CUA of the Month – November, 2010

Going the Extra Mile for UX

by Doug Gorney

The most critical element of user-centered design is understanding who your users are, and what they need. And to really be sure, as Madeleine Kim has discovered, you have to step outside the comfort of the usability lab.

As a Senior User Experience Consultant for the Rapid Design and Visualization (RDV) Practice Group at Capgemini, a global technology services provider, Madeleine uses a collaborative and iterative user-centered design process to research, whiteboard, simulate, test, and visualize new ideas with a range of corporate and non-profit clients. When an international NGO [Non-Governmental Organization] needed a new portal to unify information on a global scale, it was important for Madeleine and her RDV team to see first-hand what the needs of the stakeholders were, and how the portal was going to be used.

Capgemini RDV teams were sent to Africa, Asia, and far-flung parts of the Americas. As part of the Asia team, Madeleine traveled to Cambodia, Taiwan, and India, interviewing end-users in the settings where they would be using the system.

"We were there to try to gather as much information as we could," says Madeleine, "as well as to validate the prototypes that we'd developed prior to the trip. Donors, communities served by the NGO around the world, and employees all needed to find diverse information through this portal. We wanted to see if our visualizations resonated with the people who used them, and if they addressed the pain points users were experiencing. Is it enjoyable? Painful? Do users like one particular system or not? We needed to find out about the different types of tools they use, and the people they interact with."

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Going the Extra Mile for UX... (Continued)

Madeleine's objective was to get feedback to update her team's simulation work. Having worked closely with NGO subject matter experts in initial simulations, the RDV confirmed that their designs had been on target, but they did encounter some needed refinements.

"It was eye-opening. You only have one perspective of how you see things, and then your world view explodes when you get all these surprises."

Madeleine says that the trip showed her that user-centered design can really make a difference in the world. She had seen that UX could help a corporation prove a product, but it was another thing entirely to see how NGOs were using the user-centered design her team had developed to serve underdeveloped communities. "Seeing how user-centered design worked outside the corporate arena was pretty powerful," she says.

The fundamental humanity of UX is what attracted Madeleine to usability in the first place.

"I'm always asking myself, what things can I do to make it better for the user, to make our design of systems more human-centered? I want to push beyond a design simply dictated by the tool itself, requiring humans to adapt to it."

After studying visual communications at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, work in web design led to an interest in human-computer interactions and user-centered design. At Capgemini, where Madeleine has been for six years, she learned about HFI from a colleague who had taken HFI courses and was successfully applying the knowledge and expertise he had learned. Madeleine took HFI classes herself, passed the certification test and became a CUA.

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Going the Extra Mile for UX... (Continued)

"CUA training and the certification are invaluable in reinforcing what I know, refreshing my skillset and introducing me to new trends and new skills to consider," Madeleine says. "I'm currently working on a competitive market intelligence project for a pharmaceutical company. That user-centered analysis methodology is helping in the interview sessions and in gathering information, as well as in the rapid development of prototypes."

The refined skills and methodologies from her CUA certification, paired with her practical experience in developing countries, has given Madeleine a wise, almost anthropological perspective on the practice of UX.

"What I found in the field, generally speaking, was that users are hunters and gatherers of information. They are looking for the ultimate information that will help them accomplish their goal. They will hunt for valuable nuggets, gather them into their basket, and then later slice and dice that information to get the single answer they need. As UX practitioners, we guide those hunter-gatherers – the users – to make better decisions when they look for, analyze, and make a decision on that information."

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