Photo by Jorge Toro

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But what exactly are these qualities? What is the magical blend of skills and temperament necessary to be a great UX designer? While not claiming to be a great (or even a merely competent) UX professional, I do feel I have been around long enough to note the desired qualities of greatness. And in the time-honoured fashion of our profession, I have sought to tabulate these qualities using a heuristic framework.

I’ve also borrowed a few ideas from the ancient Greeks (plagiarism being another time-honoured practice of our trade). Aristotle, the great philosopher, believed that a person needed certain character traits (or “Virtues”) in order to live a good life. These virtues included courage, truthfulness, generosity and humour. Having the right amount of a particular virtue was important. Having too much courage, for example, could make you rash or foolhardy; while too little would make you a coward. Having just the right amount was known as the “Golden Mean“.

My UX Professional Virtues Framework™ is laid out below. Either side of the Golden Mean are the excessive and defective qualities for each virtue. I’ve tried to avoid general virtues like reliability or honesty, as these are necessary for almost every profession. Instead I tried to focus on character traits specific to our field.

Needless to say, there aren’t too many UX designers who have the right amount of all the virtues all the time. Aristotle believed that attaining the Golden Mean was a lifetime’s work. The same applies to us humble UX designers of limited talents: we may never be perfect, but we have something to aim for. As the Greeks supposedly used to say (in Latin): Citius, Altius, Fortius!

The virtues of a good UX designer:

I went about updating my profile bio on Twitter the other day.  The print that I ignored underneath the text entry field says the limit is 160 characters. So I type in my bio, click save, and receive the following (crudely) written error message:

I suppose I am guilty of ignoring the small print. That aside, I don’t have an inbuilt character meter that alerts me when I am approaching character 159.

If I were designing this functionality, I would do the following.

Place the character limit number to the top right of the form field and as the user types count it down to 0. When a user exceeds this limit I would then change the colour of the excess character number to red.

Look familiar ?? 

(Image from the Thoughtpick blog)

As part of my previous life working in online poker, I once spent 8 straight weeks in Las Vegas for the World Series of Poker (WSOP). That year, the event was right in the middle of summer, meaning a lot of time indoors – and in casinos.

The foremost authority on casino design is Bill Friedman, who penned the hefty 630-page “Designing Casinos to Dominate the Competition” in 2001. He studied every major casino in Nevada, from the legalisation of gambling in 1931 all the way through to 1996. He came up with 13 ‘Winning’ and ‘Losing’ casino interior design principles, which explained the vast differences in the number of players (and hence success levels) among all of the casinos.

Looking online

In 1996 Intercasino was the first to bring gaming online, with the first recorded sign-up to an online casino. Since then, there have been hundreds, if not thousands, of different online casinos in operation.

As a former online poker site reviewer, and a past casino bonus junkie (seeking out poorly structured online sign-up bonuses that can be manipulated for profit), I’ve probably signed up to and/or deposited at around 60 different online gaming sites.

What has struck me time and time again is how many of these sites are adapting some of Friedman’s principles for offline casinos into the online space.

Download what now, exactly?

Who trusts spam then?

In trying to adopt Friedman’s principles, what many online casinos have unintentionally succeeded in doing is creating websites that look and behave like spam.

Given that informative content and interface properties account for almost 60% of the effect of trust for online gambling sites (Shelat and Egger, 2002), and that 56.8% of people surveyed by eCogra in 2007 rated a solid reputation as one of the most important things they wanted in an online casino website, why do online gambling companies continue to build such bad websites?

Is there a role for UX?

The very knowledgeable Staffan from UXiGaming recently posted an appeal to online gambling operators to consider player experience as the way to develop a competitive advantage.

I responded with some obvious cynicism – mostly from my experiences in dealing with operators. But as Brian and Clodagh have both pointed out – effective UX design comes from being involved and valued at an organisational level much deeper than just the website.

Considering that casinos (both online and offline) are not user-friendly by definition – after all they profit from games with no statistical edge for users – is there really any room for UX in online gambling?

Offline Casinos 2.0 and upcoming feature

It’s important to note that casino design has undergone a shift in recent years, from down and dingy to the open spaces, natural light and entertainment-focused resorts of the Wynn, Bellagio and Palazzo. In an upcoming feature I’ll be looking in more depth at current website and interface designs for online casinos and how they can follow suit.

(Image from the blog of Kevin Breuner.)

Last week, Des Traynor tweeted about a video from James Archer (from Forty) on the topic of decision modes. The video outlines the technique they use to design for different types of decision makers.

James’ idea is that people make decisions in different ways, and that different types of design, functionality and copy will help them decide.

Their approach reminds me of Personas: a great design tool that reminds you that not everyone thinks the same way, and not everyone thinks like you do.

Both are very useful tools in website design: understand your users, think about what they’re trying to do, and think about the different approaches they might take.

Design may not be the issue

But what if people can’t make decisions on your website, not because of the wrong design, content or functionality, but because your products are too complicated, named badly or there are too many to chose from?

This is a problem I have seen in many organisations: Telecommunications operators, Mobile operators and Financial services to name but a few.

For example: try choosing a mobile phone from the hundreds on offer – how do you work out which one is right for you? Then you need to choose a price plan to go with it (I often wonder if price plans even make sense to the person who designed them).

Great website design can do a lot to help alleviate complexity and help people decide, but sometimes, the problem isn’t a website design problem, it’s a product design problem.

The paradox of choice

The Paradox of Choice is an excellent example of one of these product design issues.

Companies often find themselves going down the path of a large number of similar but subtly different products – often without a clear strategy, and with the idea that providing more products will encourage more people to buy.

The Paradox of Choice says that giving people too many choices, paradoxically, produces paralysis rather than liberation.

In his TED talk from 2005, Barry Schwartz gives the following example:

“A colleague of mine got access to investment records from Vanguard, the gigantic mutual fund company of about a million employees, and about 2,000 different workplaces. And what she found is that for every 10 mutual funds the employer offered, rate of participation went down 2%. You offer 50 funds, 10% fewer employees participate than if you only offer 5. Why? Because with 50 funds to choose from, it’s so damn hard to decide which fund to choose, that you’ll just put it off till tomorrow. And then tomorrow, and then tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow, and of course tomorrow never comes.”

Are you paralzying your customers?

I cannot count the number of times I have left a shop or website because I was simply overwhelmed by the huge number of  options available. Most recently, I fled B&Q because I couldn’t chose a shade of white paint from the hundreds of “off-whites” on the shelf. If there was just one, I would have bought it and left happy.

By providing people with so many products to choose from, you are paralysing them rather than enabling them.

If you recognise your organisation here, stop and think - before you start fixing your website, make sure you have a clear product strategy, that you are not overwhelming your customers with choice and that your products are designed for your customer, not you, your organisation, or your CEO (unless, of course, you’re Apple).

Last month, the New York Times made an announcement, the same announcement that Rupert Murdoch made six months earlier:

They are (somehow) going to start charging for their online content. How exactly they are charging (the somehow) plagues the new media industry.

The problem

For years ad revenue has slid downward. But the decrease in money doesn’t correlate with a decrease in audience. Hence the discord over what, if anything, should be done about it.

The opinions are many and varied:

• No one will pay for online publishing because value is associated with the medium. Paper is what’s expensive.
• Devices or dedicated platforms might be the only way to elicit payment for online content (eg iTunes, Kindle)
• Charging for content is at odds with journalism’s evolution as a collaborative and public endeavor
• Online content should never have been free in the first place: charging for it will simply break the bad habit.
• What to do depends on what the publication is: some should be free, some paid for and some publicly funded.

The two sides of the fence in this argument have business people on one side and journalists and online analysts on the other. That in itself, I think, should guide us towards some consensus.

Me and Conde Nast

I used to work as a web producer at Gourmet magazine, which went kaput last October, to much dismayed hubbub.

When I joined Gourmet in 2007, they were just planning their first website. Previously, their web presence was limited to a collection of recipes alongside Bon Appetit, a ‘rival’ food magazine (although both owned by Conde Nast) on epicurious.com.

What was interesting about the project was that every call to action was a subscription to Gourmet in print. In fact, all Conde Nast online magazine ad spaces had to point to a Conde Nast print publication.

Indeed, print advertising earns more money than online advertising; most online papers and magazines exist to serve their paper cousins.

While print news readership is melting away as digital readership skyrockets, a paper edition still makes an average of 10 times more ad revenue per user than online news does.

The crisis

Conde Nast axed Gourmet along with three other magazines because the ad revenue wasn’t there – even though the audience was.

At the time, Conde Nast said they “hope to announce initiatives to develop digital versions of our brands that will make use of new devices and distribution channels.”

The battle scene

The device loyalty offers a more realistic pay model than a ‘traditional’ pay wall does. A device is a one stop shop for all of your content consumption. That means devices are designed for convenience — and the first step in extracting money from people is removing inconvenient barriers to entry.

But the obstacle now is getting people to use one device, and getting all news supplied to that preferred technology. Considering the amount and breadth of news, that obstacle may not be surmountable.

Now, I don’t know how to solve the problem. But I do know that no matter what Rupert Murdoch says, a pay wall is a bad idea.

It places an editorial model within a business model that is at odds with it. It’s like trying to squeeze content into a poorly planned wireframe (a content editor’s biggest peeve).

The Guardian’s Alan Rusbridger says that journalism is now a network, with journalists and consumers working together to create a new kind of output:

Sometimes “our readers know more than we do,” as seen in the case of the Barclays investigation by David Leigh, which was followed by “participation and analysis by people who really understood the finance world” — a collaborative but competitive approach has proven to get to the truth of things, faster.

Grasping at solutions

Pushing content into a misshaped business model is the wrong approach.

Business people would say that fewer paying readers are better than millions of non paying ones. But even content held behind a wall isn’t insular; therefore, that comparison doesn’t hold any water.

All content online is a story, and the sooner we understand that, the quicker we can properly monetize it.

We must start examining the content we produce and the story we’ve constructed, whether that story is a customer’s journey to purchasing your product or service online, or the story is an interlinked network of news stories on 3 different websites and 500 tweets. Both are stories, both have shape.

The maybe happy ending

This is somewhat comforting to me amid the doomsday attitude of the media. A story can be understood, broken down, studied and recorded, and reused, retweeted, reconstituted.

Even if there are many platforms for that content, we are not incapable of mapping it and creating a new best practice. Aiming for that is much better than applying an aggressive business model to the rebellious editorial one.

Denouement

I’ll be talking more about this and all things content with Elizabeth at the Content Strategy Forum in Paris this April. Check out our talk, The Evolution of Content, and if you fancy, register.

Thanks to John and Lar for providing great resources.

What are we looking for?

• Someone extremely organised, emphasis on extreme (emphasis also on organised).
• A natural manager: someone who can manage both their team and the client’s team
• Someone who likes working with smart people
• A ‘big picture’ person
• Someone who is detail oriented with strong communication skills

It would be great if you came from an IT background, but it’s not necessary

Why do you want to work here?

Because iQ is a great place to work. We’ve recently ranked 15th in the Deloitte’s 50 fastest growing companies list and we’ve also ranked in EMEA’s fast 500 (one of only 18 Irish companies to make that list).

We have built a smart and motivated team, a great working environment and now we’re looking for even more smart people. If you’re interested, let us know. Read more about the position and send your CV and cover letter to jobs@iqcontent.com.

I recently bought a 10-journey ticket for Dublin bus. When I swiped the card at the reader, it emitted a beep.

This is one Dublin bus beep

This beep suggests an error.

So I looked closely at the reader, where the display was very faint. I could just make out ‘9 journeys left.’ I looked at the driver for approval and he nodded as if to say, no problem, go on.

Now compare that to the LUAS. The LUAS smartcard is similar to a Dublin bus ticket. When you swipe at the reader, it too emits a beep.

These are several LUAS beeps during morning rush hour

This beep suggests success, rather than failure.

Why?

At its simplest, it’s the length of the beep. A success beep should be short, and in turn, an error longer. The Dublin bus beep is more than a second long and is insistent, suggesting that you need to take action.

The LUAS beep is short, suggesting all is fine and you go on your way.

It is subtle, but it makes all the difference. An ominous beep slows people down; they will take a moment to realise everything is fine and they can board the bus. That makes a big difference during rush hour.

Any Dublin bus users out there think this is a problem?

Thanks to my colleague John Wood for twitter research on this subject.

Rosarie lets us know whether or not that’s a good thing in her new feature A whole lotto love? An online lotto review.

She tells us how the site works and where the showstoppers are, as well as some simple guidelines for online gambling layout and whether playing online is really easier than popping down to the shop.

Read the feature: A whole lotto love? An online lotto review

In early 2007, I decided to leave my job at Ireland’s best weekly newspaper. The paper was great, but its website was an embarrassment, and I found myself increasingly drawn to the possibilities of the web. There was a whole other world out there that I only knew the surface of. And I wanted to know more.

One morning, I Googled ‘writing for the web training Dublin’. And found iQ Content.

Fast forward to today, both the web content field and I have come a long way. Content is no longer merely a brochure sliced and diced into scrappy HTML, nor is it just a pared down bulleted list, or a sales page overstuffed with meaningless keywords. This year, the web and business worlds have begun to wake up to the reality that in order for websites to excel, web content must be front and centre, and to get there it must be methodically planned, produced, and maintained.

In short, the web needs content strategy.

Editors of print publications may well crook a quizzical eyebrow that it took this long for us to figure that out. But we had other things to deal with. In a recent post on content strategy, Melissa Rach of Scroll Magazine compares the recent history of the web to a kid growing up. If we’re now in our Gen X period, then it’s high time things got serious.

I was a fledgling web nerd

In my first year at iQ, I quickly discovered that content wasn’t given the time or space it required in projects. We had this quaint idea called ‘the content phase’.

We’d do our discovery work and cascade our findings down through IA, wireframing and much client deliberation before feeding it through to the content team (back then, that was just me).

Mostly, my job meant rewriting existing on and offline content. And while my edits were - if I may - an improvement, I was still trapped in a demoralising situation: as soon as we handed over a fresh new site to a client, the content was the first thing to suffer, from either starvation or bloat. Either way, the results weren’t pretty.

What’s changed in iQ and out in the world

What’s happening today – and there is quite a groundswell going on (see #contentstrategy on Twitter) – is the natural evolution of a decade’s worth of work from writers and editors in the trenches of the web industry.

Here at iQ, we’ve evolved too: moving from our old traditional project methods toward a more agile approach - developing content, wireframes and prototypes in rapid iterations. Exciting times.

Introducing a content strategist - CS - role means we’ve moved beyond CMS administration and usability-focused web editing to a truly all-encompassing web content strategy.

And there’s a lot of complexity in the role: To paraphrase my high school history teacher: If content strategy is the mother science, then Analytics and SEO are tools in its service. Likewise, content is a tool in the service of sales. And the CS is there to tie all those threads together.

Spotting a content strategist in the wild

A true CS is someone who will go to bat for the site as a whole, and who truly owns its message and its direction. An editor in chief, if you will. They’ll have a detailed focus on the words, but a strategic overview of the tone, direction and objectives those words are a part of. And they’ll be passionate - maybe even a little bit scary.

Image from the University of Texas at Arlington

To make a truly great web experience, a site needs to be owned from the words on up. That’s why the ideal web team has evolved to mimic a rather traditional structure: a newspaper editorial department.

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This coming April, the iQ Content content team (Elizabeth and Randall) will be talking about the Evolution of Content at the first European Content Strategy Forum. It’s in Paris, did we mention that? Find out more and register here.