Headshrinker

Hello after a long break. Been a quite busy time for yours truly. Work has been super busy for the past three weeks. More on that later. Plus Halloween was loads of fun. I dressed up as Indiana Jones, which some of you may accuse me of re-costuming but I significanly upgraded my costume from the previous time I wore it. It included a better shirt and yes, a whip (a toy one since my local sex shop was all out). I went to the Rotten Tomatoes Halloween party and it was as fun as advertised. Then I went to a co-workers party and then a house party that by association I was able to go to. The house party was fun but the DJ used the fog machine way too much which led to the fire alarm going off multiple times. At work, there was also a Halloween party. Of course, all pictures can be found on my Flickr. I would have gone out again this weekend to Icer Air 2006 but alas, I caught a cold Thursday night and I am still lingering from the effects. Stupid me for not bringing a jacket on Thursday night. Also I have been in sorta low energy funk for the past month or so. Been too tired after work and on the weekends to do things I want to do. But I think I am going to break out of it tomorrow as in I can't put off things as much as I have been.

In other news, I did attend some more talks (which apparently certain people now think I am a "talk fiend" or something like that. Both talks were really good. The first was by Mitchel Resnick from the MIT Media Lab. He showed off some cool new learning toys and software which encourage creativity. I'm pretty envious of the kids that get to used them. I think the most creative uses of the toys I had when I was a kid was how many different ways I could use legos and lincoln logs to build forts that I could then blow up with my GI Joes. And see how creative I turned out. Of course, I do believe that encouraging children to be more creative is better in the long run. As many researchers have pointed out, children who are drilled in rote learning may do well on achievement tests but have trouble coming up with creative ways of applying such knowledge. The second talk I went to was by John Zimmerman from CMU. He talked about "Designing for Self" which is basically taking an identity centric focus in design to produce products and technology that makes people feel better about themselves. Its really fascinating research (such as a house that helps relieve parental stress by offering positive comments) which at times makes me envious of those in academia who can send their time researching about this stuff. But then again, I think my paycheck and not having to do 5-7 years of a PhD probably puts aside those thoughts.

Speaking of work, like I said I have been pretty darn busy these past three weeks. Probably the reason why is that i have run a study every week for the past three weeks. Which is not the best in terms of time/work management. You see, running a study is more than just running the participants. There is lots of prep time with writing scripts, talking with product teams, planning out the tasks, recruitment and other logistics. Plus then you have to do set aside several hours to run all the participants. Then you have to write a report of the findings, which involves reviewing notes and video. The problem with running back to back studies is that when you finish one, you have to prep the other. Meaning data analysis and report writing gets push aside. So I got a crapload of report writing ahead of me. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoy my job. But like any job, there are tasks which are not my favorite. I think even people with the best jobs in the world, such as Playboy photographers or the Hawaiian tropic model judges, have little things that they don't particularly love in their jobs.

Based on my whopping 4+ months of user experience job experience so far, I think there should be added lecture for any usability methods/research class titled "Practical HCI Crap You Should Know." Now I know most universities would argue that the learning the underlying theory is more important, but maybe touching on the following will be helpful.

1. Writing meaningful yet brief usability reports I think, on average, every usability report I wrote in grad school was around 15 to 20 pages. In my current job, the longest report I wrote has been 8 pages and that includes large headings, graphics, etc. My average is about 3 pages including screenshots. Most people just don't have time to read long reports so you have to make them short and to the point. And seeing how I like to ramble, it has been an adjustment for me. So I would require students to rewrite one of their reports from 30 pages to like 3. Also I would require learning how to write a brief announcment email when sending out the report to make people click on the report link instead of deleting the email.

2. Cutting video clips Usability studies are usually taped and it is usually up to the researcher to cut the video that demonstrates a certain finding. The problem is that unless you remember or write down when a certain thing took place, you have to scan through the entire video again to find it, cut it, and make into the clip. It is quite a tedious process. When I was presenting a report, I had to cut several clips from a field study I did. I had to go through many hours of video to find clips to show.

3. Taking notes In grad school, we had specifically designed note taking sheets for almost every study I did. The problem with that on the job is that you don't have to time to create one for every study. So you end up taking notes on the fly. It is not so bad if the notes are only for myself. The problem is that if anyone else wants to read my notes, i have to take extra time to rewrite them so that they can be understood by someone else.

4. Explaining ambigious results In grad school, almost all usability studies I did had some clear conclustion since the scope was rather wide. But on the job, often we test a specific UI feature or change. In one of my first studies, the product team wanted to know which of two UI options of one feature the users liked better. Turns out users hated both of them equally. While nice to know, didn't help when trying to explain it to the team. Eventually, I ran a follow-up study after some UI changes and there turned out to be a clear cut winner

5 Being wrong I don't think it was ever mentioned in grad school about what to do when you are wrong. As a usability professional, I recommend changes based on my knowledge, experience, and what the studies seems to show. But it is almost certain, that there are times when something I say is a problem doesn't turn out to be one or something I didn't even see turns out to be a major one. Yeah, a short lecture on how to bs your way out of being wrong would be helpful. Seeing that I am an excellent bs-er then I should be alright.

But like I said, I really enjoy my job and definitely am thankful everyday I get to do something I am really interested in. So yeah enjoy one of my few HCIish entries because I will most likely go back to ranting about edgeless people or conservatives in my next post. Until next time, peace.