Attended UPA International Conference 2010 @ Munich, Germany.

Embracing Cultural Diversity – User Experience Design for the World

RANZ @ Usability Professionals Conference 2010 - Munich, Germany

Attended UPA international conference at Munich, Germany. Last year I had plan to attend UPA conference at Portland but could not make it. This year, I am impressed with the theme of the conference “Embracing Cultural Diversity – User Experience Design for the World”.  and decided to have my presence. While doing the registration, I was in a small confusion weather to attend UPA Conference (or) UX London Conference (stars bashing on my head!!!) . I spoke to my buddy UX pros and Finlay decided to attend this.

For the first time in its history, the Usability Professionals’ Association International Conference will travel to the heart of Europe. The key theme focused on how UX professionals can create great user experiences across different cultures, meeting the challenges of delivering to diverse audience.

The international UPA conference was hosted in Munich, Germany, and provided a great opportunity to meet and network and to share ideas, visions and innovation strategies across cultures and across countries. There were more than 800+UX professionals from more than 50 countries.

Tutorials and workshops on 24th Monday and 25th Tuesday, then two and a half days packed with presentations, Idea Markets, and opportunities to network with other user experience professionals. Workshops and Tutorials begin on Monday, May 24, and regular conference sessions begin on Wednesday, May 26 at Munich, Germany at the Bayerischer Hof Hotel.

I have reached to Munich via Frankfurt by Lufthansa airline on 25th June. I used to wonder is this city called "Munich" or "Munchan" but both are the same. Stayed at Intercity Hotel which is at located at central Munich. The hotel was cool and very accessible and BTW free WIFI. Without internet we will end up nothing in Europe :) Went to the conference hotel in the evening to just have a overview of the place, people, etc and done with the formal registration. After that i started exploring the Exhibition stalls in the conference.

The conference venue itself is very beautiful! It’s being held in the Hotel Bayerischer Hof and it’s one of the grandest and most expensive hotels in Munich. I did not stay in this hotel as this is very very expensive €250. The only WIFI available in the building costs €27 for 24 hours and could not afford to spend for Internet during conference breaks. You can make out lunch and dinner with that penny.

The lunch sessions were a great idea, rather than being a formal thing, you just head to a restaurant (which has a topic) and discuss. Unfortunately, we had about 50 people go to our restaurant, which resulted in bill chaos and a very slow lunch. There was also too many people so the leader couldn’t really lead the discussion (as he was on a different table) but I met some great people and I managed to get back to the conference in time. Sometimes, it’s just easier to let the venue sort out the catering, since they are equipped and used to dealing with big groups in a short time period. We had some great discussions on User experience and everyone sharing their practical experiences. One thing which i have realized that all the UX designers across the globe will have same set of problems. "Dev /QA Vs UX"

I really enjoyed the conference and made many international UX friends. Got an opportunity to meet more than 800+ UX professionals from 50 different countries. Happy to see some of my old friends from India and abroad. Jumki Iyyengar, Sameer Chabuskwar from India, Saud Sultan from Singapore, Daneil Suiz from Hongkong & on....!

The experience in Munich was awesome. Munich is a very beautiful city. I am really impressed with the architecture, roads, food and mainly public transport. Even i had a free ticket for tram / bus / metro, i just preferred walking across streets. Did not get much time to explore the city but after the conference ~7.00PM walked around the city with my gears and clicking photographs. Good thing is that climate was good and it was long day. Me, Saud and Tania (Ukrine friend) generally used to go around the city in the evenings and take some photographs. I know you all have missed this but don't worry..!!! I will be sharing you some great photographs & my experiences.

Did not done any shopping except some magnet Souvenirs, Pens & Beer mugs. I have a habit of collecting some fridge magnets from each place i visit and stick to my fridge... (its my dashboard ...lol!). Water is expensive than Beer. German Beer is famous in the world and tried tasting different Beers, even i don't have much habit of drinking.... just followed the Funda...."Be a ROMAN in ROME"!!! Finally... realized we should experience everything... that ithis world offers!! lol!

Trust me…if you are planning for UX conference don't miss UPA next year at least. If you get a chance try planning a trip to Munich, Germany for a vacation…Its awesome.!!!! I have taken lots of photographs in the conference and also in the city... to share with you all...enjoy!!!
Stay tuned... will be posting more details shortly...

Usability in Movies...

watch this movie and this may give a clear picture what Usability mean..!

Eyetracking: Is It Worth It?

"It is easy to get excited about eyetracking. Seeing where people look while using your Web site, Web application, or software product sounds like an opportunity to get amazing insights into their user experience. But eyetracking is expensive and requires extra effort and specialized knowledge. The heat maps and other visualizations certainly look impressive, but what can you really learn from them? After using eyetracking for the first time, many find that it is not easy to know how to analyze the visualizations and make conclusions from them. Does eyetracking really provide any additional insights you would not have discovered anyway through traditional usability testing? Does the value of eyetracking outweigh its limitations? This article will discuss and answer these questions." (Jim Ross - UXmatters) ...more

AIR INDIA “USER IN EXPERIENCE” Design

Air India online ticket booking experience...nothing worse than this...
Recently, I was looking for fight prices to Bangkok and found Indian Airlines flies from Hyderabad - bangkok from yatra.com

Once i clicked the URL www.inianairlines.in it displayed Air India logos and site branding. Then i thought may be these two companies have merged now. Rechecked the URL but still it showed me www.indianairlines.in. There are 3 sections and each section has button just like a drop down design.

No idea where to click as there is any description. The 3 options are Air India Express, Air India AI Code flights.. (No Idea what this mean).. Air India IC code flights.. (No Idea what this mean.) Tried sometime and it looks like Air India Express is something different service and it has different fleets. Could not flight out difference between AI & IC codes... as there of the links take me to a different websites in a new windows and all of them has its own booking engines.

Ok, finally I thought lets try IC and find out flights for Bangkok.
Here is my booking experience...@ AirIndia .. :)


- The heading says. Book a flight - IC flights... (No idea....What is IC?)
- Multi city link... what it means..? Why is this placed after return...? No idea..!
- More cities link was placed after the cities. I was expecting this might open a other drop down in place and list more cities... but surprisingly it has taken me to other website.. :) We will find similar booking engine and it has few more cities added in the list and again you find a "more cities" link which will open the previous website "IC" in one more window :) What a great workflow..!
- I have selected Hyderabad - Bangkok and selected "Return" radio button and selected dates as Departure: 6 Sept 2009, and Return: 31September 2009. I was looking for the search button and did not find. By mistake I thought "Reset" Button is search and clicked on it. All the fields were reset to current date. I was confused because the reset button was given more priority than the “Book:” by placing this in right. Retyped everything and this time carefully looked into the user interface and realized I need to click on "Book Now" for searching...flights. - Once clicking the "Book Now" button it showed me the same screen, then I clicked 2-3 times but still in the same page. Looked carefully and noticed that there is an error in red color saying "Invalid Departure/Return Date" I thought that there might be no flights available on that day but the fact is that there is no 31st date in September. System doesn’t validate and tell the user about dates being a booking engine. Very sad and bad user experience…ever experienced…!
-By Default Indian Rupees is selected and id don't know why they want Any other currency radio button and a Drop down deactivated - selecting "Australia - AUD" Looks like the designer want to make the interface very busy without any room :)
-Instructions text is very funny; it occupies ~20% real estate and unwanted secondary information.

- All fares are reflected in Indian Rupees.
- Equivalent approximate fares in your chosen currency are also displayed.
- Sale of International Sectors (Ex-India or Return)is now available on our website.

Finally this website has eaten my time and I have decided that let me go back to some private fight booking website and do the booking. I have lost all the good will / credibility about this Air India spending some minutes on their website. I came to a conclusion that if something goes wrong in my shopping cart, I am not sure getting my money back easily...
Tried calling some local agents... at the end of the day :) as I felt they will respond me if I call them and intimate me the status rather than I solely taking risk :)

Summary: For online ticket booking site, search and the booking engine is the heart of the user experience. Too much of information will kill the experience, keep the site as simple as possible and design it more task driven. Have proper validation and give an impression that this site is secured and your money will be safe / secure. Divide the tasks in to primary and secondary and make it simpler to use by providing proper user assistance elements inbuilt in the design. This website needs a serious redesign and need to follow UCD model. Don’t know why Government is putting lot of money in other stuff but why they are not focusing on small things which give revenue to the government and happily diverting the business to the private folks!

Thinking Aloud...!

What is this?
Thinking aloud (Nielsen, 1994), may be the single most valuable usability engineering method. It involves having a end user continuously thinking out loud while using the system.

Purpose
By verbalizing the users thoughts, the test users enable us to understand how they view the system, and this again makes it easier to identify the end users' major misconceptions. By showing how users interpret each individual interface item, THA facilitates a direct understanding of which parts of the dialogue cause the most problems.

Points of Interest
a failure to lend itself well to most types of performance measurement; the different learning style is often perceived as unnatural, distracting and strenuous by the users; non-analytical learners generally feel inhibited; time consuming since briefing the end users is a necessary part of the preparation. Causing users to focus and concentrate is both an advantage and disadvantage since it results in less than natural interactions at times and THA results in being faster due to the users focus.