Prototyping for physical and digital products

Prototyping for Physical and Digital Products Kathryn McElroy Prototyping for Physical and Digital Products by Kathryn McElroy Copyright © 2016 O’Reilly Media All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by O’Reilly Media, Inc., 1005 Gravenstein Highway North, Sebastopol, CA 95472 O’Reilly books may be purchased for educational, business, or sales promotional use Online editions are also available for most titles (http://safaribooksonline.com) For more information, contact our corporate/institutional sales department: 800-998-9938 or corporate@oreilly.com Editor: Angela Rufino Production Editor: Colleen Lobner Copyeditor: Jasmine Kwityn Interior Designer: David Futato Cover Designer: Randy Comer Illustrator: Rebecca Demarest March 2016: First Edition Revision History for the First Edition 2016-03-11: First Release The O’Reilly logo is a registered trademark of O’Reilly Media, Inc Prototyping for Physical and Digital Products, the cover image, and related trade dress are trademarks of O’Reilly Media, Inc While the publisher and the author have used good faith efforts to ensure that the information and instructions contained in this work are accurate, the publisher and the author disclaim all responsibility for errors or omissions, including without limitation responsibility for damages resulting from the use of or reliance on this work Use of the information and instructions contained in this work is at your own risk If any code samples or other technology this work contains or describes is subject to open source licenses or the intellectual property rights of others, it is your responsibility to ensure that your use thereof complies with such licenses and/or rights 978-1-491-95275-7 [LSI] Chapter Prototyping for Physical and Digital Products There seem to be hundreds of new smart objects and apps reaching the market every day With all of this competition, how you know that your idea will be influential and that people will buy it? You’ve done the market research and found a viable sector, or you’re working with a team that has an idea and is rushing toward a minimum viable product (MVP) But how can you truly know that your ideal customer will benefit from your new product or app? Prototyping and user testing is the best way to make viable products that are impactful for your users By creating incrementally better prototypes throughout your process, you can get valuable feedback to improve your product By using real people, instead of merely trusting your gut, and observing how they interact with your prototypes, you’ll see exactly where they get stuck, what they don’t understand, and their visceral reaction to the entire experience Prototyping is a key to developing a good experience and good user experience design In this report, I’ll begin with the basics of what prototypes are, with examples from different industries Then I’ll explain why prototyping is important, including the many reasons for and value of prototyping I’ll dig into current approaches and more specifics for prototyping for physical and digital products Finally, I’ll explain how to set up and run user tests with these prototypes Physical products in the context of this report means physical-computing, electronics-based products, including smart objects, wearable technology, and Internet-connected devices, whereas digital products are software and apps that we use on devices that are usually screen-based This report focuses on the abundant opportunities that we have designing for the Internet of Things and how to get started in electronics It does not cover how to prototype for industrial design or product manufacturing By the end of this report, you’ll understand how to create cheap, fast prototypes at a variety of different fidelity levels and how to user test them to get the best insights to improve your product You’ll feel empowered to take the next step in prototyping for your current project, and I hope that you do! What Is a Prototype? Prototypes are created every day for all sorts of situations Even if you haven’t consciously been making prototypes, they have most likely intuitively been part of your process or even your daily life A prototype is “a first, typical or preliminary model of something, especially a machine, from which other forms are developed or copied.”1 This “preliminary model” can be anything that takes an idea that’s in your head and gives it a form to test As long as your goal is to always improve your idea, everything is a prototype They can be sketches, sculptures, or intricate drawings Or they can be coded, soldered, and fully functional products All sorts of industries create prototypes of their work to test and try out different ideas, as you’ll read in the following sections Architecture In architecture, prototypes include floor plans (which are drawn and redrawn based on user input and needs), form studies, aesthetic models (Figure 1-1), air-flow models (testing ventilation throughout a space by showing how air will move through the rooms), and daylight models (improving window design by testing how much light they let in at any point in the day or year— see Figure 1-2) Each of these prototypes has a specific use and improves the building based on the testing of the models Figure 1-1 Architects make prototypes to explore many alternative form factors before deciding on a direction (photo courtesy of Flickr user Forgemind Archimedia) Figure 1-2 More complicated models allow architects to test air flow and daylight for their chosen form (photo courtesy of Flickr user Forgemind Archimedia) Industrial Design In industrial design, prototypes include hundreds of sketches, foam models, material studies, ergonomic studies, and final forms (Figure 1-3) These short-listed forms are created in the proper materials and tested for material longevity and feel before the final form is chosen and prepared for manufacturing Industrial designers spend most of their time prototyping their ideas before settling on the proper form for production Figure 1-41 High-fidelity coded prototypes include visual design, animations, and interactions At this point in your process, you’re testing minute details and interactions Is the font size appropriate for the different media sizes? Are the animations adding to the experience and not distracting the user? Is the content easy to read, and are the calls to action clear and accessible? You can conduct longer, more detailed tests, and users can tackle complex interactions Use these prototyping types as a toolkit from which you can pull what you need, when you need to Remember to write out the assumptions you’re testing, and then choose the proper fidelity level and type of prototype you need to prove or disprove that assumption The best user experience designers and prototypers don’t depend on just one tool; they have a whole arsenal of options that they’re comfortable with, and choose which one to use for each specific engagement User Testing with Prototypes After you’ve created your first, or hundredth, prototype, you’re ready to user test it User testing is the process of getting someone who is as close to your ideal user as possible, and who is not you, to interact with your prototype and find any pain points, problems, or confusion within your proposed idea Observing a user directly interacting with your prototype will give you a wealth of information beyond just “did the task get finished?” By being in person, or including a video feed of your remote user’s face, you can look for micro-expressions of frustration, delight, and confusion, and then ask follow up questions to why the user felt that way It’s qualitative data that lets you examine the emotional response to an experience, rather than just the quantitative analytics once it’s delivered The first step for successful user testing is to create a research plan that includes exactly what assumptions you want to test, the goal of the research, a few basic questions to establish who the test subject is, and the questions you need to ask or the tasks the user needs to accomplish to test the assumptions This document can be formal, including a list of your stakeholders and business objectives that the test will affect, or it can be more casual, acting as a guide to help you during your testing For a more formal version, look at Usability.gov’s template The Assumptions and Goals You should already know the assumptions you’re testing because you designed the prototype to address those concerns directly If you don’t, though, start by writing out exactly how you expect your user to use the prototype and point out the most important interactions that the user needs in order to understand and use your product Look back to your user flow, and see where there might be deviation points from your happy path If you’re later in the process, your assumptions will be more specific interactions and patterns Once you’ve written out your assumptions, write your goal for the test If I’m making a meditation app, and my assumption is “users will be able to find the additional meditations in the menu,” an example goal is “determine if a user can discover and choose a new meditation.” The Questions There are two types of questions you should ask your user: establishing questions and feedback questions Establishing questions allow you to get to know this specific user, to understand their work background, and to find any hidden biases that may affect your testing Here are some examples of the information you may want to gather: Name Job Description Team profile (if it’s a work-based software) Home life (if it’s a lifestyle product) What software/apps/smart objects you use on a regular basis? What is your favorite app/smart object to use recently and why? Feedback questions are the meat of the interview, and should be written to accomplish your goals When you write these questions for your user testing, there are a few guidelines you should follow The objective of these questions is to get your user to interact with your prototype in either an open or closed way (exploratory versus guided, depending on the research goal), and talk about what they are doing, what they expect, and what issues they’re having The biggest rule for writing research questions is to create open-ended, nonleading questions that not result in “yes” or “no” answers As the following table illustrates, you should frame your questions in an open-ended manner to keep the conversation—and insights—flowing: Don’t ask this Ask this instead Would you use this product? How might this product integrate into your daily life? Did you like feature “A”? Observe how they interact with the feature; ask, “what did you expect to happen?” Do you like this product? What’s your impression of this product? What was your favorite thing about this product? What were the top two things you liked and the top two things you disliked about this experience? The more you can get the user to talk about the experience with your software or physical product, the more likely you’ll find nuggets of insight and wisdom in what they’re saying More often than naught, the most insightful conversations I have are usually right after the “testing” is done, and we’re just talking about what the user thought of the whole experience So keep recording your conversation until the entire session is over! The Tasks Tasks are another way to guide the research so that you’re testing your specific assumptions instead of letting a user go randomly through your product Tasks should give the user a goal that aligns with the research goal, and then see if the user takes the assumed path to complete that goal For the meditation app example, a task would be “sign into the service and choose a new meditation to listen to.” It does not directly tell the user how to complete the task, just what they should accomplish Now you can see if your user’s actions match your assumptions A Sample Research Plan Here’s a sample research plan for the meditation app example: Goals and Assumptions Determine if a user can discover and choose a new meditation Assumed that they will find the catalog of meditations and will be able to choose one based on the provided information User Profile Beginner or intermediate experience with meditation Has meditated at least once in the past week Questions Name Job description What role does meditation play in your life? How often you meditate? Do you use other existing meditation apps or products? Tasks You are a returning user to this meditation app, and you’d like to find a new meditation that fits your current mood Once you’ve “listened” to the meditation, you want to come back and use it later How you accomplish this? Now that you’ve finished, what were the top two things you like about this app, and what were the two things you disliked about it? Conducting the Research With your research plan in hand, you’re ready to conduct your research First thing you’ll need to is find users to test with It may seem daunting to reach out to people to test a prototype, but I have a few tricks that make it easier The first is to check with your friends and family to see if anyone fits your user persona It’s helpful for you to interview them first to get an initial test done, but remember that because of the nature of your relationship, they might not give you the hard constructive feedback you need Take their feedback with a grain of salt It’s also better to use friends for lower-fidelity prototypes that need bigger-picture feedback The second, and best way I’ve found to engage specific users is to look for a meet-up that your ideal user would attend, reach out to the organizers, and see if you can attend the next event For the meditation app, it would be easy to attend any sort of meditation meet up and after it’s done, ask the other attendees if they’d be interested in helping you with a project You’ll be surprised how many people love trying new products before they come out You can also put ads out on Craigslist or Facebook, go to locations your users hang out and intercept people for short interviews, or even place prototypes in the environment to get people to interact with them (more so for outdoor smart objects) Set up your research session for success by gathering the necessary materials before you start You’ll need a consent form for your user to sign, such as this one from Usability.gov, the prototype, a way to record at least the audio, if not a video or screencast of the session, and ideally a second person to take notes while you pose the questions and tasks During the session, make sure to record from the beginning to end, and have your user think out loud as they go, so you can hear what they expected and what their initial reaction is to the content (Figure 1-42) Keep an eye out for micro expressions, where the user looks confused, excited, frustrated, or even scared for a split second Dig deeper into those reactions and ask what they saw or thought just then My favorite question to ask when I see microexpressions is “what did you expect to happen?” Take notes, and return to the recording to take additional notes about what the user enjoyed, disliked, and anywhere they got confused along the way Figure 1-42 During your test, observe how your user interacts with your prototype, where they get lost, and when they get frustrated Finding Insights After the session, and preferably within a day, you’re ready to find insights in the interview Remember that if a user went off your happy path, it’s a good thing! You’ve found a problem that a user would have had with your finished product, but you found it before your product shipped Seeing where people get lost is the main goal of prototyping and testing; it means the prototype was valuable Start by going over your notes, and writing anything that is potential feedback onto individual Post-it notes or in a list After you’ve gone through the entire interview and you have a ton of Post-its, look over all of them and start grouping similar ideas into categories (Figure 1-43) These categories will tell you what can be improved in your prototype, and what you should ideate on next Think of lots of different solutions for those problems, and decide which solutions to include in the next prototype you design This user testing process will help you improve your product, communicate those improvements to your stakeholders, and keep the user central to your design With a little bit of planning, you can conduct these experiments as part of your weekly sprint cycle or longer-term workflow Figure 1-43 Sort all of your observations into categories to determine the main insights Conclusion Prototyping is a core skill for all designers, and it’s the best way to improve your product with user-centered design leading the way By testing your ideas with your ideal users, you can create a more intuitive and useful product for them, whether it’s physical or digital Your MVPs will have more punch, and your stakeholders will be impressed I hope this report has given you a good basis for what prototyping is, why you should prototype more often, and the tools you need to begin building prototypes and testing them I hope you feel empowered to prototype early and often Don’t wait for perfection; test what you have now so that you can improve your product for your user “Prototype,” Merriam-Webster, accessed January 10, 2016, http://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/prototype “The Lean Startup,” The Lean Startup, accessed January 10, 2016, http://theleanstartup.com “Hammerhead,” Hammerhead, accessed January 10, 2016, http://hammerhead.io/index.php “Diego Powered Dissector System,” Diego Powered Dissector System, accessed January 10, 2016, https://www.ideo.com/work/diego-powered-dissector-system Mary Meeker, “2015 Internet Trends Report,” 2015 Internet Trends—Kleiner Perkins Caufield Byers, May 27, 2015, accessed January 10, 2016, http://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends About the Author Kathryn McElroy is a design lead and UX designer for IBM Watson, designing with the world’s most advanced cognitive system in Austin, Texas She is an award-winning designer and photographer, and is passionate about near-future technology and building electronics and smart objects She has published tutorials and articles about her projects in Make, Fast Company, and Time Out New York, and she regularly speaks about design thinking, prototyping, and user experience design In her spare time, Kathryn volunteers to get girls involved in STEM fields by speaking at schools, afterschool events, and on career panels ... many reasons for and value of prototyping I’ll dig into current approaches and more specifics for prototyping for physical and digital products Finally, I’ll explain how to set up and run user... test, and improve, the better How Is Prototyping for Physical and Digital Products Similar? Prototypes for physical and digital products have a few similarities and a few differences We’ll go over... studies, and final forms (Figure 1-3) These short-listed forms are created in the proper materials and tested for material longevity and feel before the final form is chosen and prepared for manufacturing