message design and content creation: info design

Message Design and Content Creation:

Info Design

12 February 2008

Kathy E. Gill

Kathy E. Gill, uwdigitalmedia.org

Agenda

Reading Review Lecture Lab Team/Project


Recap: Our goal is flow

The process of an optimal experience The activity feels seamless It is intrinsically enjoyable Individual loses self-consciousness


Five Tests of Effectiveness (1/2)

Time to learn How long does it take for typical members of the community to learn how to complete task?

Speed of performance How long does it take to perform relevant benchmarks?

Rate of errors by users How many and what kinds of errors are commonly made during typical applications?


Five Tests of Effectiveness (2/2)

Retention over time Frequency of use and ease of learning help make for better user retention

Subjective satisfaction Allow for user feedback – interviews (focus groups), online surveys (both free-form comments and satisfaction scales).


Design for Diversity

Personality differences Cultural and international diversity Users with disabilities Elderly users Anything else?


Raskin’s Rules

The user should set the pace of the interaction

Error avoidance, facilitated with “undo/redo”

Accessible to the naïve, efficient for the expert


Errors are not mistakes!

Mistakes are the result of conscious deliberation

Slips result from automatic behaviorNorman’s Types: capture, description, data-

driven, associative activation, loss-of-activation and mode errors


Good Error Messages

Polite Illuminating Treat the user with respect


Design for Error

Minimize occurrence by understanding the causes of errors

Make detection and recovery easier Change the attitude toward error from

“stupid user” to “stupid design”


One small problem:

When you design an error-tolerant system, people come to rely on that system (it had best be reliable!)Anti-lock brakes (ABS)Blade guard on circular sawAnything else?


To increase errors, add a little:

Social pressure Time pressure Economic pressure

In other words, real life!


Resultant design philosophy:

Put knowledge in the world (iow, make options visible)

Remember the three questions:Where am I, where can I go, where have I

been? Design for errors


Sitemaps (1/2)

Organizing content – the backbone of your information architecture

It is human tendency to organize things to make them easier to retrieve


Sitemaps (2/2)

How to learn how people think about your contentObserveVisit competitor web sitesEvaluate server logsCard sorts


Card sort (1/3)

List of information by topic Cards (or post-it notes for affinity

diagram) Group Name the group


Card sort (2/3)

Look for patterns – dominant organization scheme

Adjust for consistency ID categories that don’t match

May be featuresMay just be oddball

Test the resulting patterns


Card sort (3/3)

Category refinement = taxonomy Examples:

http://eat.epicurious.com/ http://www.outpost.com/ http://www.bestbuy.com/ http://news.google.com/


Next Week:

Personas

message design and content creation: info design

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