfaces. Follow Damian on twitter @damianrees

If you live in the UK, you’ll be hard pressed to avoid The Olympics at the moment. One of the main talking points, certainly for Londoners is the traffic nightmare expected to jam the roads, underground, buses and trains. In anticipation, the powers that be have set up a website which is advertised to help people avoid traffic chaos: www.getaheadofthegames.com.

Unfortunately, we feel the website doesn’t live up to the hype and we’re surprised the user experience was so poor. Instead of moaning about it, we thought we’d use it as an example to help you avoid similar user experience issues cropping up on your website.

1. Your homepage should focus on building credibility and leading users to the main reason for their visit

Your homepage should deliver a clear, coherent message about who you are and what you offer. Any confusion or mixed messages lead to high bounce rates as users click the back button to return to the search results.

The first impressions of the getaheadofthegames.com website are that it looks like some kind of affiliate website. The use of clipart and the cheap looking logo don’t foster immediate credibility. In addition, the huge map of the UK and live twitter feed capture attention but offer very little value to the first time user who is most likely looking to plan a journey in a specific area. Although the dropdown is placed high up on the homepage to allow users to filter by their location, this could be missed by users as the pink headings, blue buttons and large green and pink map dominate attention.

The ‘plan your journey’ which we anticipate to be the biggest user requirement for the site is given much less priority in the design by being placed in the bottom right corner. Even less prioritised are the official logos behind the site, which are placed at the bottom of the page.

Its so important to establish credibility quickly. If we were working with getaheadofthegames.com we would recommend that they reorganise the layout of their homepage to de-prioritise the map and twitter feed, and instead boost the journey planner and spectator user journeys.

2. Check that any advertising and call to action buttons deliver what users expect

When setting expectations in advertising or even in the labelling on a call to action button, be sure to deliver on that expectation. If you offer a ‘book now’ button make sure users can actually start booking straight away after clicking that button.

We would expect most people coming to the getaheadofthegames.com website to be focused on solving a travel related problem. They are likely to be either looking for the best way to travel to the Olympics as a spectator, or as far away as possible so they can travel freely to their destination. Although the site offers links to ‘plan a journey’ and ‘are you a spectator’ clicking on those links takes users to a page full of text and links to other websites.

If you set an expectation in an advert or other marketing material which promises to solve a problem for your customer, make sure you can easily deliver the solution. The getaheadofthegames.com website offers help but then passes the buck and links off to several different sources. This is likely to frustrate and overwhelm users looking for a simple answer to their travel problem. We would recommend that the getaheadofthegames.com website worked more closely with other content providers to embed journey planning tools into the site rather than linking off to a variety of different locations.

3. Don’t blow your budget on ‘cool functionality’ which doesn’t offer a great deal to users

Although you and your team may be excited by some funky new gadget, widget or tool, be very clear with yourselves on the reasons why you are including it in your site. If the honest answer is that you think its cool and you want to learn more about it, you probably shouldn’t do it. Focus on whether it will really solve a problem that users need solving. When we conduct user experience research, we often speak to clients confused why their site isn’t delivering on their business objectives. When we delve a little deeper, we find that users don’t use the features they spent most of their budget and attention on developing because they don’t see the value.

Sadly, getaheadofthegames.com have clearly spent a lot of resources in developing a nicely designed, very visual, interactive travel disruption tool. Sure, it looks good and works seamlessly, but do users really need it? If you’re trying to get from Waterloo station to Russell Square, do you really need this tool to tell you that stations on the District Line from Wimbledon to Earls Court are likely to be much busier than normal? Showing the whole underground map with a date slider at the top looks interesting, but the amount of information displayed is overkill for the average user.  Is this a case of designing a cool tool, but not thinking about how much it actually solves the problem users face?

Perhaps we’re being a little harsh but we believe that simply focusing on core user needs will lead to innovative features and functionality which are exciting and really useful. If we had been involved in the getaheadofthegames.com project we would have made sure we fully understood user requirements at the outset to ensure all features and functionality were clearly mapped to priority user needs.

How to take action on your website

1) Take a look at your website right now. Ask yourself, does your homepage demonstrate how credible you are? This is particularly important for the lesser known brands. Do you make a case for why users should stay on your site? Now take a critical look at whether you’re offering a simple next step for users to start their journey. If there are more than 3 things shouting for their attention you probably want to remove the less important ones.

2) The next thing on your to do list is to take a look at whether your promises in adverts are actually realistic. Take a look at your print adverts, your banner ads, paid search ads, email marketing, and any other marketing material. Are you setting realistic expectations for users? Does your site really deliver? Now take a look at the journey from the ad through to your website. Is the journey simple? Does each step make sense? Do call to action buttons deliver on expectations? Can you remove unnecessary distractions?

3) The final thing you can do is less immediate. Next time you’re in a strategy meeting discussing planned changes for your site. Look out for any suggestions of cool content or functionality and ask if users really need it. If in doubt, ask for some budget to do some user research to clarify whether users really need it.

Running a website that really helps users is tough, and websites like getaheadofthegames.com are a good example of what to avoid.

About Damian Rees

Damian has worked as a usability and user experience consultant for over 13 years. He has worked in senior roles within companies like the BBC and National Air Traffic Services where he has researched and designed for users in a variety of different contexts including web applications, voice recognition, and air traffic control interfaces. Follow Damian on twitter @damianrees

Right now there are hundreds of thousands of people cursing themselves for forgetting their password. 20 years ago we never had this problem. It’s a modern day frustration which is one of the down sides of the Internet.

Many of us use several passwords on the web

If you want to do anything meaningful on a website in 2012, chances are you’ll have to create an account. In doing so you’ll have to create a username and password. As creatures of habit we like to use the same ones we’ve used on other sites, but in their wisdom many developers are unhappy with this idea of conformity and instead like to impose different rules to the rest. Some websites will only allow passwords with more than 6 characters, some more than 8, some force you to enter a numeric character, and others like to enforce the use of commas, apostrophe’s, and full stops in the password. My biggest bugbear is with sites that force you to use a password you’ve never used before.

All these password rules for different websites mean we have a whole string of different passwords for different websites. When we need to access a site we haven’t used for a while it can be an extremely painful process. Often by the time I gain access I’ve forgotten why I went there in the first place, but this could just be an age thing.

Of course online security is important, but us humans only have a limited capacity to remember all these passwords. I know quite a few people who’ve taken the unfortunately ironic step to write down all their passwords on a pad next to their computer.

Google has a simple idea to help us remember

Anyway, I digress. Rather than rant about remembering passwords I wanted to highlight a really nice idea I saw on Google today. In one of my more security conscious moments I decided to change passwords to a more secure one for some of the sites I rely on for business services. So earlier today I tried to access Google with my usual password and Google had remembered that it was an old password and reminded me I’d changed it. I thought this was such a nice simple solution that all sites should do the same.

What do you think? Have you any other nice examples of password recovery on the web?

About Damian Rees

Damian has worked as a usability and user experience consultant for over 13 years. He has worked in senior roles within companies like the BBC and National Air Traffic Services where he has researched and designed for users in a variety of different contexts including web applications, voice recognition, and air traffic control interfaces. Follow Damian on twitter @damianrees

I was talking to someone the other day about the new BBC homepage which employs a way to navigate through content from left to right. I thought it was well implemented, and knowing the BBC they would have user tested it thoroughly before making the call.

Anyway, the conversation swiftly moved on to horizontal scrolling and how as a ‘usability dude’ I must hate anything with a horizontal scroll bar. I tried to  explain that most of us ‘usability’ people are not against unconventional design, but we just like to see it implemented for the right reasons (because it fits with the user goal) and not for the wrong reasons (because the designer likes it and wants back slaps from peers).

Vertical scrolling, Yes. Horizontal scrolling, No.

In a talk, Jakob Nielsen once demonstrated his thoughts on horizontal scrolling by nodding his head up and down saying, "vertical scrolling, yes", then, shaking his head left and right saying, "horizontal scrolling, no".  A clever way to make a point, but digital design is never as simple as just following a rule or guideline from a so called ‘guru’. There are of course situations where a design works perfectly well going against conventions (which are typically outdated anyway). So we ask: When should you use horizontal scrolling?

Of course there’s no easy answer to that question. But when understanding the context of use and the goals users have when using the site it can become easier to decide whether to use horizontal scrolling or not.

When using horizontal scrolling can be beneficial to users

Although it’s not something we would always recommend, these examples may suit horizontal scrolling if you are keen on using it:

• Displaying a variety of visual images i.e. a photography site or design portfolio
• Displaying information in a large visual area that is not easy to see at a glance – i.e. think of a map or Google’s street map which employs horizontal scrolling to good effect
• Displaying discreet sections or slides of information – Tablets and smartphone apps employ the notion of swiping and when this is used to move from one screen from left to right it can work really well and feel completely natural. Similarly applications such as Slideshare work well in the horizontal plane (although it is arguable that this constitutes scrolling)
• Displaying a large catalogue of products or items where scrolling horizontally could display different product categories

Why you should be careful in using it

• Most mice have a vertical scrolling wheel, few have an easy way to scroll horizontally. This means most users have to manually operate the scroll mechanism. This is slowly changing with smart mice like the Apple Magic Mouse but may still take some time before they’re mainstream. In fact if you consider physical ergonomics, it’s much easier to move a finger up and down, than it is left to right. Thumbs and hands on the other hand are much more adept at a horizontal scrolling motion, so this type of navigation is likely to depend on innovations in gesture interfaces
• The experience of scrolling horizontally on some sites makes the screen judder and can have that headache inducing feel to the experience
• Controlling the speed of the scroll can be problematic, with some content whizzing past and others taking forever. Giving users the right amount of control can be difficult to get right
• We’re so used to reading left to right within the confines of a page where we make our way slowly downwards, introducing a horizontal scroll could break a fairly rigid western convention so should be used with care when reading is a core part of the user journey

Examples around the web

Interestingly Abercrombie, Hollister, and Superdry have made the decision to move away from horizontal scrolling to vertical. Shopstyle on the other hand have employed horizontal scrolling well on their site.

Like all new functionality, it should be thought through carefully and of course tested with users before taking the plunge.

Here’s some examples from around the web that we’ve found using horizontal scrolling in some way:

• http://www.bbc.co.uk/
• http://www.kiapicanto.co.za/
• http://www.cooper.com
• http://www.marianaonate.com/
• http://www.mareenfischinger.com/
• http://www.dennys.com/
• http://www.shopstyle.co.uk/

What do you think? Do you have any good examples to share?

About Damian Rees

Damian has worked as a usability and user experience consultant for over 13 years. He has worked in senior roles within companies like the BBC and National Air Traffic Services where he has researched and designed for users in a variety of different contexts including web applications, voice recognition, and air traffic control interfaces. Follow Damian on twitter @damianrees

Santa’s job gets more difficult every year. Less and less kids write to him making the elve’s lives more difficult to keep up with the latest toy trends, the population grows more each year making Santa work harder, and more and more houses are opting for wood burners or no chimneys at all.

This year Mrs Claus contacted us to make Santa’s life a little easier when he’s on deliveries. Of course we were more than happy to help in the hope we would make the Nice list this year.

Mrs Claus was worried about Santa

Mrs Claus was our client, but Santa was our user so we first had to establish the aims for the project and the client’s requirements. In our meetings with Mrs Claus it became clear why she wanted our help:

• Every year she’s up all night worrying about Santa and whether he’s safe – she wanted a way to keep track of his whereabouts without calling him all the time
• She’s worried about Santa’s growing waistline so she wanted a way to remind Santa not to eat so many mince pies on his rounds
• She was also worried that Santa should be careful not to take too many sips of sherry on his visits
• Her primary concern was that the route the elves draw up for Santa was getting more and more complex each year and she was worried Santa would get lost and miss deliveries

Santa’s requirements

Before coming up with a solution we wanted to talk with the user of anything we designed, so we had a chat with Santa to understand more about the context of use. It quickly became clear that he had a different list of requirements:

•  He wanted to keep his sightings to a minimum. With the growth of Facebook and Twitter in recent years, he was worried that he was becoming increasingly vulnerable to people being able to track him
• Rather than a route planner or sat nav, Santa would prefer a pre-defined chimney stops so he could go from chimney to chimney with the route already planned out
• Santa has been struggling to remember the sleeping places for the scary dogs, which houses had difficult roofs to land on, which chimneys were too narrow and so on. He wanted a simple way to receive all that information as he left one chimney on the way to the next
• Santa sometimes gets bored with listening to the Reindeer bickering so wanted a way to set up and manage his playlists
• Santa need a way to track his time and see how he was progressing with his delivery plan to make sure he remained on track
• Santa needed some clearly marked stops where he and the Reindeer could have a ‘comfort break’

In coming up with our solution we had to take into account the context of use:

• It would be cold so anything he used would have to be easily operated outdoors with gloves on – i.e. large buttons
• Santa would need a sleigh mounted device as well as a mobile device to update and consult whilst down a chimney

Wireframes for Santa’s interfaces

We took away all these requirements and wireframed a solution using a tablet device mounted to the sleigh console as well as a smart phone device which synched to it when Santa was on the ground. In phase 2 we will look at a separate monitoring interface for Mrs Claus and the elves to track Santa.

Santa’s Sleigh Mounted Tablet Interface

• Sightings alert  which monitors Facebook, Twitter and SMS chatter
• Next chimney stop with suggested landing places and up-to-date house intelligence
• Playlist controls
• Local time and delivery progress monitor

Sleigh mounted interface - click for fullscreen

Santa’s Smartphone Interface

• Checklist to tick off deliveries as he goes
• Ability to post updates to house intelligence including chimney dimensions, dog sleeping places…
• Mince pie and sherry sips update reminder – with an external breathalyser (we felt this was less priority so have planned this for phase 2)

Santa's smartphone interface - click for fullscreen view

Next steps – Prototype testing with Santa

We’re having to move fast on this project as you can imagine. We’ve only got a couple of weeks left! So now we’ve created the wireframes we need to test them in a prototype with Santa on a few test runs out in the sleigh with his gloves on. We’re looking at stitching finger and thumb pads into the tips of his gloves first. After some user tests we’ll refine our prototype and then start work on the visual design. We’ll keep you posted on how we get on. Wish us luck!

About Damian Rees

Damian has worked as a usability and user experience consultant for over 13 years. He has worked in senior roles within companies like the BBC and National Air Traffic Services where he has researched and designed for users in a variety of different contexts including web applications, voice recognition, and air traffic control interfaces. Follow Damian on twitter @damianrees