Babies’ heads, maps, whiteboards, everything
I was fortunate enough to attend the Guardians UX drop in yesterday afternoon. We learnt how content is organised for the website (everything is tagged basically then sections can be created pulling in content based on their tags, e.g. music & photography), how the UX team (or duo) work and where digital and UX is placed in the organisation. We also got to peek at the upcoming Guardian Android and Windows phone apps, got to sit in a pod in the middle of the building where every morning editorial staff sit on large low comfy couches and discuss each days issue and got an inside look on the design process behind their ‘9/11 Your Memories’ interactive feature from developer and journalist Jonathan Richards (what an intriguing combination of skills). I’m not going to do a ‘My Holiday’ type essay on it (although looking at what I just wrote I guess I just did) as the Guardian’s head of UX Martin Belam has a good run down of what was discussed here: UX drop-in at the Guardian. But there were a few things that might slip through available notes that I thought were interesting enough to quickly share:
Location
The Guardian is not produced in a grey and smokey news sweatshop as I sometimes imagine, but is actually on 3 floors of a rather plush building (Kings Place) that has a lovely outlook over Regents Canal. Frustratingly they have access to good coffee beans (Union) in the cafe downstairs that are then butchered by mediocre barristers into very average coffee.
Satisficing
A couple of interesting experiences came out of their initial designs for the 9/11 piece which invites people to submit what they were doing when they first heard about the attack on New York and Washington. In a facebook page inviting people to submit these experiences through a link to their interactive feature many people recorded their experiences on the comment field of that post. A classic example of satisficing behaviour and something to think about when creating pathways to controlled experiences.
Attention Misdirection
The other piece of user behaviour they discovered was on a section that asked people to pinpoint on a map where they were when they first learnt of the attack. The interface had a greyed out submit button in the conventional location next to the input box users entered their location into. It became active once the user had identified a location. However because the map updated dynamically as the user typed in their location users attention was diverted from the button and many users missed the change of state from unavailable to available. Some users consequently couldn’t proceed as they hadn’t realised the submit button was now active. There are many possible ways to solve this problem, they responded by moving the button to the location shown in the map where the users attention was directed, asking them to confirm that was the correct location.
Users This Week
The thing I saw at the drop in that I liked the most was Karen Loasby’s experiment with trying to talk to 3 users a week. Specifically her technique of writing up how many users they had talked to so far that week on a prominent whiteboard, causing nagging guilt when the number was low. In a busy organisation where reaching out to users needs to be very self directed this is an excellent idea for ensuring that you keep trying to test your ideas against reality when it is so easy to just let it go.
Danger Will Robinson
Any journalists can potentially enter any piece of HTML or Javascript into the Guardian CMS. So they can communicate using private APIs or custom code as well as just photographs, drawings and words. Even though this is risky security wise they value openness and innovation enough to tolerate a certain amount of risk in order to give their journalists the ability to communicate in unconventional ways. I wonder what the demographics are of the journalists who engage in the possibilities of that opportunity.
As You Were
Very interesting overall, particularly the idea of the Guardian being an open organisation and how that manifests in terms of their UX design, CMS and how they handle data. I thoroughly recommend you jump in if they hold another UX drop in. They are recruiting for UX people by the way if you are interested. Applications are here: UX and Information Architect
By far the highlight of the trip was the proximity of the Guardian building to my home, which meant I could meet my wife for lunch and had the rare treat of being able to smell my new daughter’s head during my lunch break. Lovely.