Latest Posts (17 found)
Anton Sten 5 days ago

Henry Ford's horse problem wasn't about imagination

>"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses." - Henry Ford (allegedly) This quote gets thrown around constantly—usually by someone who wants to justify ignoring user research entirely. The logic goes: users don't know what they want, so why bother asking them? The problem isn't the sentiment. It's that people are using it to defend bad research, not to avoid research altogether. Here's the thing: Henry Ford's mistake wasn't talking to users. It was asking the wrong question. ## The real problem with "faster horses" Let's assume Ford actually said this (there's no evidence he did, but let's run with it). The issue isn't that people asked for faster horses. It's that "What do you want?" is a terrible research question. Of course they said faster horses. That's the only frame of reference they had. But if Ford had dug deeper—if he'd asked about their actual problems instead of solutions—he would've heard something very different. Imagine if he'd asked: - What's frustrating about traveling with your horse? - Tell me about the last time you needed to go somewhere far away. - What stops you from traveling more often? - How does weather affect your trips? Suddenly you're not hearing "faster horses." You're hearing: - "I can't take my whole family without a carriage" - "Long rides leave me sore for days" - "I get soaked when it rains" - "My horse gets tired and needs rest" - "Feeding and caring for a horse is expensive" None of these answers mention cars. But every single one of them points directly to what a car solves. ## Good research doesn't ask for solutions The mistake most people make—and the one this quote reinforces—is thinking user research means asking users what to build. It doesn't. Good research uncovers problems. It reveals pain points. It helps you understand what people are actually struggling with in their daily lives. What they're working around. What they've given up on entirely. Users aren't supposed to design your product. That's your job. But they're the only ones who can tell you what's actually broken in their world. When you focus on understanding problems instead of collecting feature requests, you stop getting "faster horses" and start hearing real needs. ## Why this matters more now than ever Here's the irony: the same people who quote Henry Ford to avoid user research are now using AI to build products faster than ever. Which means they're building the wrong things faster than ever. The market is flooded with functional products that [solve problems nobody has](https://www.antonsten.com/books/products-people-actually-want/). Henry Ford couldn't build a car in a weekend. You can build a working app in hours with AI. The barrier to building dropped to zero. The barrier to understanding what people actually need? That stayed exactly the same. Which makes user research the only competitive advantage that matters. ## How to actually understand your users I've written before about [stakeholder interviews](https://www.antonsten.com/articles/stakeholder/) and the same principles apply to user research: **Ask about the past, not the future.** "Tell me about the last time you struggled with X" beats "What features would you want?" every time. **Focus on behavior, not opinions.** What people actually do matters more than what they say they'd do. Watch for workarounds—they reveal unmet needs. **Dig into the why.** When someone mentions a problem, ask why it matters. Then ask why again. The first answer is usually surface-level. The third or fourth answer is where the real insight lives. **Listen for emotion.** When someone's voice changes—frustration, relief, resignation—you've hit something that actually matters to them. None of this requires a PhD. It just requires showing up with curiosity instead of assumptions. ## The bottom line The Henry Ford quote isn't wrong because users can't imagine solutions. It's wrong because it defends lazy research. Great products don't come from avoiding users—they come from understanding them deeply. Not asking what they want, but understanding what they struggle with. What they're working around. What they've accepted as "just the way it is." That's how you build something people actually need instead of just another faster horse.

business Business design Design
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Anton Sten 1 weeks ago

From powerful to personal: Where design is heading

One of my favorite things about writing my newsletter is that it's not one-way. Most newsletters are—let's face it. But I get questions from readers that make me stop and think harder about things I thought I already had figured out. Alina sent me one of those questions recently: > "From what you've seen, how has design as a way to serve people changed during your career? I feel that in the past, design often showed how powerful a tool could be—it was more about showing what technology can do. Now it seems design is more personal: helping people get the tool they need right away. To me, that reflects a bigger social trend of asking, 'Who are you? What matters to you personally?'—almost a wave of psychological customization for each person." She nailed something I hadn't put into words yet. And I hope she's right—that design really is becoming more personal, more about helping people get what they need instead of showing off what's possible. ## The shift to personalization Personalization has quietly become one of the defining themes of the last few years. And it makes sense. Once you've experienced a solution that feels like it was built for you, why would you ever go back to something generic? The bar keeps rising. A personalized experience becomes the baseline. Then someone builds a *hyper*-personalized experience, and suddenly the old version feels stale. The only way to pull someone away from a tool they love is to offer them something even more tailored to their specific needs. And the next phase? Tools that are proactive instead of reactive. Not just responding to what you ask for, but surfacing things you didn't even know you were looking for yet. Showing you the answer before you've fully formed the question. AI is accelerating this in ways we're only starting to understand. It's not just about showing you content you might like or recommending products based on your browsing history. It's about adapting interfaces, interactions, and entire workflows to match how *you* think and work. We're moving past "one size fits all" and even past "a few sizes to choose from." We're heading toward "this was made for you, specifically." ## New surfaces, new possibilities But personalization isn't just about smarter algorithms. It's also about where and how we interact with technology. The Meta Ray-Ban glasses probably aren't *the* next big thing. But they're pointing in a direction that feels inevitable. Voice, gestures, wearables—these aren't novelties anymore. They're becoming legitimate interfaces. Designers are going to need to think beyond screens. What does personalization look like when the interface is a conversation? Or a glance? Or a gesture you make without thinking? This isn't science fiction. It's already starting to happen. And it's going to require us to rethink what "design" even means. ## Circling back So, Alina—I think you're onto something. Design really has shifted from "look what this can do" to "here's what this can do *for you*." And that shift isn't slowing down. If anything, it's accelerating. The question now isn't whether design will become more personal. It's how personal it can get before we start to feel like the tools know us a little *too* well. But that's a question for another post.

ai AI design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

How designers can earn a seat at the table

Spot on from Marc Hemeon in this AMA on how designers can earn a seat at the table and gain more influence. I thought all of his answers were really good but this stood out to me. >Hello Noam!!! Damn. Excellent question! For context here folks, Noam is an incredible human, founder who exited to YouTube, where he became the Director of Product for YouTube and was responsible for many consumer facing parts of YouTube. As you know, I have always struggled with wanting to have more influence in a company as a designer, at YouTube I always felt the PMs had much more power than the designers and I would get frustrated more designers werent mentioned in the press when a redesign would roll out or a new feature would be talked about – I always wanted a list of designers and engineers names attached to these articles as well. For example this Wired article has a photo of you, Kurt, Nundu and AJ only 🙁 http://www.wired.com/2012/08/500-million-youtube-channels/ When that article came out it bruised my ego a bit – I felt I had a ton of influence on the YouTube leanback experience and wanted some accolades. I realize now how immature and wrong my attitude was. I now have a massive appreciation for the amount of work it takes in an organization to create new products and features, especially at large companies like YouTube and Google. Heck, even at small companies like North (just 5 full time people) – we can't do anything without each other. There really is no room for entitled credit hogs who are just in it for their own ego and increase in social capital. Designers can earn and maintain a seat at the table a few ways: 1. Be easy to work with and listen to everyones feedback (no matter how whacky it is). Don't raise a ton of objections when you listen, take notes and truly listen. Have an opinion. Never criticize a product or UX feature without at least having an alternative to present and share. No one likes a complainer Present design ideas in the way your stakeholders need to hear them. Do you need to do a 1:1? through it in a keynote presentation? Get buy in from your UX Director first before sharing with others? Do you need to print everything out? Do you need to make a prototype? Every company culture is a bit different and all humans learn differently – I have seen a ton of good designs get looked over because they were communicated poorly. Take the time to flex your communication style in a way others can understand. Actually solve the problem – don't just make it look pretty, solve the darn UX problem! I've found everyone can get behind a smart UX solution. Designers tend to try to solve design problems with shiny UI and not UX Give others credit – No designer creates in a vacuum, they are influenced by everyone on the team – nothing worse than someone standing up saying "I solved our sharing UX with this new feature" – better to say – I've been working closely with Kevin, Caleb, Jonathan and Ryan on a better way to share articles" Always follow up and hit your deadlines – if you tell someone you are going to mock up an idea then mock it up! even forgetting to follow through one time hurts your credibility. Get behind company style guides and existing heuristics – soooo many designers, when they first get to a company want to just redesign everything – chill the F out and take it all in first and understand why things are the way they are – being careful of course not to fall for group think as expressed with the monkey and banana story (read more here: http://johnstepper.com/2013/10/26/the-five-monkeys-experiment-with-a-new-lesson/) Drink Water Not sure if I fully answered the question – hahahhahaha

design Design career Career
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

The days are long but the decades are short

Over and over my mind wanders back to this great post by Sam Altman. It's a while since I turned 30 but I can honestly say that I wasn't as clear thinking and had as much perspective as Sam seems to have. Here are a couple of my favorite highlights: > On work: it’s difficult to do a great job on work you don’t care about. And it’s hard to be totally happy/fulfilled in life if you don’t like what you do for your work. Work very hard—a surprising number of people will be offended that you choose to work hard—but not so hard that the rest of your life passes you by. Aim to be the best in the world at whatever you do professionally. Even if you miss, you’ll probably end up in a pretty good place. I always thought that it was mainly in Sweden people were offended by hard-working people (because of Jante) – but apparently it's the same in the US. It's fascinating and disturbing how much energy people can put into this. > On money: Whether or not money can buy happiness, it can buy freedom, and that’s a big deal. Also, lack of money is very stressful. In almost all ways, having enough money so that you don’t stress about paying rent does more to change your wellbeing than having enough money to buy your own jet. Making money is often more fun than spending it, though I personally have never regretted money I’ve spent on friends, new experiences, saving time, travel, and causes I believe in. Love making money and love spoiling my wife. > Remember how intensely you loved your boyfriend/girlfriend when you were a teenager? Love him/her that intensely now. Remember how excited and happy you got about stuff as a kid? Get that excited and happy now. This seems to be so obvious, yet it's so hard to live by day-to-day. > Be grateful and keep problems in perspective. Don’t complain too much. Don’t hate other people’s success (but remember that some people will hate your success, and you have to learn to ignore it). See above.

career Career
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Working with UX-designers and getting results!

## What UX Is and What It Isn't Designers seem to be very fond of labeling themselves as UX-designers these days. Perhaps it's due to the corporate focus on the value they receive when they are attentive to creating great user experiences. While I've tried to explain to others what UX-design really is – and what it isn't – I've had the opportunity to reflect on the different kinds of work that I am actually doing. For years, it seemed as though UX-design was equated to wireframes. The deliverables of a UX-designer revolved around these wireframes and they varied quite a bit based on style and purpose. But wireframes, though important to the bigger pictures, are not the only way for a company to improve their user experience. You see, I've found that it is actually rare for me to create wireframes anymore. Most of my days are spent communicating and guiding design decisions to improve conversions through close attention to the experience of the user. Here's a few insights into how I actually accomplish these goals and what the deliverables look like. So I can be as clear as possible, I'll use real cases. ## Augmenting Teams with Fresh Eyes For the past year, I've been honored to work with the amazing people at Frank. Frank manufactures, and sells, the best coffee scrubs and recently launched a great new website. I got connected with Frank when a friend suggested that they may benefit from my UX-check. Frank already works with a great team of very capable designers and developers, Love+Money, who were responsible for the creative concept and development of the new website. Frank wisely figured that a second pair of eyes could help make things even better. !Frank Body Because they already had designers that created both wireframes and designs, nearly all of my deliverables have mainly been through e-mail. I would look at the existing designs and give them my detailed opinion on how conversions could be improved. It could be really minor suggestions – like the wording in a button and it's placement, or it could be more complex – like the flow of the shopping cart. I take the time to do a sweep of the entire experience, desktop and mobile, and highlight any inconsistencies that may derail the experience. > "After going through the initial UX check with Anton and seeing some great results, we realised we needed to engage him further with our new website build. Anton has been across every aspect of the new website build and has given crucial advise in between the the design & dev team and the company directors. His advise has been crucial to the success of the new store." Alex Boffa, CEO Frank ## User Focused Product/Feature Design Done Right When I help clients like E.ON with technical solutions, the process is usually multiphase and dependant on the origin of the idea. * If it's a feature that is desired by the client, it'll usually be followed by a process of in depth learning about the system that needs to be implemented and all of its related systems. This can get incredibly technical. I certainly have a greater understanding of electrical consumption and management that I would never have known otherwise! From this meeting/learning process, I'll head back to my office and assemble a very rough wireframe or sketch about the desired functionality and the flow of the feature. Basically I am nailing down how the user is presented information and all the different options and functionality. These will go back and forth a couple of times until it is well defined as being user friendly enough for the average user, but is still functional enough for the advanced user. !Eon sketches * If it's a feature/subject or area where I can see a need for improvement, I approach it differently. Even though I'm not generally the target for the product, it's my job to think like them and consider features that I would have like to see. These are usually presented in an e-mail, during an informal meeting, or using Keynote. > Quick tip: Keynote is a great tool for visually communicating concepts and ideas that don't have all the features set in stone, something that's not a wireframe, and that doesn't necessarily have a flow. The two advantages I have found Keynote has given me: * Clearly highlights the problem through a visual medium * Gives a strong representation of the solution (what is technically possible, economically sane, and represents a focus on improving overall experience) As an example of this process, the project I've been working on with E.ON for the past two years gives a user access to manage and monitor all of their electrical and heating facilities. The user can also manually add these facilities to groups of multiple facilities. Working with groups would give the user more insights, but the way it was implemented made it difficult to create groups and managing them was labor intensive. Problem identified: Creating and working with groups is too complicated and time-consuming. The suggested approach was to let the user create dynamic groups themselves. They would be built out of three different parameters: Geo-positioning (Where the facility is located and expand) * All facilities in Stockholm * All facilities that share the exact same address * All facilities within a radius of 50km of Stockholm Energy * Electricity, heat, or gas * All electrical facilities that have sub-levels * All gas facilities that are environmentally friendly Consumption * My 5 facilities that consume the most * My 10 facilities that have the most uneven consumption Solution: Give the user the ability to create dynamic groups. Using these three group sets makes creating groups easier and yields better information with less effort. An example of a user created group: A group that features my top 5 facilities in the larger Copenhagen area that consume the most electricity with sub-levels installed. > "What impresses me most is the way Anton understand the underlying needs of the business, and translates that into a beautiful solution. Anton is very easy to work with and he is good at finding the balance between listening and pushing." Anna Bengtsson, E.ON ## 1 Hour Consultations What I have talked about so far are situations that are long contracts, but companies also work with me on a consulting basis. This usually consists of 1 hour strategy sessions over Google Hangout or Skype and are based around a set topic (on boarding, conversions, design style, or checkout flow) This is super efficient for the client because they'll get a lot of valuable information in a really short period of time. There's usually not a set deliverable, but the take-aways are still very tangible. As you can see, good UX designers aren't limited to wireframes. The bigger picture elements play a much larger role than many companies anticipate. When the product features, the user journey, the microinteractions, and the beautiful design are all aligned, amazing things can happen!

design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Growth

Although I quite recently touched the subject of staying small, I thought this blog post from Offscreen was too great not to mention. Here's a great excerpt but you should really head over and read the entire thing: I love going back to an essay in issue No7 titled “Human Scale”, written by fellow Australian and Icelab co-founder Michael Honey. He writes: > ‘It doesn’t scale’ is a criticism levelled at many new ideas. (…) But how many things which are good when small get better by becoming bigger? (…) Humans are good at family, middling at community, dysfunctional as nations, and self-destructive as a planet. What doesn’t scale is our ability to relate to each other as human beings instead of target markets — as eyeballs to monetise. And then there is this recent interview with Jeff Sheldon of Ugmonk fame in which he talks about being proud of staying small: > “We’re not growing a hockey-stick growth, but we’re growing enough. We’re building that fan base and are in it for the long haul, so I’m able to keep it really small and handle every part of the business or almost every part of the business, which does limit me on the creative side sometimes. I can’t release a hundred products every year. I can’t speak at dozens of conferences. I have to limit everything I do. (…) But I’m okay with all those things right now. I choose to keep it small, to keep it lean, to keep this business profitable where it is. (…) I’m much more focused on building that tribe of core followers that cares about what I do, than having ten thousand, one hundred thousand, or one million people that kind of like the cool shirt today, and then they totally forget about it tomorrow.” So here I am, working long days (and sometimes sleepless nights) to make a thing with a growth trajectory slightly more optimistic than the mom-and-pop shop down the road. And I’m finally ok with it. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t mind growing, but I do mind growing for growth’s sake, which is what seems to happen a lot with tech companies these days.

business Business
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

What is the cost of sharing?

It’s natural to have differing opinions. When working on any major project/website it is to be expected. Honestly, I would say that it is a bad sign if everyone agrees on everything. Lately, I’ve been giving a lot of thought to one specific discussion that has come up in every web project that I’ve ever worked on. This discussion seems to be more common on eCommerce websites, but I’ve experienced it in almost all types of digital projects (even iPhone apps!). The client’s demand for social media sharing. A few years ago, I had the opportunity to consult for one of the largest retailers and was tasked with the redesign of their department and category pages. Although the scope of the project didn’t include the product pages, the discussion of social media sharing became a hot topic for them. After we had finished the design and everything was laid out, someone mentioned that the page was lacking social media sharing icons. I knew it was coming. I diplomatically asked them why we needed the option to share “Product Y” to Facebook. The answer was simple — it drives traffic. When I asked them to share the statistics on how much traffic comes from social media/shared content, the answer I got was that they don’t really know but ‘imagine’ that it’s a fair amount. ## My experience and the data show that’s not always true. The other response that I sometimes get is that it does ‘no harm’ to have them there. I can understand this argument, but I have to disagree. The whitespace of a website is a vital part of every high-converting page. Project managers are hard to convince of this concept. They have an imaginary checklist in their head that has ‘social media enabled’ as a box needing to be checked and whitespace as a place where that would naturally go. > “White space is to be regarded as an active element, not a passive background” I do believe that you need to ask yourself a couple questions before you add the share icons to your project: * Would I ever share this content? * Do I know anyone that I think would share this content? * Would my followers enjoy this content? * Would this be something that I would normally share publicly? The vast majority of the time, the answer to all of these questions would be no. According to the social media planning framework, KUDOS, how useful information is should guide how it is shared. It could actually be harmful to your brand if you are not careful. So, back to my client. I think it’s pretty safe to say that most people wouldn’t want to ‘share’ the bookshelf they are looking at buying with all of their Twitter followers. There really isn’t a situation where sharing a kitchen door knob on Facebook would be useful. This company, however, has made it exceedingly easy to do all this sharing. You can use their custom built ‘share’ button to email the page to someone or share the product to Facebook and Twitter. Great. But they didn’t stop there. You can also share it to Google+, pin it on Pinterest (to be fair, this one isn’t such a bad idea), and if you missed the first ‘Share’ buttons, you ALSO get the ‘Share to Facebook’ and ‘Like on Facebook’ buttons from Facebook itself. ## Why anyone would ‘like’ a kitchen door knob is beyond me. So, imagine my excitement when I read Eric Mobley’s excellent post on how social media share buttons impact your website’s loading speed and performance. He took the time to perform tests with blank pages and measured the page load of different social media sharing options. Addthis.com, one such option, added around 500kb of extra data to your your page. Dependant on the connection, it’s safe to assume that your customer will be waiting for at least one extra second for just those icons. It absolutely validates the argument that there is a cost to adding that option. ## When designing webpages and online experiences we need to consider everything — load time included. According to an article posted at FastCompany, just one extra second of load time could impact your sales as much as 25%: > For example, one in four people abandons surfing to a website if its page takes longer than four seconds to load. 4 in 10 Americans give up accessing a mobile shopping site that won't load in just 3 seconds (which is roughly the time taken to read to the period at the end of this sentence). Crazy, given that shopping sites tend to have to be image-centric, and thus may take longer to load. For a large e-commerce company like Amazon, this could total $1.6 billion of lost sales each year. That’s a HUGE number. Adding social media sharing buttons or anything that isn’t really necessary may just hurt your bottom line. Is it worth it? Designing with data has become a popular subject for the last few years and a focus for what I do. The more information you have, the easier it will be to calculate the optimal page design. Does this ‘share’ button really improve page hits more than the cost of that additional second of load time? Does it actually lead to more conversions? For designers, I think it will be necessary to weigh all of these different decisions against one another. It is key to understand exactly what the business goals are and what drives those goals. So, here’s some free advice. Remove one of your sharing icon sets and utilize some A/B testing to see how you are really converting and what traffic is actually generated from social media. The results may surprise you. Steve Jobs said it best, > It's not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.

web-development Web Development design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Freelancer for Life: 5 Reasons Why This Works

> "Being small is nothing to be insecure or ashamed about. Small is great. Small is independence. Small is opportunity. Celebrate it…It's truly to your advantage."**Jason Fried** I was recently invited to talk to a group of international business students about my company. The idea was to bring in companies of different sizes and have them describe what they have to offer. While it was only a 10 minute talk meant to enlighten students, it actually gave me the opportunity to reflect on what I have learned over the past 6 years as a consultant. ## 1. I am passionate about being a one-man company. I want to make it very clear that I have no intention of ever changing that. For the past six years, it's been just my dog and I doing great work for clients without the distraction of the overhead of running a larger business. When I started consulting, there was the plan that when the client load grew, I would need to hire others. I believed that the only way to get bigger clients was to get bigger (e.g. more employees). The reality that I found was that working with amazing freelancers, I had the opportunity to continue growing and support other one-man companies like myself. ## 2. It's not an in-between jobs thing. I have been working professionally in this industry for the past 18 years. Working for small bureaus and network agencies like BBDO and Bates was great, but the longest I ever held a full-time position was two years. People are surprised when I say it, but the last six years of running my own company has been the best work experience of my life (and I have the best boss!). It is the most stable, revenue secure, and challenging job that I have ever had. The rewards are endless and I love what I do. I think Paul Jarvis says it best when he describes his own freelancing experience: > "I believe freelancing is the ultimate way to take control of my life, my finances and my daily happiness. I don't freelance as an interim step until I build a wildly successful product or a huge company. This is a long-term, long-lasting career that's now more stable than any corporate job. I freelance because I love being a freelancer. It gives me the ability to chart my own path in life, not to mention working in my underwear (with my clients being none-the-wiser). I choose who I work with, when I work, and most importantly, when I don't need to work."**Paul Jarvis** ## 3. No full-time job would change my mind. I've been approached by some of the largest companies out there as well as most top digital agencies. When Apple came calling, I had to decline. Don't get me wrong, I love Apple. They are pioneers in design and they offer some of the best user experiences. I believe that designing concepts for iOS10 or doing design for upcoming streaming services sounds like an amazing opportunity, but there's also someone designing templates for Keynote or iAD frameworks. Freelancing frees me to have control of the projects I take, the location I am at, and the flow of my work. Working in Sweden has amazing benefits like healthcare that make it the ideal place in the world for me to work. ## 4. I'm not tied to geographic borders. Simply put, I help clients define a problem, outline a solution, and execute it. If none of these things are bound by geographic boundaries, why should I be? Working with international clients can be exceptionally difficult for larger companies and the costs rise accordingly. I have learned to be understanding of the cultures of each client and that allows me to grow strong business relationships. Knowing how to effectively communicate, when to push through or step down, or even understanding how they view work is important to each project. The only disadvantage I've run into is that having clients from around the world means it is always business time for someone. Setting the right expectations can ease that burden, but it can be difficult. ## 5. It's not as lonely as you think. One of the key questions I often get is if I get lonely. The short answer is absolutely not. I work very closely with all of my clients and am dedicated to their success. I am always talking to someone and forming good relationships with them. These personal relationships with my clients put me in the position to help them make wise business decisions. A larger agency would struggle with being able to establish this personal relationship with each client. Thinking all of this through has convinced me to change my primary domain from lepetitgarcon.com (company) to antonsten.com (me). I'm just me, there is no one else, and I'm happy to say that I have no intention to change that.

career Career
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Working with me

A couple of weeks ago I sent a small survey to selected clients. I wanted a quick and easy way for them to be able to tell me what they think of working with me and the work I deliver. Each client could leave a comment and decide if they wanted to leave their name or not. There was one specific comment that made me extra happy. It's short, just two sentences but it captures so much of what I think is important when working with me. Are you ready for it? Here goes: > "What impresses me most is the way Anton understand the underlying needs of the business, and translates that into a beautiful solution. Anton is very easy to work with and he is good at finding the balance between listening and pushing." If we break it down, here's what I love about it: As a designer, my job is not to create pretty things. My job is to understand the underlying business needs and translate these into a well-crafted solution. This involves understanding the client and their business as well as it involves understanding their end users and their needs. The client in question is the world's largest electricity supplier (E.ON) and I'm helping them with an online tool for their largest corporate clients. Needless to say, I am not part of their target audience. But as a UX-designer, it's my job to understand how someone who's a site operator thinks. It's my job to understand and develop the features an accountant will need. Working with, especially, large corporations is very different from working with smaller start-ups. The pace and the time it takes to get things implemented is very different. It's essential to understand the possibilities as well as the limitations of any client that you work with. And most of all, it's important to understand when to push and when to pull back. Creating an online experience is not a sprint, it's like so much else, a marathon. And as a designer, I need to be able to know my body well enough to know when to push and when to slow down and just enjoy the scenery.

design Design business Business
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Planners and UX-Designers

Chloe Gottlieb on planners and UX-designers: > "The two minds—the experience designer and the planner—are so important because as I look for pain points and things that will add value over time, the planners look for dissonance and interesting elements that will stand out. By combining these two mind-sets, we're looking for patterns and dissonance together. It gets really juicy and really interesting." I do share her reasoning that different types of people (roles) will look for different solutions and pain points. Different perspectives on the same problem should ideally give a more thought through solution. However, I think it's clear from the quote that R/GA's blood is marketing rather than product design. From a product design perspective I'm trying to create an experience without elements that stand out but rather a seamless, simple and efficient solution. People that use products daily want things that just work – not things that stand out and create fraction against the rest of the experience.

career Career
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Ux Design explained

There's something distinctively special about the way digital designers think. They keep weird hours, exhibit odd habits and they throw a lot of jargon around – leaving those in the offline community a little dazed and confused. Most of the time you needn't bother with trying to translate a lot of what they're saying, but if you are running a live site, there is one word you need to quickly and closely become acquainted with: ## UX Design. You've probably seen this term, UX Design, thrown around a bit. You've probably seen it in the same sentence with words like: - Information Architecture - Interaction Design - Graphic Design - Web Design - Web Coding And especially the words: User Interface Design. And you've probably seen UX and UI Design paired with a lot of metaphors, each as entertaining and confusing as the last. But UX design is none of these things. It may hang out with or heavily overlap with some of these things, but it is not actually any of those things. ## It is UX Design. It's a field of expertise that stands as an independent and crucial component in website development, backed by a community of specialist professionals with enough specialist jargon to leave you begrudgingly clueless. I can help you with that. Let's begin: ## What does UX Design mean? UX Design is an abbreviation for User Experience Design. This expansion might allow you to understand its purpose a little better. In fact, you may have even drawn your own conclusion that it's about the design of a user's experience. If so, well done. >"User Experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the company, its services and its products" Don Norman, a cognitive scientist credited with coining the term User Experience in the late 1990s. To elaborate: UX design is a mix of sociology and cognitive science that looks at how people and products interact. As a scientific process, it can be applied to tangible products like cars, chairs or tables. But in the digital world it simply refers to the way a user interacts with the interface, be it a website, e-commerce store or app. ## What does UX Design aim to achieve? - To improve customer satisfaction; - To improve the quality of interaction between a company and its consumer; - To make sure that the product, whether that be a website, app or software program, logically flows from one step to the next; ## How would a UX Designer do that? Glad you asked. UX Designers are creative and critical thinkers. For the ease of explanation, let's suppose our UX designer is currently working on a website for a client. They look at the overall experience and effectiveness of each tool or facet on the company's website, and then examine if the needs of their users are met. >By understanding consumer behavior and analyzing the consumer's experience, a UX Designer can effectively create or tweak a website so that is enjoyable and easy to use for the consumer. Their design principles are derived from cognitive and behavioral analysis, rather than aesthetic or composition values. This is where a UI Designer comes in, but we will save that for later. ## This sounds like the role of a Market Researcher? Not quite, though they do share a lot of research and analytical techniques with marketers, as well as often filling the role of: - Project manager - Information architect - Program manager - Content strategist - Functional analyst ## And when you're not watching, they're usually doing: * User research * Usability testing * Information architecture * Interaction design * UI design * Visual design * Prototyping * Wire-framing * Development planning * Experience and content strategy * Service design and delivery * Coordination with UI Designer * Coordination with Web Developer * Tracking goals and integration * Analysis and iteration ## How do you find a UX Designer? You'll often recognize a UX Designer by what they say: - ""We should show users the ''Thank You' page once they have finished signing up."" - "Design is just rectangles in other rectangles, then Helvetica, then profit." - "Information is cheap. Understanding is expensive" - "We don't need more ways to wash our clothes. We need faster or quieter ways" - "But, why?" - "I have to make high fidelity mockups for a client" - "How would this interaction go if I was talking to a real person?" - "Why would you do that to information?" - "Driving users to close the browser is a design pattern" If you hear these phrases, you're talking to a UX Designer. To recap: - A UX Designer is not a graphic designer or web coder. - A UX Designer's role is to look at a website and analyze how a customer will use it and feel about it. - They will ask, "How can I make this easier for them to use?" or "How can I make the user's experience on this website more enjoyable?" - A UX Designer asks these questions so that a customer leaves the website happy and satisfied. This creates customer loyalty. - Happy loyal customers = happy business.

design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Kudos: Social Media framework

I've recently done some changes to my website, the most significant one being going from company-focused (Le Petit Garcon) to solely being me. More on that here. Another thing is that I'm back at blogging. I've read through tons of old posts (and even reposted some of them here) but interesting to see is the most shared content since 2011 is the post about 'Kudos'. Ironically, since it's about what kind of content is social media friendly. ## Here's the re-cap of Kudos: > Kudos is a planning and evaluation framework for social media marketing. When planning a piece of social media we need to ask ourselves if it is going to be; ## Knowledgeable Does this activity demonstrate knowledge on the part of the brand? Is it something that you know about our product category that your competitors don't? Is it knowledge that is unique to your brand, product or service? From the audience's point of view you need to consider if its something they need or want to know. Are you increasing their knowledge or just telling them something they already know or could have gained elsewhere? ## Useful Not all of social media activity is useful to the brand's audience. Not all dissemination of knowl- edge is actually useful to the brand. It might be commercially sensitive. It might promote an out of stock product or a discontinued service. The best-case scenario is when an activity is useful to both the brand and the audience such as with Amazon's product ratings; the audience benefits by having unbiased reviews to help them make their decisions. Amazon benefits from the free content and additional product information for its audience. I'd add here that providing entertainment is actu- ally useful. Ask any bored office worker, student or house bound parent – a good laugh has plenty of use. ## Desireable Thinking through the desirability of an activity can be a great check against what is assumed to be useful. By desirable we mean that both the brand and the audience actively want it. This is a step on from useful. Think of eating your greens; useful but not that desir- able. Conversely, consider for a moment the joys of unlimited self saucing sticky date pudding – desirable – oh yes, but no, not actually that useful. If something is desirable, really tasty-can't-get-enough-of-it desir- able to your audience you'll know it. The servers will fall over. Your hosting bill will go through the roof and you'll get calls from the IT department over the weekend screaming about terabytes of data. Desirable is a can be a challenge because making something truly desirable is actually quite tricky. ## Open Used to the impression of control that broadcast media had previ- ously afforded them, open is a concept that some brands have been struggling with. Open means honest and transparent. Not just about the parts of the message that are desirable to the brand, but about the whole lot, warts and all. An audience will respond very actively and negatively when they believe a brand has been dishon- est with them. There are lost of examples of where brands have been dishonest and been caught. Don't be one of them. It doesn't even require active dishonesty – just a lack of intent to be com- pletely open can come across badly. ## Shareable Another degree further of open is making the activity sharable. Are the materials easily downloadable? Can it be linked to or have you gone and wrapped them up in a big Flash movie that no one can link to? If it's a Flash movie then there's less material that can be shared in social book- marking sites like del.icio.us, Digg and Stumbleupon. It is as im- portant as being open that the brand then follow that up by making the activity sharable by acknowledging standard protocols that enable sharing and by actively promoting sharing with a simple "Digg this" button or a downloadable Zip file of assets. Here's the original Kudos – PDF.

marketing Marketing
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Understanding UI Design

UI Design looks familiar… If you've been looking around the digital sphere, you may recognize the term UI Design, or perhaps you might know its counter part, UX Design. You can learn about UX Design here. Whilst both UX Design and UI Design work closely together, each role refers to extremely different processes when it comes to designing and building a website. Though this does not stop people from misrepresenting or misunderstanding both roles. Rahul Varshney, co-creator of the site Foster.fm describes this difference in the first of many metaphors people like to use when discussing both terms: > "A UI without UX is like a painter slapping paint onto canvas without thought; while UX without UI is like the frame of a sculpture with no paper mache on it" This metaphor doesn't necessarily explain the role of UI Design, but it does highlight the nature of the relationship between UX Design and UI Design. Put simply. > User Experience Design focuses on how the user thinks and feels. User Interface Design looks at how the content is organized and used. or > A door handle is UI Design. The fact you need a door is UX Design. ## Which one is more important? Both are crucial and play an important role in building a site. Of course there are millions of websites, apps and software programs that may contain one without the other. But consider how much better off they would be had they taken advantage of both. ## What does a UI Designer aim to do? * To compliment the work of a UX Designer by translating their research and requirements into an attractive, guiding and responsive experience for users. * To make sure all visual elements are consistently displayed and adhering to a style guide. ## In an example: The UX Designer decides that there needs to be a 'thank you' box that appears after a customer has registered their details. The UI Designer decides that this box appears in the top left in blue in Helvetica. ## A better example? A UI Designer will design each page on a website in accordance with the UX Designers recommendations. They might be transferring some analytical data into a graph or dashboard on one of these pages. They might decide to move the more important information to the top of the page, or it might make more intuitive sense to include a zoom or sliding function to adjust the graph. ## That's sounds like a Web Designer. There are a lot of overlapping responsibilities between a Web designer and a UI Designer, and often a UI Designer can fulfill the role of a web designer as well as a graphic designer, brand designer and a frontend developer. But there is a distinctive separation. Most of those roles focus on translating design into code. But a UI Designer is responsible for translating the brand's strengths and aesthetical values into a usable and attractive interface.The interface is what a customer will be navigating around and interacting with. It's the visual composition of the page. It's everything the customer will be looking at. A UI designer looks at branding and visual design principles as oppose to cognitive analysis. They're designing graphics, constructing the layout and introducing appropriate typeface. ## Think of UI like a tool. It's a medium of communication between a person and a company. By presenting your websites information in a well-formulated and attractive layout, you are allowing your customer to interact with information and your company. You are causing them to behave with your company. As such, it means it is observable, measurable, and testable. ## How do they know what works? Like any designer, a UI Designer will keep their eye trends in their field. Just like a furniture designer will keep tabs on new developments and ideas, a UI Designer will look at other interfaces and designers to see other ways a website can be maximized. ## What's cool in the UI World? 1. Content chunking – This is way to break up large information, by separating them into chunks by using sub headings, new paragraphs and pictures. Like what we have done here. It makes it a lot easier to digest. 2. Laser Focus – This is when a design of a page will cause someone to complete an action by making it really obvious. Like when you sign on to Google, there is a blank bar to write in. Immediately you are drawn to think that this is the most obvious and prioritised task to complete. 3. Context Sensitive Navigation & Collapsed content – This is just asking the question, what items should be seen all the time and some hidden. Like how you don't see a 'like' or 'next' option until you cursor drags over an image. Or you don't see the full menu until you click on that little icon in the top left. 4. Minimalism – No longer are we interested in multi-colour or rich gradient buttons or text. It's all about being simple and colour minimal. 5. Long pages – we used to like having everything sorted into different pages, using our mouse and a menu bar to navigate through everything. But this requires a lot of work from users. It works better to keep things simple and easy by building it all on to one page. ## In short, what are a UI Designer's Responsibilities? * Customer Analysis * Design Research * Branding and Graphic Development * User Guides * Prototyping * Animation and interactivity * Transference for all devices and screen sizes * Implementation with a developer ## In a sentence: > A UI Designers responsibility is to build an attractive interface in order to enhance the relationship between the customer and the brand.

web-development Web Development design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Look and Feel and Feel

Jason Fried makes a great point in his latest post Look and Feel and Feel. > Designers often talk about the look and feel of a product, an app, an object, etc. These are good concepts to be talking about, but how the thing feels isn’t really the important feel. The important feel is how it makes you feel. Jason makes the point that Instagram makes him happy whereas Twitter makes him feel anxious, unhappy and uncomfortable. I can see his point and agree. Twitter is more of a rage-outlet whereas Instagram is much more personal and "warm" even though I'm not only following friends but also celebrities, people I don't know and even brands. They all make me feel warm and nice (@thefatjewish occasionally being the exception I guess). Facebook just makes me feel exhausted. > “It’s not the buttons, it’s not the animations, it’s not the interface or visual design. It’s not the colors, it’s not the font, it’s not the transitions. It’s how using the apps make me feel before, during, and after”

design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Naming your icons

I think good design is intuitive but should also involve a certain degree of exploration (unless it's.. say an ATM machine in which case exploration is not necessarily appreciated by the user). There's a growing trend amongst designers though to use icons that are extremely hard to understand with the sole excuse that the use will eventually learn their meaning. Joshua Porter makes a great case for labeling your icons in Labels always win. > However, I think labels should be kept around in almost all cases as they turn guesses into clear decisions. Nothing says “manage” like “manage”. In other words, in the battle of clarity between icons and labels, labels always win.

design Design
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Anton Sten 10 years ago

Conversations

Do you remember the last time you had a really great conversation? Regardless if it was with a friend, a colleague or a stranger, I imagine that it was a rewarding experience. The two of you talking, listening, interacting, engaging with each other. I'm pretty sure you felt there was a mutual respect. Maybe you gained some new insights or was touched by something they said. Perhaps it made you look at something from a new perspective? Now do you remember the last time you had that type of communication with a brand or a product? No? Most brands today are getting really good at communicating their thoughts and opinions through social media. They've adopted the new (digital) landscape and use the tools at hand to talk to millions of fans, followers and "friends" on a daily basis. For some reason though, it's not really that same type of communication now is it? What we as communicators often forget is that communication is a two-way street. Without a mutual respect for each other there's nothing to base the communication and the relationship on. How come so many brands try to start a communication by talking, rather than listening in and joining in on a topic? When you listen to people and really try and understand their thoughts and everyday life, you get to understand what their needs are. This enables you to create products and services that not only make your users happier — but thoroughly gives them a better everyday life. "Sure, but we're already talking to our customers and taking input from them." Well, that's great but here comes the tricky part. Your organization will have to change. Your company will need to adjust and reshape. Every day. And there's no guarantee that it will bring you anymore success. I recently gave a short talk about the challenges the banking industry is facing. It's an industry that have been centered around their own office for centuries and they have had complete control over their customers and the way they should run their business. The last couple of years though, we've seen a huge change within that industry and there are literally new services popping up every day that will give the old banks a decent fight over users. I'm a consultant and consultants generally sell their services in relation to time. Some charge an hourly rate and some charge a monthly rate. But the general business model is that you pay X times Y. It's an understatement that my potential might be resistant to hire someone they've never met (and usually never will meet) to do something that they find it difficult to scope. When talking to potential clients I realized I had to offer a lower risk, lower cost offer that I could offer to them without really knowing the specifics of their business. As a low risk offer, I realized I had to drop my current business model of charging for my time and give them a fixed price, fixed deliverable product. You can find out more about it my offer here. Change is scary because you're never sure of what you're going to get. I have honestly no idea how my product will fall out. I have invested time and money in it but I'm not sure if it'll ever generate me anything back. But as Peter Aceto, CEO of Tangerine put it: > "Don't get me wrong, (banking) innovation is not easy, but the alternative, as far as we see it, is no longer an option." So we dare to try. We dare to fail and because of that, we will succeed.

business Business marketing Marketing
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Anton Sten 12 years ago

Cost, pricing and perceived value

There's a very simple pricing strategy I like. Wether you're selling a physical product, a digital product or a service — it's price is related to three different factors. There's the cost which basically is how much it'll cost to produce or what your lowest hourly rate would be. If you price your product below the cost, you're eventually run out of business (unless you have other super products to balance it up). Then there's the price which is how much the customer pays, sometimes referred to as the markup. Take the price and subtract the cost and you'll end up with the profit. Thirdly there's the perceived value that the product has. If the cost is 50$, the price is 100$ but the customer's perceived value is 150$ — everyone wins. The manufacturer will end up with a 100% profit and the customer will feel as if they've done a great deal — paying less than what they think the product is worth. When the iPhone originally launched in 2007 and with the significant update in 2008 (iPhone 3G) — it was a huge success. iPhones were sold for 500-600$ depending on capacity and had a production cost in the areas of 200-250$ giving Apple a massive profit of somewhere in the amounts of 300$ per sold unit. > The perceived value of an iPhone was far higher than it's price. Now, the iPhone was not just a phone — or even a smartphone — it was a whole new category of products. Nothing like this had ever been introduced before. Expectations were high before it's announcement and they were met — and exceeded. People were enthusiastic, they were thrilled. The perceived value of an iPhone was far higher than it's price. As we're approaching a new product launch, it'll be interesting to see what Apple have in store for us. The rumored, low-cost, iPhone 5c will likely be less of a profit product for Apple but instead bring users to it's app-ecosystem. The perceived value of an iPhone 5c will surely be lower — as will it's profits — but allow Apple to gain larger market share. The world's most sold phone is the Nokia 1100, having sold more than 250 million units. It doesn't allow you to do anything besides call and text — but it's value lies elsewhere, it has great battery life lasting for more than a week and is a low cost phone at a cost of 12-15$ (prices vary heavily). What features could Apple introduce to the iPhone 5c that would allow for it to gain market share in regions such as India, Africa, China and Latin America?

business Business marketing Marketing
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