Recent Post on Freelance Is Good...

http://www.freelanceisgood.com/2014/11/priya-shah-ux-freelancer.html

Freelance to me is like being in a relationship. 

I’ve always been intrigued by freelance…. But I was always scared to start a relationship with freelance. Freelance was charming and promised me a life of true love and told me I would only do all the things I loved doing and I would be rewarded for committing 100%.  

But like I said, I was scared to start a new life with freelance. Unpredictable and inconsistent were some concerns I had about leaving my comfort zone of a secure relationship with those that I had been around for decades.

But like Lisa mentioned in her post - at some point, everything becomes incredibly clear and sometimes the decision, though frightening, is also empowering. The breakup hurts and it’s scary BUT only because that’s all you’ve known up until that point. That’s what happened to me earlier this year. 

But I’m proud to say that freelance and I have been going steady now for 10 months. Freelance has treated me well so far, respected me and showed me that there is a whole other world out there.

Okay, so enough with the relationship analogy. I’m boring myself with it now.  So what the hell do I do?

I do UX. I’m a user experience consultant. It’s a hot term these days – pretty much every agency and company in Boston is looking for good UX people. I heard one agency actually has 24 openings for UX so if you are thinking of starting your career or making a change – you should consider UX.

I started in UX when no one really cared much about it in the infancy stages of the internet. I wouldn’t say that I knew UX was what I always wanted to do. It really was really just a thing that I started doing as part of my job when I was working for a technology consulting firm. 

Before I knew it, some early adopters like Breakaway Solutions started actual UX departments and it wasn’t long before I found myself there. Fast forward 20 years, I’m not only in it, but I managed to head up the UX practices at two of the largest advertising agencies in Boston over the last ten years.

I always tell everyone that what I do isn’t very hard. In fact, I think a lot of it is just common sense and thinking things through logically.  All you have to be able to do is figure out all the pieces of the puzzles and simply put them together in a way that makes the best strategic sense. But the other part of the puzzle is probably the most important and oddly enough my college major was in it…. Psychology. Imagine that. Actually using your college degree for something!

Psychology is everything, no matter what field you are in. It’s about understanding your audience, what they like, don’t like, and, at the end of the day, making them feel good. That’s basically what I do in UX. I figure out my audience, their needs and make experiences that make a difference to that person. Earth shattering? No. Saving lives? No.  But I take away frustration and replace it with value.

I truly love what I do. I love figuring things out, organizing information and creating experiences. In the words of Sir James Dyson, “I just like things to work properly.”

How do I do that? Check out my website utopia46.com for all those details, there is actually some methodology behind it but the purpose of this is to share my experience thus far.

1.     Don’t be scared. If you are good at what you do and good to people, good will come your way. 

2.     Keep searching for that balance. Don’t settle for status quo. Life is too short to spend it at work all the time. There is a beach, child, spouse, boyfriend, Crossfit class, girlfriend, pet, parent, friend, cookie, ocean, boat, book or plane out there waiting for you.  Go join the fun. We live in an incredible world with technology today that allows you to embrace a world outside of one building. Use it to your advantage.

3.     Keep learning. Full time or freelance. There is a world of knowledge out there to consume. It doesn’t have to be related to your field… just keep learning – I guarantee you, it will help you at some random point in some random meeting.

4.     Be nice to people. One of my favorite things about joining the freelance world was that when I changed my LinkedIn profile to independent UX consultant, my phone and email blew up with many folks that I had worked with in the last 20 years. The number one reason most said they wanted to bring me on? They just wanted to work together again and you know what, so did I. 

5.     Help others. This dovetails with the one above but I believe in this one the most. Not everyone is as confident or sure. Help them, be a mentor. We’ve all had mentors along the way. I’ve had so many. Many that probably didn’t even realize they were on my personal board of directors.  We all need guidance. I still do and heavily rely on mine. You will learn more about yourself when you do mentor others.

So that’s it. If you are curious about UX or need UX help, give me a call. Since I started on my own, I’ve had the pleasure of working with The Boston Globe, Hood, Harvard Medical School, Travelers Insurance, Trip Advisor, NSTAR, PieHole Whiskey, a luxury Italian footwear company and many local agencies….  I love what I do. I love controlling my schedule. I love getting to work with all these great folks I’ve worked with in the past. I love getting time to spend with my children and husband. 

I think it’s safe to say Freelance and I may just be in it for the long haul!

See more at http://www.freelanceisgood.com/2014/11/priya-shah-ux-freelancer.html

10 Super Bowl Lessons Learned By My Four Year Old This Year

My kids loved watching the Superbowl this year. But they also learned some important lessons... okay, maybe I had to explain them a little, but still ... lessons perhaps all of us can learn as well.


1. DO YOUR JOB. It does matter, even when no one may know who you are, your job matters.

2. Stay focused and don’t listen to the chirpers. They are out there to distract you. Let them chirp, you do what you need to do.

3. Stay in the moment to be the best you can at THAT moment, even when all odds and seconds are stacked against you.

4. Give credit to other members of your team. Every play counts towards the win.

5. It takes both older, experienced players and young, skilled players to create a great team.

6. Study and remember all the practices and plays. You may find it tedious to practice them over and over but one will come in handy before you know it.

7. Listen to your coaches. They have the whole story in mind, but know they are not infallible, just like you.

8. You may not get to meet every single person but know that there are always a huge number of fans/supporters that want you to succeed, use that energy to fuel you.

9. Tom Brady is an amazing athlete who still remembers to thank his parents.

10. Team loyalty is important, pick one and stand by them through thick and thin. If you are lucky and wicked smaarht, your team happens to be the New England Patriots.

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Trusting Your Intuition While Hiring and Getting Hired

Show perspective, not pedigree.

Recently, our CEO Karen Kaplan wrote a great piece that was featured in The Huffington Post titled: "How to Get Hired: Show Perspective, Not Pedigree." In this article, she covers various aspects in hiring the right person. Aspects like diversity, character, openness, collaborative, someone who is comfortable with the uncomfortable, confident yet humble and most importantly willing to work hard.

Kaplan writes, "One of the founding fathers of the advertising industry, Bill Bernbach, once said, "Throw out the resume. Hire on character." He believed -- and I do, too -- that you can hire smart people, or you can hire nice people, but the way to win is to find ambitious, curious people who are both smart AND nice."

This is not new thinking by any means, but we are in the age of highly qualified, skilled, over educated people entering our lives constantly. You are probably one of them. So what will help you get the job vs. that next person. You, as a person. The smile you may have, the warmth you bring to a room, the calmness that you may present while explaining a complicated process.  I guess it's just called being human.  These are the people who will succeed and move through the ranks.

"Priya has a tough time with numbers and grasping concepts, it's best not to expect too much from her." 

I'm one of those folks that did well in life not due to my stellar academic background, in fact I still have a report card somewhere from middle school where my math teacher stated "Priya has a tough time with numbers and grasping concepts, it's best not to expect too much from her." Yah, awesome freakin teacher - isn't that against the law to say that? HA! I'd love to show him where I am today as a Senior Vice President at one of the largest advertising firms in Boston.

Strive for a higher EQ vs. IQ.

My point here is at some point it became clear to me that common sense and striving for a higher EQ (emotional quotient) vs. IQ (intelligence quotient) is what will define success for me.  So I focussed on that strength of mine.  Now this isn't to say that I'm not smart, or don't know anything. I won't sell myself short either… you don't get to go to Boston College without a little knowledge and know how!

Hire based on intuition.

My first manager at a firm called Clarke & Company hired me back in 1994 based not on my transcript but on character, charisma, willingness to learn and do hard work. They hired me based on their INTUITION that I would do well and I did. I remember that all the time when I meet people and yes you will see me psychoanalyzing you with a smile on my face when I first meet you to figure out who you really are.  But I will say my intuition and gut feelings have yet to fail me.

Personal Case Study.

Here's another first hand of experience that highlights all the aspects of this post.

As a working mom, one of your hardest decisions that you are sometimes forced to make as early as your baby hardly turns 10 weeks old is to bring a complete stranger into your house to take care of your newborn. There are so many different feelings that take place as a new mom and you tend to question everything about yourself and every decision you make as you place your most precious love in this persons hands.

This person after all will now be spending potentially more time with your child than you…. and that's hard to stomach. Four years ago, Suhani came into our lives and the time came to find someone to take care of her so that we could continue working. We interviewed many people, very qualified people. But I chose to go with my gut and I just wasn't getting a good feeling from anyone.
 
Then Fanny was recommended to me. On paper, she didn't seem like a great fit, she hardly spoke english though she had taken care of children for over 20 years. Then we met her. Her warmth and love immediately came across when she saw Suhani and picked her up and knew exactly what to do with her. Suddenly the fact that she only spoke spanish seemed like a ridiculous reason not to hire her. 


She was a good person and I'm so glad I trusted my gut.


We were blessed to find her - an incredibly loving, caring nanny. She and her husband have now cared for Suhani and Arjun for the last four years and they've taken care of us as well. 


Today is actually their last day with us as they make their journey back to their motherland Columbia to be with their family. Thank you Fanny and Jairo for loving our children as much as we do and for showering them with love and making them feel safe and secure when we weren't' there to do so. Thanks to you we all learned spanish and we consider you family and will be eternally grateful to you both. You will be missed dearly!!!!

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Does President Obama Know Where His User Experience (UX) Team Is?

Five Lessons in User Experience All Brands Can Learn From.

CBS News reported that the White House recently hired Jeffrey Zients to head up a team to “fix” Healthcare.gov. They also stated they were reaching out to experts and companies in Silicon Valley, trying to tap their expertise for the rescue of the site. 

Ok. Everyone knows that Healthcare.gov site has problems. The largest ones being functionality that that doesn’t work and accurate data collection and storage. This piece focuses on one other aspect, User Experience. Simple tweaks that can make the experience a bit easier for the user to navigate the site.

When a website launches, issues are inevitable but there are many lessons that brands can learn from the government’s (aka your tax dollars’) misfortune.

Let’s put all politics aside for a moment and take a look at some simple UX tactics that could have been applied to minimize risk. I’ve read a lot about the issues but the best knowledge is always first hand and I had to do a test drive myself.

What did I find, you ask?

Oh, many issues but most can all be consolidated into the following five points:

1.     You Need A Captain

2.     Estimate Initial Usage But Be Prepared for 10x the Volume of Users

3.     Streamline Content – Don’t Distract The User With Irrelevant Content

4.     Don’t Scare Them with Commitment Language Off the Bat

5.     Test Early and Rapidly

1.     You Need A Captain

October 2011. That’s when the government began subcontracting out development work for the website. Guess how many organizations this project was subcontracted to? 47. Yes 47.

So with 47 different subcontractors, how could the government know at any given point who was working on the site and who was responsible for the most critical piece that would deem this successful – ie a successful user experience?

It’s a given, when you are building a large site, that you will have multiple departments, people and potentially companies working on it.  That’s why it’s essential to have a UX captain that is all along ensuring the testing and usability of the site. If you don’t, you will fail. No blurred lines there. Your UX captain can serve as the connective tissue from concept through development and launch. Use them, that’s what they are there for.

2.     Estimate Initial Usage But Be Prepared for 10x the Volume of Users

The U.S. Chief Technology Officer Todd Park stated the government had expected to draw 50,000-60,000 simultaneous users at any given time and they were prepared for that.  What happened? On average over 250,000 users have been trying to log in since it launched on October 1^st. 250,000!!!! Remember if you are building a site where you have stated your goal is “7 million users”, then scalability and capacity is critical. If they can’t get in, you potentially just lost a number of users.

3.     Streamline Content for the User – Don’t Distract Them With Irrelevant Content

I have to say one of my biggest pet peeves is when I’m in an experience and I get presented information that is completely irrelevant to me at that point in the process. Don’t do it, just don’t do it. Keep the experience clean and guide the user down a path, don’t distract them.

Here’s a prime example on the site. I get to the homepage, I decide I want more information on Individuals and Families. Here are the series of pages I am now taken through until I can finally take an action that I wanted to take initially.

Great – I’m interested in individual and family – so I click on that in the tabs

Ok I guess I’ll apply online so I click on that.

Hmm… ok I guess I’ll click on the big green button to get started.

Ok – I guess I’ll pick the one starting in January.

Hmm.. Wait what? Why am I seeing Small Business and Brokers here…

I thought I already told you I was an Individual. There doesn’t seem to be a big call to action – I guess I’ll click the individual tab again?

FINALLY A GET STARTED BUTTON THAT WILL LAUNCH A FORM

TO BEGIN FILLING OUT.

So five clicks before I can even begin to fill out a form. Five clicks and that’s because I was able to figure it out and not lose hope along the way. The average user will not get past those first two clicks. “Healthcare.gov”, why are you making me click so many times? Why can’t you just take me to this page immediately?

4.     Don’t Scare Them with Commitment Language Off the Bat

These words are on the homepage and the largest calls to action.  My guess is users want a little more information before committing to an application. Something as simple as Learn More and Apply may ease the experience for the user coming here for the first time and keep them moving through the process.

5.     Test Early and Rapidly

I can’t mention this enough. Even if you only have sketches, testing makes a difference. The smallest tweaks and enhancements can make or break your site. You don’t have to test a gazillion people either. You will begin to see trends after 5-7 users. Do it. Do it often. You won’t be sorry.

“Sources tell CBS News the underlying software was riddled with junk computer code, which means, one expert said, "No way it was properly tested before it went live.”

I rest my case.

In summary, launching a site at this scale is no simple feat. There are bound to be hiccups along the way. However simple UX guardrails can be applied to minimize risk at launch. Now go find your UX team ASAP! Or call me if you don't have one! :)

Check out my coverage in Ad Age.

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Looking to Build a Home Run Landing Page?

We all have to build them at some point for our clients - need some ammo to convince your client on building the "right" kind of page to get the results they are looking for? Look no further -

This article will give you the tools you need...

"Designing an optimized landing page isn't exactly a cakewalk. If you want to achieve a respectable conversion rate, that is. So ... how schooled are you in the concept of conversion-centered design? Conversion-centered design (CCD) is a discipline targeted specifically at designing experiences that achieve a single business goal."

Read more about Principles of Conversion Centered Landing Page Design

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Gesture Recognition - What What?

Learn About Gesture Recognition and See How Cadillac is Already Using It!

First the definition…

In gesture recognition technology, a camera reads the movements of the human body and communicates the data to a computer that uses the gestures as input to control devices or applications. For example, a person clapping his hands together in front of a camera can produce the sound of cymbals being crashed together when the gesture is fed through a computer.

We all know it's in the works and has been for a while. It has already manifested itself in the gaming industry and we are seeing it now via google glass. It's just a matter of time before we are faced with yet one more variable to consider when designing a product.

Touch technology, thanks to Apple, took the world by storm with a high adoption rate and a rare sharp intuitive learning curve. Everyone just got it, including two year olds within a matter of seconds. Touch technology is also scaleable as It works within a confined set of guidelines with very clear inputs – the touch of your finger.

Gesture recognition however is a bit more complicated. Why? Here are a few reasons:

1. We are all different physically. We all do things slightly differently, whether it is blinking or moving a finger in the air from the left to the right. The screen has to adjust specially to person. Similar to voice recognition.
2. There are certain things that you would rather do quietly. As I'm searching the internet for something, rather than making my eyes move quickly down the page to scroll or waving my hand rapidly, I may prefer to do it slightly with my finger and not draw attention to myself.
3. Human Ergonomics. Sitting at a desk and looking at a lap top suddenly makes my mouse pad cursor unnecessary. Why do I need my cursor if I can just gesture or tap on something that will give me my result. To that same extent – navigation may drastically change if gesturing becomes the norm because  the natural movement of gesturing while at a desktop would be with your elbow somewhat glued to the desk, so the range of motion suddenly turns into an arc. Therefore does it make sense for navigation to be more at an arc value vs. the standard horizontal top of the page value? This is just one of the variables to consider.
4. It seems easier but is it really? While in some situations, gesture recognition seems to really be the way to go (gaming, oversized digital displays (think Tom Cruise and the Minority Report) or music perhaps) but in other situations are we just overcomplicating an experience?  

So what's the net net here? We still have a ways to go when it comes to gesture recognition. Think long and hard about the audiences you are working with and the product you are designing. 

I have no doubt it will slowly begin to creep its way into our lives but as designers of products, let's always be sure to ask the very important question of "will this enhance or detract from the experience." In that question, I believe you will find the correct answer on how to proceed in adding the additional requirement in.

In the case of Cadillac, they figured out just where they can use it in their cars. It's called CUE (Cadillac User Experience). How you ask? Very simply by the screen sensing the users presence of their finger coming closer to the screen and narrowing results or expanding. The screen is predominantly tactile and voice operated but I love that they were able to figure out a way to incorporate gesturing to enhance the user experience. 

Check out the latest CNET review of 2013 Cadillac ATS that includes the CUE technology. Surprisingly, the voice and proximity gesture recognition worked very well for the reviewer (which are usually the trickier ones) but the tactile piece was a bit slow in response time. I'm sure they are working on it!

I expect to see more of this integration in the future from Cadillac. Way to go!

Side note: Cadillac introduced CUE back in 2011 and has been enhancing ever since…

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!

Design Your Website Like The User is Drunk!

Brilliant video, I will leave it at that and let the video do the explaining!

WATCH: The User Is Drunk, You Tube

Credit: You Tube, SquareWeave, Do The Internet Better

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Visit my site www.utopia46.com for more UX info!