Mobile for business users

As I mentioned in a previous blog, Oracle Fusion Apps breaks with Oracle's past in the sense that the user interaction is built from a user perspective. Rather than exposing a datamodel or a business process to the user, they have designed the user interface based on information they have gathered about their user. Their website tells this compelling story, go check it out (after finishing this blog ;).

The world goes mobile

These days you can't just design for the desktop anymore. People use other devices like tablets and mobile phones and these devices are showing up in the workplace more and more. On top of that, people are working from different locations: from the office, from home, en route, or wherever they happen to be. This creates a new challenge when creating services or application. Take for example a HR self service application or an expense report application. Employees expect this functionality to be available everywhere, and on all devices.
At the other hand, organizations are struggling with the application of 'apps'. When I started programming, every piece of software had to have an API. Then the world realized that you want to integrate systems in heterogeneous landscapes and every piece of software needed to have a 'service interface'. Now that we have apps, every piece of software I realize needs to have a REST API so that people can create an app for that. The problem with this approach is that creating a service interface on every piece of software does not create a good service oriented architecture and creating a mobile interface for every piece of software does not create a good mobile user experience for your customers, employees and partners. So how should you approach this?

Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Patterns and Guidelines 

The ADF User Experience patterns and guidelines site is a very good starting point for organizations that want to start using mobile for their applications. The site has four sections:

1. Design guidelines. This section explains that mobile design differs from designing for desktops. It  then states 10 mobile design guidelines. The most important ones are at the top: know your user and define the essential mobile task
2. Know your user is a separate section that talks about getting to know your user. You have to revisit your idea of your user and determine who will use your application on a mobile device and in what context this will happen. Creating personas is a very good technique that you can apply. The site has some references to this technique at the bottom. 
3. Create a mobile task flow. This section explains how your mobile tasks fit in the overall business process. Unfortunately this section is rather short and uses flow charting to show the flow in the user interface, and not the overall business process. It is very important that the business process and the (mobile) user interaction that is designed from the perspective of the user are aligned: otherwise you get into trouble with rules and regulations that exist in your organization for the business process that people are accessing using their mobile device.
4. Mobile design patterns. Users may not be used to using mobile applications for work, they use it at home and in their personal lives all the time. So using patterns that people are familiair with is important. You as a developer doesn't have to re-invent the wheel when creating the mobile tasks and your users are happy because the application works the way they expect. This will save money because there will less calls to the helpdesk, less errors and your application will actually be used ;)

OBUG Connect

Ultan Ó Broin and me will present some mobile design patterns that are defined in the process of designing mobile applications for Fusion apps at OBUG connect 2013, this afternoon. We will explain the importance of patterns and show some of the patterns that can be built with either ADF Mobile, or the native platform of a device.

Next: apply!

The next step is that projects start using these techniques to built user interaction for professional users, like we have been doing for consumer software for a long time. It is time that professionals get the user experience they deserve and need to be productive and happy while doing their job!

User scenarios | why & how

Designing Vennster.nl | part 3

In my last 2 blogs I explained that in the life cycle of experiencing the services/products of your company, users of your website can be visitors, customers or relations.

I also explained the importance of knowing the needs, wishes, knowledge level and habits of the users of your website and how to personalize this information by creating personas.

In this blog I will explain how stories of how a persona interacts with a website/application (scenario), puts the persona in motion and how this helps you to design a website in which the navigation steps are obvious to a user.

Writing scenarios

Scenarios put personas in motion. Scenarios are stories of how a persona interacts with a website/application. The persona is the character, a scenario is the plot. I wrote scenarios for each persona visiting the Vennster website-to-be.

In the scenarios I described:

• The most important situation in which the future users of the Vennster website,  Afra, Bernice or Carl would use Vennster.nl – I set the scene
• What Afra, Bernice or Carl want to achieve while visiting our website
• Which steps they would take including their thoughts and considerations at each step
• What feedback or guidance they expect from the website.

Underneath 2 parts of a scenario I wrote for Carl – the persona representing the Vennster relation.

The benefits of scenarios

 

• By writing down in a scenario what a persona wants and expects from your website/application what he thinks, assumes and how he acts, you create:
• A story which makes the persona come to live for all people involved in the design/development process of the website/application. – This helps them to reason from the user context instead of their own context
• An indication of the navigation structure: the user takes steps in a certain sequence to achieve his goal – make sure the website/application supports this.
• Ideas for new functionality which is needed by the user; he wants to accomplish something - the application should provide him the means for this.
• Recognition and acknowledgement from users. When confronting them with the right scenarios you will receive remarks like: “Yes I see…, this is what I meant, I only couldn’t find the right words for it myself.” You actually help users to formulate or order thoughts they sometimes even aren’t aware of.

• Scenarios also include what can go wrong by describing typical problems that occur and how the characters in the scenario solve these problems.
• Scenarios contain information about what feedback a user expects at which moment when using the website/application. Make sure you supply them with this feedback.

Personas give you an indication of who the users are. User scenarios provide information on how users will be interacting with the website/application you intent to design.  Therefore personas as well as scenarios are crucial to be able to develop a website/application for visitors/users to achieve what they really want/need.

N.B. The scenarios describe the most probable cases that the user will need and that you want to support. Keep them in mind when designing and developing your website or application. However, as Alan Coopers states in one of his design axioms:  “Design for the probable; provide for the possible.”  In other words, the use of scenarios shouldn't result in a restricted user interface. It should result in a structure that is optimized for the most probable usage scenarios. The more exotic or less frequent scenarios should obviously still be possible and accessible. Think for example about changing your personal data on an e-commerce site. This is less important than the ordering of products, but you still make it possible for users to execute this task.

With the personas and scenarios for Vennster.nl, I gathered crucial content for the User eXperience Design Quadrants model (XDQ copyright 2009 by Akendi) which I use as a guideline to great UX-design.

In my next blog I will tell you more about the XDQ-model and how I use it while defining the UX for Vennster.nl 

Personas | what, why & how

Designing Vennster.nl | part 2 

In my last blog I explained that in the lifecycle of experiencing the services/products of your company, users of your website can be visitors, customers or relations.

In every phase of the lifecycle, a user has different needs regarding the website.

To be able to create a successful, user-friendly website or application, every decision you take, whether you are part of the marketing team, the design team or the development team, should be based on what you know about the user.

But be aware of the fact that YOU are NOT the users/visitors of your website/ application.

For example:

A manager is looking at an application which is designed to be used by the customer service department within his company. He judges it and says: “I don’t understand this button!” He himself will never use the tool. His service people are working with the tool every day, therefore they have different expectations and requirements than their chief executive. For them this criticized shortcut key is one of the features they like most about the application, saving them time in processing the calls.

It is important to realize that:

• Your visitors have different goals than you have.
• Users/visitors don’t care about the way the product is created as you do. They have no interest in how the carefully crafted navigation system that you are selling them works, as long as they can accomplish their goals.
• User/visitors have different skills, background, education and interests.

As you can see from this, you are not the (target) visitor of the application or the website, and… the users/visitors of your website aren’t all alike!

Creating a realistic character sketch which represents one or more segments of the website’s or applications target audience (a persona) helps you visualizing the user(s) of your website. This then helps you focus your effort on certain personas and aides in your decision-making during planning, design and realization.

Creating personas

During my search for user needs, - characteristics and their behavior regarding our own website I learned about them through direct contact. For example by doing user research like: 

• User interviews and field studies; 
• User surveys.

If you don’t have the opportunity to meet your user(s), doing desk research can also provide you with the necessary information to collect information about users.

I came to know about the goals, the behavior and the attitude of the different users and found information about their background and knowledge level regarding the website we want to design and develop.

With the information I gathered from the research, I was able to create 3 realistic character sketches (personas) which represent the different users of our Vennster website.

Personas put a face on all the user research. Each persona has a name and a face (by means of a photo), a profile and a quote from the persona that captures his/her essence and serves as one of the initial things to get a quick sense of that persona. A persona also includes personal information, domain specific information, and information about his or her computer and internet usage.  In addition to all this information it’s key to also add the business objectives you have for the persona.

For Vennster.nl I created 3 personas:

• the visitor (Afra - Looking for Vennsters experience);
• the customer (Bernice - Satisfied with the Vennster consultant);
• the relation (Carl – How can Vennster and my company cooperate?).

Underneath for example part of the description of Carl - the persona representing the Vennster relation.

Besides the information about the characteristics and an indication of their lifestyle and identity, the description of what motivates them, their experience with computers, internet and which websites they prefer helps to give the character more depth in areas that are relevant for our website. 

Prioritizing personas

Sometimes you find personas have conflicting needs with regards to the website. In our case the technical persona (Carl) knows the jargon but the business user (Afra) is not familiar with the technical terms. A way of dealing with that conflict is to prioritize the personas.

Together with Vennsters management I figured out which persona is the most important to satisfy by deciding which one is the most (financially) valuable to Vennster as a company.  This primary persona is the one for whom we will optimize the site.

Furthermore we as Vennster decided what we will do with the needs of the other personas. Possible solutions are micro sites, a blog for the more technical user, etc. 

The benefits of personas

As this example shows, personas have the following benefits:

• Personas bring focus.
• Personas build empathy, not only because of the fact that they have a face and a name, but also because it is as if you really know them personally.
• Personas encourage consensus. They bring the marketing-, design-, development team together and create one shared vision of exactly whom the team is designing for and what the users want:
• Business development; developing a strategy that fits the client.
• Marketing; seducing the user/visitor.
• Technical development;  developing with the user in mind.

• Personas create efficiency. They help the whole team to decide what to create in the first place.
• Personas lead to better decisions; every decision the team makes can be linked to users in a defensible way.

Source of information: 'The User Is Always Right' by S.Mulder with Z.Yaar.

Above mentioned benefits indicate the role of personas in the UX design process. Using personas ensures that marketers, copywriters, designers and developers during the development of the site do not lose sight of the users/visitors when taking crucial decisions.

In my next blog I will tell you more on how to put personas in motion by making them the main characters in user scenarios - stories of how a persona interacts with Vennster.nl - and why doing this helps you design and develop a usable website/application.

 

Website users in different stages of the experience lifecycle

Creating Vennster.nl - Part 1

As you might know we as Vennster are an independent company since the beginning of 2011. As part of the process, we changed our name and our branding style. Now it’s time to develop our own website - Vennster.nl. Of course we do that in a way we also would when designing a website for one of our customers using the appropriate methods and tools.

The first and most important step is to determine who the target audience of our website is.

In the lifecycle of experiencing the services/products of your company, users of your website can be in different stages. They can be…

…Visitors

• Don’t know you (very well)
• Become aware of you: the company & the people
• Explore your services/products
• Compare your company with similar companies
• Might become a customer

…Customers

• Are already making use of your services/products
• Wonder what more you have to offer
• Want to know what there is to benefit

…Relations

• Know you very well – are loyal fans
• Need information in more depth
• Want to know about new things
• Want to share knowledge
• Might recommend your services/products to others

All three user types…

• ...have different needs when visiting the site.
  Relations are familiar with your way of doing business, the methods you use. Visitors might not be, they need more explanation.
• ...look at the information from different points of view.
• ...might enter a website via different channels. Therefore you need to be sure that your website is findable in all different ways. Visitors will use Google, customers might use (part of) the URL and relations may have (a certain page of) your website in their list of favorites. Therefore users will not always land on your homepage but will very likely end up somewhere else in your site. This means you have to make sure that it is easy to navigate from anywhere in the website. If you want to know more about ‘the Total Experience Lifecycle’ check out the website of Akendi, partner from Vennster in UX-design from Canada: http://www.akendi.com/end-to-end-experience-design-process/akendi-experience-lifecycle.php.

First we determined who we want to target with our website. Due to the nature of our services our target audience consists of people with very different professions and skills. In order to find out who these users of our Vennster.nl-site really are, we used a common technique: describing personas; a realistic picture of a person that represents a specific part of the target group for the service/product/website we have to offer them. In our case there is a need for personas in different stages of the relationship describing the visitor, the customer and the relation.

In my next blog I will explain how we created such a realistic picture and why this is necessary.