"Using the Right Tool for the Job" by Martin Belam

I wanted to tell the story of a project to redesign Guardian News & Media’s Job website, which was carried out during 2009. Guardian Jobs is one of the newspaper’s most successful digital properties. In a time of financial uncertainty, particularly in the media sector, it was important to make sure that any changes to the site improved not just usability, but also the commercial performance of the web property. I was assigned the project shortly after joining The Guardian on a full-time basis as Information Architect, and looked at it as an excellent chance to demonstrate the value user-centred design processes could bring to the business.

Strategically the project had two aims. One was simply to give the design a refresh, so that, whilst it retained its own personality, it felt more in line with the look and feel of the main guardian.co.uk site. The second was a business aim. In print The Guardian has additional daily supplements for specific sectors—“Media” on Monday, “Education” on Tuesday, and “Society”, which covers health and social issues, on Wednesday. These carry a significant amount of recruitment advertising, and we wanted to reflect those key sectors much more on the jobs site.

Guerrilla User Testing: In the early stages of the project I carried out some “guerrilla usability testing” of the existing site at the London Graduate Fair, which was held in Islington. With a long history of being involved in Graduate recruitment, The Guardian was a sponsor of the event, and Guardian Jobs also had a very central stand in the exhibition. The stand featured several laptops where people could browse the Guardian Jobs site, and also the Guardian Careers site2 where we publish information and content to help people through their working lives. To carry out the testing we replaced one of those PCs with my own MacBook. ...

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"How to Love and Understand Your Audience by Probing Them" by Chris Khalil

Now that I have your attention, I’ll let you in on what I’m really talking about.

The probe I’m referring to is a cultural probe, which is an in-depth, ethnographic research tool used to generate real audience insights—without spending thousands of dollars or investing months of effort.

In this story I’ll share with you my recent experience of using one. I’ll talk about how it enabled us to be innovative in our product design and share some of the tips I picked up along the way.

Once in a while a project turns up that has nothing to do with directly improving the user interface and everything to do with developing a deep understanding of the audience. Typically, this is because the stakeholder who owns the product wants to obtain an insight into the needs, behaviours and philosophies of their audience. Armed with this, they can forge a product strategy that meets both user needs and business goals. ...

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(Image: Patrick via Flickr)

"Shaping Spaces" by Andrea Rosenbusch

From Archivist to Information Architect. Digitising Finding Aids: I started out as an archivist. As a history student, I found a part-time job writing descriptions of the records of the district attorney and attributing keywords to them. Most of the records concerned petty crimes or car accidents in the 1950s. The photos of the accidents contained contemporary street views otherwise seldom found, and the records of suicides were both gruesome and fascinating.

What made the job interesting was that at the time the archives had just started digitising their finding aids. During my studies at university, library catalogues had gone from card indexes to stand-alone digital catalogues. When I was writing my thesis in the mid-1990s, the latest achievement was remote access to other library catalogues. The complicated and lengthy procedure of logging into external databases was explained on slips of paper taped to the table next to the terminals. Tedious as this may sound today, it was far easier than cycling furiously up and down the hills of Zurich and trying to leaf through the index cards of as many libraries as possible during their restrictive opening hours. ...

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"Culture Shock" by James Kelway

Welcome to Denmark. Denmark, to an Englishman, can be summarized with four words: beer, bacon, butter and bricks. (Lego of course!) There is another “b”—the beautiful people that live here and that was how I was introduced to this small, fascinating land, through my girlfriend (and now wife). It immediately felt like a place I could live in and Copenhagen has a very human scale to it that is not found in all capital cities.

Making the leap to uncharted territories was always going to be tricky. Doing it in the world’s most severe recession for 70 years was just going to make it a little bit harder. A month before the move, our English mortgage fell through. But we made it, thanks due to a friendly Swedish bank. As the crunch became a crisis, I knew that if we had left it a few more weeks we may never have made the move.

Hello Hello. To be honest, the adjustment period of moving from London to Copenhagen never became an issue as there simply wasn’t any time to settle in. I landed on the 11th August and started work as a Senior IA on the 12th at Hello Group. ...

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"Cutting Through the Opinions" by Eirik Hafver Rønjum

It was in the Nineties. Fredrik, a Swede and former journalist, was walking to his job. For a couple of days he had been working as a web editor for a Swedish public website.

Something was rotten on the website. There was this ugly button on the front page. An ugly button with a strange word: “Intranet”. Fredrik didn’t know the meaning of the word, but he did know he hated that button. It made the clean, functional front page a mess. While walking, Fredrik’s mind was occupied with one thing: he had to get rid of that button.

Fredrik was not an anarchist. He was a Swede. Swedes follow rules and regulations. So he knocked on the door to his manager’s office, preparing himself for the battle for the button. ...

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"The Stamp" by Cennydd Bowles

It took me a while to realise that user experience was my calling.

Don’t get me wrong: I had been fascinated by it for years, and was slowly but surely nudging my job description from analyst to information architect. I voraciously consumed blogs, books and Boxes & Arrows and dreamt about life as a “proper” IA, but I was young and it was easier to stay in this university town with its cheap rent, beer and women, than make the move down South. However, my interest soon snowballed into passion and I knew that I had to make the leap. I took advantage of a well-timed redundancy offer and set off for London with a hangover and a new haircut.

London was everything I expected: vast, tough and quite unlike anywhere else in the country. I coped with the geographical transition surprisingly well—it was the culture of my new role that was the shock. I had landed an IA job at a well-known dotcom, and arrived at my skyscraper twenty minutes early fully aware that my horizons were about to change drastically. You never complain about an old employer, especially not in a book, and I am not about to here. It was a company that did a lot right and taught me a lot, but it was a big change from my cosy government job in the Midlands. ...

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(Image: Tower Bridgephoto by Nanagyei)

"I Am Feeling Lucky Strike Today" by Gennady Osipenko

One day, a prospective client asked me to meet him to discuss some work over lunch. The weather was fine and at some point we changed the subject and started talking about websites, their souls and life cycles. Sitting in a quiet Belgian fusion bar in center of Kiev, I compared websites to living beings, suggesting they evolve like any other creature on our planet. The soothing ambient music accompanied our conversation and the imported Palm ale made things even more relaxing. I had to do something to stay focused, so I picked up the cigarette pack that was on the table and started explaining: “Imagine creating a site for Lucky Strike fans!”

I’d like to note that I don’t smoke and don’t encourage others to, either. The problem was, the cigarettes were the closest thing to hand; my iPhone simply happened to be a bit further away.

So, holding the cigarette pack right in front of my face, I said, “We start by launching a site for fans of—let’s see,” I looked at the pack, “Lucky Strikes. Those of us who adore these cigarettes would like to know that we aren’t alone in the vastness of the internet. So we start by counting like-minded individuals. Let’s show an image of a pack of Lucky Strikes to attract brand Nazis like us and place a button that says ‘I’m feeling Lucky Strike today!’ Visitors click the button and we show the number of times it was clicked. That will help our site to get underway and become at least a little popular.” ...

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(Image: Dominic's pics)

"Design is Problem Solving—In More Ways than One" by Sudhindra V. Murthy

It all began on a cold day towards the end of October in 2005. I was rushing up to go over for a client meeting, 5 miles into the city. As I was about to close and lock my computer, I saw a message pop from the Resourcing Team. I gave it a cursory glance, thought with a sigh, “Another hard gruelling project” and locked my computer. However, I thought I had noticed something like a “travel instruction”. So I unlocked my computer and read it in full. It was indeed a new project I was to take up, but to my disbelief, I saw that I was to travel to Singapore in the next 3 days. Of course, I was shocked, unhappy and essentially disturbed since I was to travel at such a short notice.

“Let’s deal with this when I am back from the client meeting,” I thought. The meeting itself went pretty well and the clients were a happy bunch, now that we had turned around their rather clumsy news site into a more “new-worldish site” - in their own words.

I came back three hours later, went through the mail again and called the Resourcing Team. The first thing they asked me “Did you get your ticket yet? What kind of accommodation are you looking for? Please fill in the travel request form and send it back ASAP.” I fought to control my myriad emotions at play and asked them a simple question “Why is it such a short notice?” “Because the project has started yesterday and today, you will be talking to the client at 6.30 pm. Did you not get the invite yet?” was the reply. ...

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"UX Professional Goes Car Shopping" by Timothy Keirnan

In the winter of 2008 my most excellent auto mechanic, Jake, gave me the bad news: my beloved 12-year-old car should not be driven through any more Michigan winters. Too much corrosion was attacking the frame.

Many car parts can be fixed or outright replaced, but a frame with too much corrosion becomes dangerously weak and impossible to repair. Michigan is in what we Americans call “the rust belt”. The steel in automobiles competes with the salt spread onto the roads during the winter. Eventually, the salt wins because the rust spreads like crazy.

“If you really want to keep it forever as you’re always telling me, get something else to drive in the winter,” Jake said. Jake knows what he’s about. He rebuilt the engine for me at 217,000 miles. Replaced the clutch, too. He also modified the suspension and exhaust system for me over the years as we made the car more fun to drive than it had been straight from the factory.

So this car I’d bought when fresh out of grad school in 1996 was now too rusty to drive all year round. This was a moment of serious emotional import. This car and I had been through a lot together. It was even stolen in 1999 when I lived in Denver. Days after the theft, I bought another 1996 Saturn SC2 in nearby Colorado Springs because I couldn’t order a new one. (Saturn had ruined the model for me with Chapter 2 251 Timothy Keirnan UX Professional Goes Car Shopping some ugly revisions in 1997, and there were no other car brands on the market that remotely interested me. I wanted the same car back as I had lost!) But then the police found my original car partially stripped in a south Denver parking lot. So I had two 1996 SC2s in my driveway for a few months until my original car was restored and I sold the second one. ...

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"A Day at Acme Corp" by Mark Hurst

I spent a day at Acme Corp recently … you know, the multinational company that makes all the supplies for Wile E. Coyote and other avid inventors. (Hey, I figure it’s more interesting than “all names and details have been vastly changed” etc. :)

Anyway. Acme had a problem: research showed that their website was completely, unforgivably, disastrously hard to use for their customers. And ugly, on top of that, as if it was spat from a template circa 1996.

So I sat down with the executives, everyone with a stake in the online presence, to help them improve the business metrics by improving their website.

Here’s an excerpt of the meeting transcript, more or less. ...

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"Accepting Star Wars at Work" by Henning Brau

Red cascades of data flicker rapidly through my right eye. They move with me as I turn my head, telling me where to go; I now have to turn right. I mechanically follow the instructions, getting closer to my destination.

My mission is clear: find artifact A2000 4356 7832, pick it up, bring it back home. As easy as that. Yet I have never been in this sector before; I must rely on the information that appears in my eye.

I listen to the metallic pounding of my heavy boots on the floor, echoing and fading away. My hand wanders over the touch pad in the beltmounted device at my side and I change the intensity of the rays.

Distant machines stamp out their never-changing beat. The hall I enter lies bathed in dim light.

Although the walls numb the senses with their icy greyness, I am not cold; it is warm in here, maybe 27° Celsius. A bead of sweat runs down my forehead into my eye. I feel a sudden sting, but I do not dare to wipe it away, afraid to lose sight of the thin red lines.

A man comes round the corner and stops in his tracks as he sees me. His mouth opens in disbelief. He certainly wasn’t expecting me—the cyborg—to appear here. ...

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(Image: Peter Taylor)

"One Thing, Many Paths" by David St. John

When I graduated from college the only computer programs I knew how to use were Word, Internet Explorer, and the popular CD-ROM based PC game called Myst. This was still the height of the dot-com boom, so while I had limited technical experience, my college education and a healthy local economy lead to plenty of work as a contractor for several startups in the Seattle area. Most of the assignments were not glamorous (data entry, quality assurance and categorizing products), however these experiences opened my eyes to the way of life in several technology companies that were still grappling with how to turn a profit using this new thing called the Internet.

It was during this early period that I participated in the launch of a new category of products for a large and successful e-commerce company in the Seattle area. All of the employees I met were extremely accomplished. Several people had companies that were acquired during the Internet’s growth spurt, while several others abandoned previous careers to join the tide of new companies flowing onto the Internet. It seemed that no matter your background, there was a place for you in this new economy.

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"Moving into Non-Linear Iteration" by Dave Malouf

... and Managing People Who Haven’t Arrived There Yet

Have you ever noticed that all stories are really sub-stories of a bigger story? There is no true beginning and there is no true end. Really great stories actually begin to develop their back-story in fuller depth as you move forward through the part of the tale that the teller wants you to focus on. As I begin to write this story, I’m struck by this same problem. Where exactly does the introduction start and where does the conclusion end? Through the iterations of this very paragraph I have started and restarted a host of times. At some point, you just have to throw the proverbial dart at the screen and let it fly from there: Design.

That is my introduction to how I learned about iteration as a primary concept and tool for design. Of course, even the simplest story is strewn with nuances and sub-themes and hopefully a few of those will rise to the top as well.

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More than 100.000 downloads

The other day we crossed the 100.000 downloads benchmark. Isn't that amazing? A big thank you goes out to all the authors who contributed to this project. Another big thank you goes out to the entire team that worked on this project for almost a year - back in 2010. And of course: a big thank you to you, dear readers. Thanks for downloading this free eBook.

Hey, why not repost parts of the actual UX Storytellers foreward? Here we go:

I contacted many potential authors, and over the next 10 months, we—Jutta, Stephen and I—set about collecting and reading stories. Reading and re-reading them. And re-reading them again. Sending suggestions back to the authors who were so generous to submit a story for this book. And so on. Finally, we ended up with 42 extraordinary authors, all people I admire and look up to. Take a look at their lives, their books, their blogs, and their achievements. Jaw-dropping, isn’t it? You can’ t help but be astonished and inspired. Not only are they leading experts in UX and related fields with strange acronyms, but they are also the most wonderful people. Please take the time to read and truly listen to their stories in this book—or in person, if you happen to bump into them at one of the many conferences that take place around the world nowadays. Dear authors: I salute you.

Moreover, a special thank you must be said to all the non-English speaking authors who had the additional challenge of writing in English, but kept at it and delivered really marvellous stories. We have carefully polished their stories while retaining the local flavour—always wary of reducing them to bland uniformity.

Why are there so few female authors in this book? Well, I can assure you I honestly tried to contact as many female authors as I could think of (ok, there was a bottleneck right there). I am all the more grateful for the contributions of Andrea Rosenbusch (Switzerland), Colleen Jones (USA), Deborah Mayhew (USA), Marianne Sweeny (USA), Olga Revilla (Spain) and Sylvie Daumal (France).

"Almost Dead on Arrival: a Tale of Police, Danger, and UX Development" by Aaron Marcus

How We Got Started: It is not often that the lawyer for a prospective client, that is heavily armed, calls us in for a new project. Starting off with lawyers and police, we were already on alert. Still, we anticipated that this job would be different, challenging, and perhaps dangerous. It happened about five years ago.

The lawyer (for the policemen’s union) explained that the police department of a major Silicon Valley city was rolling out a new mobile information display system, but they were running into problems. The police officers who had to try the new system found it problematic, sometimes refusing to even use it, because they said it might endanger their lives. What a customer or user reaction! As we learned more and more about the context, the application suite, the software developer, the threads of politics, software development and organizational behavior became more and more intertwined. We felt like we were detectives ourselves, trying to understand how things had come to this situation; that the police officer’s union (which hired us) was about to sue the software developer, the police management, and the city for creating a fiasco. The newspapers were also beginning to sniff around. ...

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"Wine, Women and Song" by James Kalbach

Hello, Deutschland: “Wine, women and song.” That’s the short answer I tell people when asked how an American ended up in Germany. Either that or “sex, drugs and rock-and-roll.” Both jokes, of course. But it usually brings about a chuckle.

Actually, there were a lot of converging reasons for my coming to Germany and staying there. The most important was meeting my lovely wife. There was also the excitement of living in Europe: Prague, Oslo, Amsterdam, Paris—all a short flight or train ride away. And the European way of life simply appealed to me, particularly their orientation towards time. A saying I once heard sums it up well: in the U.S. you live to work; in Europe you work to live. Who wouldn’t want 30 days of vacation? Compared to the measly 5-10 vacation days you start with in the States, a month and half of paid time off is luxurious.

Work-wise, job prospects kept me in Germany as well. If doors open up, you sometimes have to take the opportunity. So the whole moving-to- Germany thing wasn’t planned at all: it just kind of happened. But in moving to Germany, I also found a career that matched my academic background, experience and skills: information architecture, usability, and, later, user experience.

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"UX the Long Way Round" by Ken Beatson

User Experience Design (UX) is a much younger profession than its practitioners. We’ve almost all migrated here from other professional “lands”, bringing our own unique histories and perspectives. I came here from fairly nearby places; I was a database developer, web developer, designer and web project manager. Others came from slightly further away: product designers, graphic designers, librarians, marketers and many other interesting starting points. So here’s the story of my journey to UX, together with some of the things I picked up along the way.

Love at First Sight: I was instantly addicted to the web. Love at first sight. It was late 1996, about halfway through second semester, just after morning tea on a Saturday. I could still smell the “new” in the University of Tasmania’s shiny, modern North West Study Centre, which felt like a brave new world of academic prosperity brought to the declining small industrial city of Burnie, Tasmania, Australia. Tasmania, for those of you who are American, is that little triangle-shaped island at the bottom of the Australian continent. It’s not that I am picking on Americans or taking sides with those unkind people who regard you as geographically challenged. I just appreciate that you’re surrounded by a heck of a lot more of your own country than other nationalities and so it’s harder to get out as often. ...

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"A Journey from Machine Design to Software Design"by Sameer Chavan

How It Began: I come from Sangli, a small town in central India, famous for sugar manufacturing and a large temple of Lord Ganesha. My family and I lived in sugar factory campus housing until I completed my engineering degree. I used to sit on the back of big trucks loaded with sugar cane, chewing on the sweet canes. My father worked as a chief engineer for, then, Asia’s largest sugar factory for 30 years, until his retirement. I cannot imagine working for the same company for three decades. I certainly can’t.

In 1991, mechanical engineering was the favorite course at every engineering college in India, and it was the subject I chose for my 4-year bachelor degree, too. A mechanical engineer himself, my father always urged me to improve my skills in managing big machines and shop floor workers. During my internship at the Cummins Company, I was fascinated by the unbelievably huge diesel engines manufactured for ships and mining haul trucks.

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"From Consultancy to Teaching" by Olga Revilla

I had been invited to teach User Centred Design (UCD) at a university. Being a 32-year-old User Experience (UX) consultant with a work experience of ten years, should be a great background for transmitting my know-how to 19-year-old Design students.

Suddenly, I realized that most of my knowledge in the field has come from non-university methods: jobs, blogs, Internet references, books, etc.; all not very scientific stuff for teaching at the university. So I started to research what was taught in other places about UCD and found that very little was done at universities. (Or public information was very difficult to find.) Then I turned to the places where I had learned and noticed that this discipline (I still don’t consider it a ‘science’) is mostly done by non-scientific professionals of design, librarianship, engineering and hundreds of other different backgrounds and profiles that had all given their “two cents worth” based on their experience.

So here are my “two cents worth” based on my experience, what I learned and what I teach on my courses.

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"Building Arcs with Wall-Hung Urinals" by Jan Jursa

I’m no longer quite sure whether it was the summer of ‘99 or 2000, but I still remember exactly that we were sitting in an old pub in Frankfurt. I was just in the final throes of my biology studies, my thesis was almost finished and I had been accepted to do doctoral research in Toronto.

I was virtually on my way over, and my buddies and I had come together to celebrate my departure. A friend gave me a map of Toronto that evening; I still have it, but I never made it to Toronto. Instead, I moved to Berlin and became an information architect.

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