Yesterday a record number of San Franciscans hit the streets biking to work. Here at Cooper, we are not only passionate about design but we are passionate about our bikes! We've got them all: Fixie, Townie, Cruiser, Cross, Self Custom-Welded, and Road. We love our bikes, and love working in a bike-friendly city like San Francisco.
When the topic of user research comes up with a new client, they're often surprised by the small number of users we want to speak to. It’s important that designers and others involved in the design process understand research methodologies and can articulate the value we get from speaking to a small number of users.
Quantitative research involves large sample sizes of participants (think thousands) and is concerned with answering questions about how much, how often, and how many. Quantitative studies can be used to understand how often people spend doing certain activity, the size of a potential market, typical demographics, and user preferences. This research usually takes the form of surveys, web analytics, and other machine-gathered information. Quantitative research is good at helping us understand more about what we already think we know. Quantitative research isn't good at uncovering motivations, goals, or getting a high-level understanding of the people that will use a product or service.
User research at a call center.
Qualitative research on the other hand usually involves a small sample size (think dozens) and is concerned with understanding how people behave, how they think about certain activities, and what factors affect their behavior and thought patterns. This research takes the form of individual interviews in the context or setting where the product would be used (e.g. at the desk, in the car, etc.). The context or setting is important so we can observe what people do instead of what they say they do. Qualitative research is really good at helping us understand things we don’t already know.
At Cooper’s UX Boot Camp, held between March 25th and March 28th at Monkey Ranch in Petaluma, CA, Fair Trade USA looked to participants for ideas around how to raise awareness of their mission and inspire consumers to purchase Fair Trade products.
Fair Trade USA enables sustainable development and community empowerment by cultivating a more equitable global trade model through certifying and promoting Fair Trade products. Their work benefits everyone from farmers and workers to consumers, industry and the environment, and yet only 20-30 percent of Americans even know what Fair Trade means. Why? The issues are complex, but as students dug into this problem they identified key factors behind this disconnect, including a lack of brand awareness of the business case for Fair Trade, low brand adoption, and limited Fair Trade product presence in stores.
From those explorations, the following goals emerged:
To get there, student teams went beyond the initial concept of a website redesign and took on the bigger questions that lead to business transformation. For a look behind the scenes as the teams approached this challenge, check out the following video filmed during the Fair Trade USA Boot Camp, and read more to take a look at the Fair Trade USA ecosystem model and what the students came up with in the pitch decks that follow.
In a prior post I explained how Cooper uses OneNote as a tool for Design Meetings. In this post I'm going to presume you're a designer and eager to get a quick primer to the tool. Then I'll share some best practices we've developed at Cooper.
OneNote is a rich program, meant for a number of different scenarios. Here I’m only going to introduce the most basic concepts you need to get going on using OneNote as a quick design sketching tool.
You write on a canvas that is for all practical purposes, infinite. You can simply use the touch screen to slide to empty paper. That canvas can have a grid-paper like background, or it can be white. For most of the time I leave that grid on, to help keep lines straight and aesthetically pleasing.
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Whiteboards are cool, I guess. Fast, easy, familiar. But really, they're nothing compared to digital sketching. At Cooper, we use digital sketching in almost all of our projects, and almost always in OneNote. In the next few posts I'll share how we use it and why we think it's awesome, see what you think. But first, to whet your appetite, some example drawings from Cooper designers straight out of the program.
These aren't meant to be finished designs, of course, but examples of how communicative and illustrative designers can be with their earliest ideas using the tool, and doing so very quickly. Each of our designers has their particular way of working, but in general we share the same setup.
Ah, the final day of IxD13 has come to an end. Day 4 was comprised of panels, debates, and rapid ingenuity cycles. It was a blast to cover this conference. If you missed any of the other days, check out our recaps from Day 1, Day 2, and Day 3. Can't wait to meet up again next year in Amsterdam!
Demand for Interaction Designers has grown, but because IxD is so new, education programs are being developed independently. With no single organization curating a design education program, there is little chance for design educators to share information and techniques. This panel was brought together to discuss patterns in design education, and as a platform for designer educators to connect with each other.
Lots of small design shops don’t have budgets to send people to conference or for extra training. And a lack of guidance can lead to people to seek other employment. At the IxD13 Education panel, these were some of the ideas discussed to build skills without breaking the bank.
There is a disconnect amongst what students think they are prepared to do, what they can actually do, and what employers want. Grads are not prepared to do high-level strategy. Many think they are, but it takes time to build that skill set.
Design fundamentals should be taught in middle and high schools, but if we can’t teach design curriculum in schools, we can host junior conference or 1 day UX Camps. Design principles are valuable to students of all ages. Design can teach people how to fail and how to take risks early in their development
We can spread good design education through our current network. Go to schools and give talks. As your relationship develops, schools will start to see you as a resource, and you can spread your design philosophy to new generations of movers and shakers.
Cooper Parlor is a gathering of designers and design-minded people to exchange ideas around a specific topic. We aim to cultivate conversation that instigates, surprises, entertains, and most importantly, broadens our community's collective knowledge and perspective about the potential for design.
Upcoming Parlor: Model Business - Turning Values into Value
Why does it make sense to pay more for coffee even if it tastes the same? How could it be successful to give away two pairs of shoes every time you sell one? What about the color red makes an iPod more expensive? It's the business model, stupid. A business model is a design, not unlike a wireframe, but instead of describing an interaction in the world, it describes how a company creates and captures value in the marketplace. A well designed business model has the power to align personal values with routine purchases. But what are the patterns? And when is one business model more appropriate than another?
This Cooper Parlor will explore existing business models designed to help consumers put their money where their heart is. We’ll begin by looking at a couple of specific cases where values (moral principles) were turned into value (additional profit). Then, we'll dive into how you can incorporate this framework into your design practice.
The nonprofit partner for our March UX Boot Camp: Fair Trade USA inspired this conversation. We were intrigued by the certification system that Fair Trade USA uses to help consumers to connect with a deeper mission and put their money where their morals are. This got us thinking about other businesses and business models that put their values first. Coupled with Patrick’s insight into business models and how to map them, we thought this would be a perfect opportunity for exploration.
The parlor is an introduction to the larger exploration that we'll have at the UX Boot Camp: Fair Trade USA this March. Together designers, developers, and project managers will be challenged to conceive of digital tools to enable advocates and influencers to ignite consumer demand for Fair Trade products to create a fundamental shift in the way goods are traded and purchased. This is a real opportunity to impact the future of Fair Trade USA, while beefing up your portfolio and making new connections.
Each day at Ixd13 brings new and crazier events. The Internet of Things, beautiful failures, Interaction Awards went down on Day 3 of Ixd13. (Catch up on Day 1 and Day 2 and look ahead to Day 4 here.)
We’re no longer telling objects what to do and why – now, they sense, respond without our direction. Right now we are in the perfect storm for the Internet of Things (IoT) with accessible robotics, affordable sensors, wireless communications, object tagging, and easy broadband access.
In 2008, the number of things connected to the Internet exceeded the number of people on earth. Through design, we have the ability to directly affect the future of the IoT.
Smaller companies are putting products out through Kickstarter and other small funding arenas and trying IoT in an experimental way.
Learning about Self:
The IoT can help us track our own behavior and habits, eventually even leading us to a better understanding of our own identity. Take the kid's toy Furby. When Furby comes out of the box, it speaks a language entirely its own. But as it spends time with you, it learns about you, and eventually, their entire personality is based on their impression of you and your environment.
Learning about Others:
The IoT can bring people closer together, too. These objects can help foster a community through a shared connection in the IoT. There are pill bottle caps that glow to remind you its time to take your medication. If you miss it, the cap can play a ring-tone. If you still can’t see it, the cap will call your phone. Every month the device prints a progress report and shares it with your doctor and family members.
Learning about Surroundings:
Devices that can learn about our surroundings are becoming more and more prevalent like Nest the thermometer that learns about your, or Hue the light bulb by Phillips that can be whatever color you want it to be. These objects help to expose the invisible and access the inaccessible while allowing us to monitor and manage them remotely.
Sitting at a keyboard or behind a screen is unnatural. We’ve spent a lot of time trying to virtualize the real world into the screen.
Now is your opportunity to experiment. There are few rules, and this is a beautiful chance to try new things.
Get more resources at the Smart Interaction Lab
Cooper is honored and delighted to receive the award for “Best in Category, Optimizing”. We are proud to be in the company of some of the most creative and innovative designers and grateful to the Interaction Awards Jury for their consideration.
Over a year ago, Cooper teamed up with Practice Fusion to design an app that revolved around how medical professionals think. Instead of asking them to learn a new way of organizing information, this EMR for iPad app leveraged their natural mental model of treating and working with people. This app significantly simplified and reduced the work of using an EMR by eliminating complex navigation and abstract categories. Now doctors can clearly view and capture details about their patients, without being chained behind a desktop.
In our March Boot Camp, you'll have a chance to work with Fair Trade USA, North America’s leading third party certifier of Fair Trade goods. You'll be challenged to conceive of digital tools to enable advocates and influencers to ignite consumer demand for Fair Trade products to create a fundamental shift in the way goods are traded and purchased. And you'll do all that in a creative classroom setting on the 50-acre organic farm of Cooper founders, Alan and Sue Cooper!
Design is a messy process, full of ambiguity and competing choices. This makes learning how to design hard. Learning tools and methods can only take you so far; to be a great designer, you have to practice thinking critically and applying those tools.
That’s the philosophy behind UX Boot Camp, our four-day crash-course in user experience design that gives you a real-world problem to solve along with a toolkit to tackle it. You’ll take your ideas from inception to design with the mentorship of our best teachers and active feedback from a real non-profit client.
