Linknote — — 66 words

Human-centred approaches — User experience — User research

Marry data science with user research — ethical design depends on it — Tony Ho Tran — dscout

Illustration of Ovetta Sampson

Why do unethical products keep being designed? According to Ovetta Sampson, it’s because of an unnecessary disconnect between user researchers and data scientists.

…it’s easier to say, “I’m just the engineer” or ”I’m just the numbers guy.” It allows us to divorce ourselves from the responsibility of what that data can do to people.

See also: ‘What’ means nothing unless you know ‘why’

Linknote — — 90 words

Accessibility — Business — Human-centred approaches — Technology — Web

Why much of the internet is closed off to blind people — James Jeffrey — BBC News

Visually impaired person using the web

The most notable thing about this article is the sorry list of weak excuses offered up by businesses who can’t be bothered to make their websites accessible.

“…a blind person can always ring Domino’s toll-free number and order that way…”
Why should they have to?
“…there is no clear objective guidance on what constitutes an ‘accessible’ website.”
O rly?
“The online environment was never intended to be covered by the ADA…”
Says who?

How about just doing the basics that will help include your customers, and your fellow human beings?

Linknote — — 43 words

User experience — User research

Work:

Contextual enquiry with members of staff working with course materials digitally — Website and Communications Blog

Staff foam board

As part of our comprehensive programme of user research in support of the Learn Foundations project, the User Experience Service has conducted contextual enquiry to better understand the contexts and needs of staff members working with Learn. This blog post summarises our findings.

Linknote — — 72 words

Human-centred approaches — Technology — User experience

The flow — Simon Wilson

Self-checkout machines may seem like an easy target for critcism. But there’s a really interesting point here about what happens when people get used to a new technology, their flow changes — but the technology hasn’t updated to adapt to people’s new behaviour.

Happens all the time — people are used to these things but the machines aren’t used to what the people now do. I am here to correct the machines.

Linknote — — 67 words

User experience — User research

Understanding design better by looking from different levels of magnification — Nicola Dobiecka — Website and Communications Blog

Screenshot from Powers of Ten showing a man having a picnic

My colleague Nicola Dobiecka wrote this brilliant blog post about how designers need to take different approaches depending on the level they are working at. It builds on [Jared Spool’s analogy](https://playbook.uie.com/blog/zooming-in-and-out-of-ux-design-resolutions) with Charles and Ray Eames’ classic film Powers of Ten.

> Essentially, colleagues at different levels of the organisation have different perspectives. All valid, but all require different skills and processes.

Linknote — — 62 words

Information architecture — User experience — User research

Work:

First click tests — building up the elements of user experience for Learn Foundations — Website and Communications Blog

First click heatmap

> We had developed an information architecture and tree tests as part of our programme of user research for Learn Foundations. The next step was to use first click tests to pit the new template against existing courses.

The latest post in my series for the Website and Communications blog about our user research work around the University of Edinburgh’s virtual learning environment.

Linknote — — 178 words

Human-centred approaches

The double diamond, 15 years on… — Cat Drew — Design Council

It’s 15 years since the Design Council came up with the double diamond, a model of the design process.

I find it useful as a general guide, although it does seem to confuse many people who assume it to be a strictly linear process. Recent conversations I’ve had at both the Service Design Academy and work have shown me that it remains a challenge to truly convey the complexity of a design process, and that the double diamond may in fact hinder this.

As always, it’s about having the right approach and mindset, rather than expecting an off-the-shelf tool or model to fix all your problems. Cat Drew’s article points this out:

But following a toolkit does not equal designing a good solution to the right problem. It is as much about the mindsets as the tools (e.g. being humble and open to ideas coming from everywhere and changing as a result of feedback, curious about what’s really going on and how things are working or not and working as teams rather than as a lone genius).

Article — — 52 words

Service design — User experience — User research

Work:

Slides from my Edinburgh UX meetup talk on Monday 2 September 2019, about the user research we have been conducting around the needs of students and staff working with course materials digitally at the University of Edinburgh. See the more detailed blog posts about this project over at the Website and Communications team blog.