Archive for 2010

Happiness in numbers

Thursday, March 4th, 2010

Prompted by a mention in Stephen P Anderson’s recent article, I’ve been playing with Track Your Happiness. Part application, part experiment, it’s an idea I’ve always found fascinating. A scrobbler for emotion so that, by matching patterns, we can try to understand what drives us.

I’ve learned that Sundays fill me with dread, that sleep makes no difference to my mood and that my leisure activities don’t make me happy. Am I wasting my time on them, or is happiness not my motivation? Let’s take the example of games, marked Playing at the foot of the graph.

Games can be infuriating. I’m frequently shot by teenagers, eaten by ravenous Turing machine monsters or beaten courtesy of a defensive howler. So why play? Because games provide other rewards. They’re an outlet for stress, and provide the challenge of competition and a feeling of mastery. By focusing on their unimportant syntax, I can break from quotidian thoughts without idly wandering into boredom, and experience emotions that contrast my collaborative professional work.

So do games make me happy? Apparently not. But they’re important vitamin supplements, making up for the deficiencies in my mental diet.

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Undercover User Experience

Monday, March 1st, 2010

At last, the big announcement. I’m delighted to confirm that Undercover User Experience, written by myself and fellow Clearleftie James Box, will be published by New Riders this autumn.

Once you catch the user experience bug, the world changes. Doors open the wrong way, websites don’t work, and companies don’t seem to care. Fortunately, anyone can learn the UX remedies – usability testing, personas, prototyping and so on – but, unless your organization ‘gets it’, putting them into practice is trickier.

Undercover User Experience will show you how to do great UX work with tiny budgets, no time, and even without official clearance.

The idea came about in a Utrecht hotel, where James and I got talking about the early stages of our careers, when we didn’t have the luxury of doings things ‘by the book’. Through the IA Institute mentoring scheme I’ve met several people in the same situation. For them, what makes UX work difficult isn’t lack of skill, but not knowing how to make headway in companies that don’t appreciate the need. Pioneering UX and inspiring colleagues who’ve never cared about design takes improvisation, persistence and diplomacy. So we’ll cover guerrilla approaches to the UX techniques we know and love, along with frank advice on how to make them most of them in your business.

On a personal note, I’m thrilled to be partnering with New Riders. They were our first choice publisher due to their outstanding UX portfolio, including the classics Don’t Make Me Think!, Designing for Interaction and Elements of User Experience.

The writing experience is already demanding and rewarding. There’s been much to-ing and fro-ing over titles and much confusion over the US tax system and self-assessment, but we’re well under way and hoping to wrap the writing up by June.

But enough – I’ve no wish to turn this blog into a marketing vehicle. If you want to keep up to date with our progress and be the first to hear when the book’s due out, follow UndercoverUX on Twitter or visit the Undercover User Experience website and sign up for updates.

Posted in book, user experience | No Comments »

Making SXSW beautiful

Monday, February 22nd, 2010

Spring’s finally poking its head round the corner: I fly off for my first South By Southwest in less than three weeks and I’m hoping that winter will have finally given up by the time I return. From the outside, SXSW gives off a Glastonbury-like vibe: an enormous cauldron of distraction, where carefully-planned itineraries are discarded within hours. With so many sessions and the endless attractions that “geek spring break” bring, I never knew how people chose which sessions and parties to attend.

Fortunately, this year the SXSW team have introduced curated workshops, which bring together panels under a common theme, meaning when Jason Beaird asked me to present my talk Beauty In Web Design as part of his curated theme, I jumped at the chance.

Great web design is all around us, but can we go beyond ‘cool’, ‘usable’ & ‘fun’ to create something truly beautiful? This session examines our changing attitudes to beauty, art and meaning, and why the web is ideally suited to become a vehicle for true beauty in the Information Age.

To add to the pressure, I’m the first thing on: 2pm on Friday 12 March. Directly following me are the talented Samantha Warren, presenting Get Stoked on Web Typography, and Matthew Smith of Squaredeye with Simple Steps to Great Web Design.

So if you’re heading Austin-wards, grab your conference pass early and join us in the glamorously-named Ballroom E for an afternoon of beautiful thrills.

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!?

Wednesday, February 10th, 2010

It’s said there are more books about chess than all other games combined.

To non-players, a chess book is an arcane mystery of jumbled letters and references to openings with such exotic names as the Nimzo-Indian Defence, the Nescafé Frappé Attack, and the Sicilian Najdorf Poisoned Pawn Variation.

But notation is deceptively simple. Each move simply lists the moving piece and the co-ordinates of its destination. Be4 is a bishop move to a central square. Rxa8 tells us the rook is capturing whatever’s in the top-left corner.

So far, so functional. However, chess notation also provides means of passing judgment on the moves. Expert annotators earn their living by peppering games with punctational shorthand:

• ! – good move
• !! – excellent move
• ? – bad move
• ?? – terrible move

These symbols can be combined. ?! denotes a dubious, but not awful, move. !? is used to mark an novel idea that looks promising but may prove to be unsound.

It’s the !? moves that I’m most interested in.

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Map design in Modern Warfare 2

Friday, January 29th, 2010

It’s no surprise that Modern Warfare 2 has broken records. Notoriety sells after all, but fortunately the game lives up to the hype. For devoted fans the single-player storyline, cause of the controversy, isn’t the appeal – it’s the multiplayer mode that’s kept gamers coming back for more.

What makes MW2’s multiplayer experience so rewarding? The answer is of course that the developers Infinity Ward have designed the game meticulously, in particular the maps on which the action takes place. By deconstructing these maps, we can attempt to understand the underlying gameplay design principles.

The most obvious principle is that Infinity Ward have ensured there is no dominant position on any map. Advantageous positions of course make it easier for you to kill the enemy, and harder for them to kill you. Features of advantageous positions include:

• Elevation. This reduces your exposure, improves visibility and offers a better angle for headshots on the enemy
• Cover. A solid object to hide behind means you can pop up into firing position and quickly drop into safety to reload.
• Limited access. The fewer routes the enemy can approach from, the easier to spot attackers and quickly take aim.

and so on. To make the game fair and therefore enjoyable, game designers must use these features with caution. Omitting them would simply create extremely dull environments, so MW2’s maps make subtle use of these advantageous features, coupling strong positions with serious weaknesses.

This ledge on the Afghan map gives clear long-range lines of sight but is exceptionally vulnerable from the rear. At the far end of the map are reinforced bunkers, from which the screenshot below is taken. Cover and vantage are both good, and the low light leaves the shooter cloaked in darkness, making them hard to spot at distance.

However, since these bunkers are potentially very strong points, the map designer clusters two together, so that each poses a tactical threat to the other. To make these appealing spots even riskier, explosive barrels are placed in a particularly juicy spot, further deterring a player from camping there at least until the barrels have been destroyed.

For the few spots that offer clear tactical advantage without high vulnerability, Infinity Ward has wisely made reaching them a risky proposition. The Highrise map features a second-floor window (below) with excellent angles, low light and few weaknesses; however, it can only be reached by jumping around on dangerously high and sorely exposed crane beams. I’ve had many a profitable game repeatedly picking off beam-runners too stubborn to accept that I wasn’t going to let them reach their beloved camping spot.

Highrise also boasts a very unorthodox but effective position (‘A’ below), which allows a player to surprise anyone emerging from the southern building. Position A is suspended off the building on a platform and therefore hard to notice if you’re focusing on the more obvious threats near the helipad ahead. However, this excellent spot is awkward to reach and treacherous to leave. Your only exit route is to laboriously climb up over the side, leaving the player vulnerable for a few seconds – as such, once your cover is blown at A, you’re pretty much screwed.

By balancing the maps’ positions of strength, MW2 keeps players continually on the move as hiding spots become discovered and teams move to flank their opponents if repelled in a frontal attack. It doesn’t take an expert to see that movement makes for a more exciting game than static trench warfare; indeed, movement impetus and variable pacing is a well-known tactic of game design. By running around, players cover more ground and experience greater ranges of contact, from long range to hand-to-hand. In short, players are pushed into experiencing of much as the game as possible. Map scale also follows this principle. Although the maps are generally larger than MW2’s predecessors there is still ample variety, with both compact and sprawling maps encouraging bloody scrambles, patient stealth and all gameplay tactics in between.

Through prolonged play it becomes apparent that Infinity Ward also designed the multiplayer maps not to punish players for their choice of weapon and style of play.

For those who enjoy a sneaky ambush, the maps offer plenty of safe havens and cover from which to spring. Terminal, set in an airport, offers some novel cover spots including this flower bed.

That said, some levels are better suited to some loadouts and styles of play.

This sort of position is close to ideal for a sniper: sure, it’s open, but the lines of sight are immense. Given this much visibility, even a modest sniper can pick off an unprepared enemy with ease. Short range weapons here are far less useful; however, Modern Warfare 2 offers players multiple ways to use territory to their advantage. For those who don’t like the patient precision required of snipers but want to use this spot effectively, the map designers helpfully place a machine gun nearby.

In the right hands the machine gun can be just as effective as sniping, rewarding those who get their kicks by spraying bullets indiscriminately. For the sake of equality, there’s a gun at the other end too and the long grass can quickly give a well-camouflaged player cover from fire.

This interplay demonstrates that every strategy has a valid counter-strategy. If you’re facing a sniper, the maps give many opportunities to hide. To counter this, snipers can flush out hiding opponents by using thermal sights and heartbeat sensors. To counter that, players can employ perks that make them invisible to these devices. Rock beats scissors beats paper beats rock. And for those who’d like to avoid this long range battle altogether, Wasteland also features an intense and dark section of trenches. Here, I’ve planted a Claymore landmine by one of the trench entrances to trap anyone who comes this way.

These indoor areas also give vital cover from the game’s aerial attacks, earned by successful killstreaks, for example killing five players in a row. At the first warning of an incoming enemy helicopter or Harrier, there’s typically a mad panic to get indoors. Skilled opponents will of course follow, but again the game provides an alternative to the hunt. Brave players can switch to a loadout armed with anti-aircraft weapons and perks and shoot the air support down for the good of the team. Thus good play gets its reward (air support usually brings many more kills) but not to the extent that it leaves the opposition team entirely devoid of options.

Through careful design, and no doubt thousands of hours of playtesting, Modern Warfare 2’s maps reward some surprisingly different approaches: caution and risk, patience and aggression, short range and long range. Admittedly the balance will never be perfect, and Infinity Ward are continually tweaking the game to overcome new glitches and overpowered strategies. But I consider Modern Warfare 2 a great example of thoughtful design achieving some difficult goals, and being clearly rewarded by the sales figures.

Posted in design, games | 4 Comments »

The best gig of my life

Tuesday, January 12th, 2010

It’s 2003 and I’m playing the best gig of my life.

The graduate slacker persona is getting old and we can no longer ignore the need for paying jobs, so it’s one last hurrah for old times’ sake. Local pub and a sympathetic crowd. I play the guitar, as all seven-year indie veterans do. A Stratocaster. Never did like Les Pauls. The mic craning in front of me indicates I drew short straw with vocals too, which I avoid by writing mostly instrumental songs.

A final nod and we hurtle into the opener we always play too fast. I realise that the weight of a typical performance is gone. No more worrying about whether people will come to see us again. Only the minutes matter.

We’ve abolished pauses between songs to sustain momentum and delay the audience response. It works. Our transitions are tight and the audience knows full well we’re teasing them. I see them grin. The songs sound demanding, you see, but they’re deceptively simple to play. The complexity is all rhythm, abstract numbers and melodic set pieces. Without fear of getting it wrong, a performance can rely on expression, not mechanics.

We pull into the new song on another wave of feedback. Two basses and a weighty tempo. As the intro builds, I keep my fingers away from the strings. We’ve practised so much that my fingers are sore, and I want to pounce at the last minute.

Then the kick in, blatantly telegraphed but somehow still a surprise even to myself. I shout something indecipherable and punch the pedals. It’s ecstatic. Not just the sound and the emotion, but the feel of the instrument. Frets worn down to just the right spot, strap lowered an inch a year as my confidence grows. I’m trying to beat the shit out of this thing and it’s responding. It could rebel at any stage, but it knows me and acquiesces. Even as it screams around the room, all fizz and distortion, I know I’m in command. I strangle its enthusiasm at the count of four, muting it sharply and jumping on the pedals with both feet. I hear a yell of appreciation, but it’s not for show this time. It’s a way to remind my guitar who’s boss.

I’ve never felt so in touch with a machine in my life, and I doubt I will again.

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Eyetracking Web Usability – review

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

Time to pick sides: Jakob Nielsen has written an eyetracking book. I can scarcely think of a more divisive pairing: mention either within earshot of a UX aficionado and you’re in for impassioned advocacy or scornful ridicule. Me? I’ll confess both subject and author have left me unconvinced in the past, but I approached Nielsen and co-author Kara Pernice’s new book with curiosity and as objective an outlook as I could muster.

Eyetracking Web Usability is the outcome of the largest eyetracking study ever undertaken: 1.5 million fixations from 300 participants. Nielsen and Pernice are clearly keen to stress the magnitude and legitimacy of their research. Their test script, posted in full, is well considered and comprehensive, covering a range of tasks representative of real web use.

After a brief recap of eye physiology and saccades, the book begins in earnest with a detailed breakdown of research methods. Findings then stretch across chapters discussing specific web elements in turn: navigation, forms, images and so on. At their best, these chapters reveal flashes of usefulness. A chart of eye fixations versus layout density shows minimal correlation, demonstrating that busy pages simply dilute attention from the most important information. The book also touches on the important role of information scent and microcopy, declaring insightfully that “a link is a promise”.

In typical Nielsen style the text is heavily punctuated by summary boxes. Sadly, it quickly becomes apparent that these make the point just as effectively as the full text. Eyetracking Web Usability is all fat, no meat. Wasted space includes a page on why a 7-point Likert scale is better than a 5-point one, and five pages on male users’ propensity to fixate on dog genitals. The writing, meanwhile, veers from redundant to simply cringeworthy: “Give that Wii a rest, and go prioritise your Web page layout design. You can do it!”

A chapter on adverts (whose raison d’être is of course to attract the eye) starts promisingly. An ad has a 36% chance of being seen by a user, a figure surprisingly unaffected by user task. However, it soon descends into known generalities: banner blindness and users’ dislike of irrelevant advertising. The chapter encapsulates Eyetracking Web Usability’s main shortcoming. Eyetracking demands specificity: carefully planned tasks on an individual site. Nielsen and Pernice’s 300-person test can only dilute potentially salient points into generalisations that even a novice designer will already know. The conclusions cover ground so well trodden as to be barren.

Despite the authors’ focus on rigour and transparency, serious concerns surround the research methods themselves. Heatmaps from the tests are dated from late 2005. With lab time accounting for five months, the study was therefore complete by summer 2006. Why then was this book not published until the brink of 2010? It is hard to avoid the impression that the results sat untouched for years and were subsequently rushed out in a lull of client work. Eyetracking Web Usability also misses a huge opportunity by focusing solely on informational websites. Web apps are discounted since eyetracking can’t handle dynamic elements, including Ajax and even dropdowns. The results are thus only valid for an increasingly small part of the UX designer’s 2010 workload.

Most worryingly of all, it seems that the tests were conducted in Internet Explorer 6. Browser choice does not appear to have been offered to users, and where browser chrome is shown (it is stripped in the vast majority of the heatmaps), it is unmistakeably IE6. If this is indeed the case, it nullifies many findings since the primary browser innovation of the 2000s – the tab – is unavailable. In IE6 a link is an entirely binary choice: go there, or stay here. Modern browsers allow an important new behaviour: Open In New Tab, creating tentative and plural navigation steps. It’s likely Nielsen’s participants relied far more on the Back button and their short-term memory than today’s users. Their search engine use is also likely to be different, since IE6 lacks an inbuilt search box in the UI.

Eyetracking Web Usability thus lacks the rigour required to be taken seriously as an empirical work; however, its adherence to factual reportage make it a chore to read. Even the most ardent enthusiast will skip over paragraphs that merely disclose participant actions in minute detail. It’s sixth form science at best; utterly literal, over-eager for the praise of the adjudicators. The effect is exacerbated by the disappointingly scant acknowledgment of others’ work. Few external insights or breakthroughs are admitted, although NN/g reports are of course suggested as ways for the reader to supplement his knowledge.

The book’s conclusion will come as no surprise to the reader. “Eyetracking fills in the details… Most companies should not bother conducting their own eyetracking studies.” It is hard to disagree. The book does nothing for the eyetracking industry except cement its status as an expensive diversion; the excessive cover price of £44 only reinforces this. If this is the accumulated wisdom of the largest eyetracking survey in history, we can safely consider the technology inconsequential.

Remember those design principles you learned ten years ago? Eyetracking shows they’re right. Carry on.

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Next to godliness

Sunday, January 3rd, 2010

In a 2010-inspired outburst of premature spring cleaning, I’ve been tidying. You’ll notice a fresh design and cleaner code for the blog. As with all personal projects it’s a work in progress – the typography in particular will evolve with the advent of certain font licensing applications.

In the physical domain, I’ve finally given the new iMac space to breathe, accompanied only by my printer and the artefacts of my emerging stationery fetish. I’m becoming more interested in how pictures can complement words, and I hope to spend as much of the year sketching as writing.

How long my workspace and mindset will stay this pristine is anyone’s guess, but for now it really does feel like a new year.

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