Product Design – Connolly Design

April 27, 2015November 3, 2020

User story mapping at Felt Lab

Last Friday I visited the REAP Felt Lab to provide an introduction to user story mapping in a lunch-hour workshop. I’ve been a big fan of story mapping ever since I was introduced to it in a workshop by Jeff Patton back in 2008, and I was delighted when he finally released a definitive book on the topic last year. I highly recommend User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product to anyone who wants to learn more about this powerful technique that can help product development teams focus on users and their needs rather than on features.

The introduction that I delivered comes straight from Patton’s book, and the folks at Felt Lab were thoroughly engaged by the experience. It was a full house, and each team learned a lot during the surprisingly challenging exercise of creating a story map about their morning routines.

Unsurprisingly, the same engagement and enlightenment were visible during a similar uxWaterloo session back in March.

If you missed these events, keep an eye on the schedule for The Boltmade Sessions, as there’s a good chance that we’ll deliver another iteration of the workshop there.

May 3, 2011November 3, 2020

My new/old wireless music player

I recently acquired a couple of pieces of technology that are pretty much at opposite ends of their respective lifecycles.

One is an Apple iPad 2, which I’ll write about another time.

The other is a product that represents a technology that was enormously disruptive to the music industry of its time. This product, and others like it, enabled anyone to listen to recordings of music in their home — no need to go out to hear live music, or to learn to play an instrument and make your own music.

I now have a Victrola manufactured by the Victor Talking Machine Co. in 1917! I’ve had 78 RPM records in the house for several years now, some of them in album form, and it’s great to have a portable (well, luggable), wireless device to play them on. It doesn’t use electricity — just wind up the spring-driven turntable, put the needle down, and listen! What’s striking to me is that my new/old Victrola functions as well today as it did when it was first built almost a century ago; I doubt that my iPad 2 will be able to make that claim.

I already knew that the steel needles that pick up the sound from the grooves of a 78 RPM record should only be used once, as they wear out and a worn needle will damage records. One fascinating bit of information that I didn’t know previously, though, is that different needles will produce different tones when playing records. Needle selection is an important, and personal, choice when listening to these records, and I guess technology lovers of any era love tweaking and tuning their toys!

April 11, 2011November 3, 2020

We’ll be right back after this short break

I’m sure that most of you reading this will have seen Google’s Gmail Motion announcement on April 1, or one or more of the company’s many other foolish initiatives on that day. I love that they play this stuff straight, and that some of the jokes can be pretty ephemeral (like showing search results for “Helvetica” on that day using the widely-disparaged type face Comic Sans).

There are also hidden bits of whimsy in Google products that have been a round for a while, but which still make me smile. The question in search results for “recursion” is a favourite of mine. And when I occasionally look in my Gmail spam folder for missing messages, the ads that link to recipes that use Hormal Spam® are always welcome.

Sometimes the bits of whimsy are quite fleeting, but no less delightful when I notice them. I only recently discovered the messaging provided by Google’s chat functionality within Gmail. The company’s attention to details means that there are usually helpful status messages that explain what’s happening: “Loading…”

When there’s an interruption in service, Chat will try to reconnect. Again, a message provides details on what’s happening: “Unable to reach Karos Health. Please check your Internet connection.”

Of course, there’s also a message when the connection is restored. Evocative of a television talk show host announcing a return from a commercial break, the message “…and, we’re back!” is easy to miss, as it typically lasts only a few seconds. That means, though, that it’s also unobtrusive and it doesn’t get annoying. Lovely stuff!

January 10, 2011November 3, 2020

A bottle of correcting fluid as a metaphor

I’ve written before, and given an Ignite talk on, the use of metaphor in product design. I occasionally see an icon and wonder if it is recognizable as an object from the real world, and hence whether the metaphor is clear. Here’s an example from Pages, the document creation application that is part of Apple’s iWork product suite. The preferences dialog includes an area for specifying the behaviour of auto-correction of things like capitaliztion, quotation marks, and so on.

The odd thing to my mind is that the icon appears to be a bottle of correction fluid, something used to correct mistakes on documents created using a typewriter. As with using “cc” in email, the metaphor refers to a pretty old technology that is used by far fewer people today than it was in the past. Beyond that, it refers to a tool that is manual and pretty finicky, about as far as automatic as you can get. I wonder how many users of Pages in 2011 have never seen, let alone used, a bottle of correcting fluid? That is, for how many people is the icon unrecognizable and, hence, ineffective as a UI metaphor?

July 14, 2010November 3, 2020

You did WHAT with our product?!?

I wrote recently about the risks in listening to what users say they do rather than observing what they actually do. The bottom line is that people are not necessarily reliable reporters of their own actions or preferences.

Another reason to observe users is to discover the innovative uses to which they put a product, uses that may never have occurred to the product’s creators. The implications of such uses can be a great source of product or feature ideas.

I was vividly reminded of this during a bicycle ride this past weekend. I’m guessing that the designers of the Zoom Boom shown in the accompanying photo hadn’t conceived of it as a security device for construction sites. Here it is, though, providing protection for a trailer-based concrete mixer on a Sunday morning. It would be pretty tough for thieves to steal the mixer out from under the Zoom Boom.

While I design for user experience in software products, this kind of ingenuity obviously isn’t confined to that realm. Seeing examples out in the world is always fun.

April 13, 2010November 1, 2020

They built a faux iPad and they’re going to use it

Speaking of UI prototyping, have a look at how the folks at Omni approached designing for the iPad without having laid hands on one. Not only did they make great use of paper prototypes, they created a non-functional mockup of an iPad to help get a feel for the interaction on a physical device. This reminds me of Jeff Hawkins, founder of Palm, carrying around a crude wooden prototype of the original Palm Pilot as part of his design research into that product.

UI prototypes help explore, share, and validate a design. Going the extra mile to create a simulation of the device on which a software product will be used undoubtedly contributes to a successful design.

April 7, 2010November 3, 2020

A busy couple of weeks

It’s been a busy couple of weeks, and I appear to have neglected the blog. Here’s a quick roundup of some of what I’ve been up to.

The most recent edition of StartupCampWaterloo was two weeks ago already, and it was another fun edition with a variety of demos and great conversation. My former Primal Fusion colleague Alex Black showed off the cool stuff he’s been doing at his newest venture, Snapsort. It was fun to see the great progress that he’s made.

Last week I had the great fortune to hear a talk by Alfred Spector, VP of Research and Special Initiatives at Google. Inspiring stuff, and there’s clearly a lot of great work being done at Google in general and at the Waterloo office in particular.

This month’s edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo was last night, and while the free pizza was certainly a plus, it was the conversations and connections that remain the big attractions.

Meanwhile, in between these events and a variety of productive conversations with people, I’ve been chugging away on a product prototype as part of an informal project with some friends. I have to say that the recent warm weather has reminded me of the joys of coding away on the front porch and bringing an idea to life. Looks like I’ll remain heads down on design and prototyping for a little while anyway!

March 22, 2010November 1, 2020

A fretboard tribe leads to print success

Traditional print publishers have been facing a challenging environment the last few years (though I have to think that there have been challenges of one kind or another for as long as there has been print). More astute observers than me have written extensively on the travails of the industry, but as a former designer of print publications it’s hard for me not to hope that the industry figures out how to make it work.

There are pockets of hope out there though. For a while now I’ve been telling friends and colleagues about one publication that I read that seems to have found a winning formula.

The Fretboard Journal started life as a high-quality quarterly magazine featuring beautiful photography and well-written articles by people passionate about music. Now in its fifth year, it remains that today, but the FJ team has augmented the magazine with a variety of online activities that support the printed product, build a community of passionate readers, and make real offline connections.

There’s a monthly email newsletter to subscribe to on their home page. Perhaps that’s a little quaint in the Internet of the 21st century, but I devour it as eagerly as I do the quarterly print magazine.
FJ is active on Twitter via both a @fbjournal and, somewhat more erratically, individual staff accounts. They’ve also created Twitter lists related to various fretted instruments. Nice!
I have to confess that I make little use of Facebook these days. In fact, the main reason that I check in is to see FJ updates — there’s a steady stream of announcements and pointers to YouTube videos.
The FJ podcast (also on iTunes) is an audio treat, with the focus being great conversations with a variety of musicians, luthiers, music store owners, and other folks. It has been weekly in the past, but seems to be on hiatus right now.
The FJ blog was far more active in the early days, and seems to have been supplanted by other activities. Still, it’s a presence. Of course, there’s also a website.

Is this a formula that can support a business? As it turns out, a new issue of The Fretboard Journal arrived in my mailbox while I had this post in draft form. It included the following from editor Marc Greilsamer in his ‘Opening Notes’ column:

It seems that the death of the magazine industry is upon us, or so we’ve been told by whatever media outlets still remain. But while it’s certainly true that many publications — young and old, big and small — seem to be falling by the wayside, The Fretboard Journal somehow continues to grow. For that we only have our wonderful readers (and fellow tribesmen) to thanks.

Not just a community, but a tribe. Sounds like a pretty healthy business to me.

Update (April 7, 2010): FJ recently unveiled a new web site and blog, with exclusive web-only content.