What is Information Architecture?

1. The art and science of structuring and classifying web sites, intranets etc. to help people find and manage information.
2. Information architecture is concerned with creating organizational and navigational schemes that allow users to move through site content efficiently and effectively.
3. The combination of organization, labeling, and navigation schemes within an information system.
4. The structural design of an information space to facilitate task completion and intuitive access to content.
5. Information architecture on the Web is closely related to the field of information retrieval: the design of systems that enable users to find information easily.
6. Information architecture is concerned with how people cognitively process information.

Components of Information Architecture

1. Organization systems - How you categorize and structure information. E.g. chronological, topics etc.
2. Labeling systems - How you represent information. E.g. scientific terminology (Amend Order) or lay terminology (Edit Order)
3. Navigation Systems - How users browse or move through information. E.g. clicking through a hierarchy, through sections etc.
4. Search Systems - How users look for information. E.g. autosuggest, index etc.

Approaches of Information Architecture 

Information architecture requires creating categorization schemes that will correspond to business objectives for the site, user needs, and the content that will be incorporated in the site. 

We can tackle creating such a categorization scheme in two ways: from the top down, or from the bottom up.

Top-down approach - 

A top-down approach to information architecture involves creating architecture directly from understanding product objectives and user needs. We started with the broadest categories and then break these into subcategories. This hierarchy of categories and subcategories serves as the empty shell into which the content and functionality will be slotted.

Bottom-up approach - 

A Bottom up approach to information architecture involves creating architecture directly from analysis of the content and functional requirements .We group items together into low-level categories and then group those into higher-level categories, building toward a structure that reflects our product objectives and user needs.

Deriving information architecture – Card Sorting 

Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a site. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups. Card sorting helps us gain valuable insight about the structure of data.

There are two common card sorting techniques: 

1. Open card Sort -

In open card sorting, each participant is given a stack of cards. The participant is then asked to group those cards together any way they want. Then they make labels for the groups they created.

When to Use Open Card Sorting – It’s beneficial to use open card sort when you are starting with the new project. In this way you will not introduce your own biases into the grouping of items and will see the information organized from other people’s perspectives.

Disadvantage of open card sorting – Sometimes it can be too vague as their might be many categories as participant has freedom to arrange and label the category .In this case it might be difficult to analyze the data and reached to any conclusion.

2. Closed Card Sort -

In closed card sorting, the researchers create the labels for the groups. Participants are given a stack of cards and are asked and are asked to put each card into a group.

When to Use close card sorting – If you already know what categories you want to sort items in, then closed card sorting is the obvious choice. Closed card sorting additionally removes the burden from the participants having to come up with their own group labels, which simplifies the activity for them.

Disadvantage of close card sorting – Using pre-determined group labels gives you less information because the participants’ choices are confined by the category labels you create. That, in turn, limits the chance of you seeing alternative approaches to the categorization of your items.

Using Both Open Card Sorting and Closed Card Sorting

Conducting open card sort first help you determine category names for each group of content, and to understand the different ways participant can group the items. Then, after analyzing the results, you can conduct closed card sorting to validate the interpretation of the results.

Online Tools 

Optimalsort  , User Zoom , Concept Codify, xSort , UXSort, Simple card Sort.

Check best card sorting tools> 

Check UX Tools> 

Author: Shiva Subhedar (@uxdshiva)

The Psychology of Wearables and Wearable Technology

In recent years we’ve seen new, disruptive innovations in the world of wearable technology; advances that will potentially transform life, business, and the global economy. Products like Google Glass, Apple Watch, and Oculus Rift promise not only to change the way we approach information, but also our long established patterns of social interaction.

Indeed, we are witnessing the advent of entirely new genre of interface mechanisms that brings with it a fundamental paradigm shift in how we view and interact with technology. Recognizing, understanding, and effectively leveraging today’s growing landscape of wearables is likely to be increasingly essential to the success of a wide array of businesses.

In this article, we discuss the ways in which effective interface design will need to adapt, in some ways dramatically, to address the new psychology of wearable technology.

Enter the Neuroscientific Approach

Cognitive neuroscience is a branch of both psychology and neuroscience, overlapping with disciplines such as physiological psychology, cognitive psychology, and neuropsychology. Cognitive neuroscience relies upon theories in cognitive science coupled with evidence from neuropsychology and computational modeling.

In the context of interface design, a neuroscientific approach is one which takes into account – or more precisely, is centered upon – the way in which users process information.

The way people interact with new, not-seen-before technologies is more bounded to their cognitive processes than it is to your designer’s ability to create stunning UI. New, often unpredictable, patterns emerge any time a person is presented with a tool, a software or an action that he has never seen before.

Accordingly, rather than employing more traditional approaches (such as wireframing and so on), you will instead focus on the sole goal of your product, the end result you want the user to achieve. You will then work your way back from there, creating a journey for the user by evaluating the how to best align the user’s intuitive perception of your product and his or her interaction with the technology used. By creating mental images, you won’t need to design every step the user has to take to accomplish an action, nor you will have to evaluate every possible feature you could or couldn’t include in the product.

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Consider, for example, Google Glass Mini Games. In these 5 simple games made by Google to inspire designers and developers, you can see exactly how mental images play a major role in user engagement with the product. In particular, the anticipation of a future action comes to the user with no learning curve needed. When the active elements of the game pop up into view, the user already knows how to react to them and thus forms an active representation of the playing environment without the need to actually have one to see. Not only has the learning curve has been reduced to a minimum, but the mental images put the user in charge of the action immediately, anticipating what the user will do and just letting the user do it.

Bear in mind that is possible to identify three different types of images that form in the brain at the time of a user interaction, all of which need to be adequately considered and addressed to achieve an effective, and sufficiently intuitive, interface. These include:

1. Mental images that represent the present
2. Mental images that represent the past
3. Mental images related to a projected potential future

And don’t worry. You don’t need to run a full MRI on your users to test what is going on in their brain to arrive at these mental images. Rather, you can simply test the effectiveness and universality of the mental images you’ve built.

Users Do What Users Do

When approaching a new technology, it’s vital to understand how users experience and relate to that technology. In particular, a reality check is often needed to recognize how users actually use the technology in spite of how they’re “supposed to” (or expected to) use it. Too many times we’ve seen great products fail because businesses were expecting the users to interact with them in a way that in reality never occurred. You shouldn’t jump on the latest, fancier technology out there and build (or, worse, re-shape!) your product for that technology without knowing if it will actually be helpful to, and adapted by, your users. This is an easy mistake and it’s quite eye-opening to see the frequency with which it occurs.

Leveraging Multiple Senses in Wearables

Wearables bring the great advantage of being way more connected to the user’s physical body than any smartphone or mobile device could ever hope for. You should understand this from the early stage of your product development and stop focusing on just the hand interaction. Take the eyes for example. Studies conducted with wearable devices in a hands-free environment have shown that the paths users follow, when their optical abilities are in charge, are different from the ones you would expect. People tend to organize and move in ways that are due to their instinctive behavior in spite of their logical ones. They tend to move instinctively towards the easier, faster paths to accomplish that action, and those paths are never straight lines.

One application that effectively leverages multiple senses is the Evernote app for the Apple Watch. Actions in the Watch version of the application have the same goals as their desktop/mobile counterparts, but are presented and accomplished in totally different ways. With a single, simple button click, you can automatically access all of the feature of the app: you don’t need multiple menus and differentiation. If you start talking, the application immediately creates a new note with what you’re dictating, and syncs it with your calendar. As a user, you are immersed in an intuitive experience here that lets you be in charge of what you’re doing, while presenting you with an almost GUI-free environment.

And what about our more subtle, cognitive senses? Wearables bring the human part of the equation more fully into account with a deeper emotional connection: stress, fear and happiness are all amplified in this environment. You should understand how your product affects those sensations and how to avoid or take advantage of those effects.

Just remember: let the cognitive processes of the users lead and not the other way around.

Voice User Interface (VUI)

In the past, designing a Voice User Interface (VUI) was particularly difficult. In addition to all the challenges in the past with voice recognition software, VUIs also present a challenge due to their transient and invisible nature. Unlike visual interfaces, once verbal commands and actions have been communicated to the user, they are not there anymore. One approach that’s been employed with moderate success is to give a visual output in response to the vocal input. But still the designing of the user experience for these types of devices presents the same limitations and challenges of the past, so we’ll try to give a brief overview here of what people like and don’t like about VUI systems and some helpful design patterns.

For starters, people generally don’t like to speak to machines. This might be a general assumption but it is even more true if we consider what speaking is all about. We interact with someone taking in consideration that the person can understand what we’re saying or at least has the “tools” and “abilities” to do so. But even that is not generally sufficient. Rather, speaking with someone typically involves a feedback loop: you send out a message (carefully using words, sounds, and tones to help ensure that what you say is properly understood in the way you intended). Then the other person receives the message and hopefully provides you with some form of feedback that hopefully confirms proper understanding.

With machines, though, you don’t have any of this. You will try to give a command or ask for something (typically in the most metallic voice you can muster!) and hope for the machine to understand what you’re saying and give you valuable information in return.

Moreover, speech as a means for presenting the user with information is typically highly inefficient. The time it takes to verbally present a menu of choices is very high. Moreover, users cannot see the structure of the data and need to remember the path to their goal.

The bottom line here is that these challenges are real and there are not yet any “silver bullet” solutions that have been put forth. In most cases, what has been proven to be most effective is to incorporate support for voice interaction, but to limit its use to those places where it is most effective, otherwise augmenting it with interface mechanisms that employ the other senses. Accepting verbal input, and providing verbal feedback, are the two most effective ways to incorporate a VUI into the overall user experience.

Micro-interactions

While designing for wearable tech, remember that you will find yourself in a different, unusual habitat of spaces and interactions that you’ve probably never confronted before (and neither have most of your users).

Grids and interaction paths, for example, are awesome for websites and any other setting that requires huge amount of content to be handled. With wearable devices, though, you have limited space for interaction and should rely on the instinctive basis of the actions you want to implement to give the best experience to the users.

Let’s take the Apple Watch for example. For one thing, you will only be able to support one or two concurrent interactions. Also, you don’t want the user to need to constantly switch between tapping on the screen and scrolling/zooming the digital crown on the side of the device. frankly, even Apple itself made mistakes in this regard. In handling the Watch’s menu interface, for example, to safely tap an icon on the menu, you will need to zoom-in and out most of the time using the crown while briefly distracting yourself from the direct task you wanted to accomplish.

A great example of effective micro-interaction design can be found in the Starwood Hotels and Resorts app for the Apple Watch. The Starwood application for Apple Watch perfectly fits their personal brand experience by letting users unlock their room door in the hotel by the simple tap of a button. You don’t need to see the whole process going on to enjoy what this kind of micro-interaction can do. You’re in the hotel and you want to enter your door without going in your bag or pocket looking for the actual key. The app also shows one of the best practices for wearables: the selective process. Don’t put more actions or information that you should, otherwise it will disrupt the experience (like in the Apple menu example). Rather, just show the user the check-in date and the room number. When they click “unlock” a physical reaction occurs, outside the device and into the real world.

The KISS Principle

The well known KISS Principle is perhaps even more relevant in the domain of wearables than it is with more traditional user interface mechanisms. The Wishbi ShowRoom app for Google Glass is a great working example of a light UI that enriches the user experience without “getting in the way”. It has already been incorporated by companies like Vodafone and Fiat. Basically, it facilitates streaming online content live, even at different quality rates. And it does that with two simple actions; one that helps you start the broadcasting, and a split screen that captures everything you’re seeing. For an action as complicated as live broadcasting, the app manages to be extremely lightweight and unobtrusive.

Wearable Technology Conclusions

Remember, every interface should be designed to empower and educate the user to perform a desired activity more quickly and more easily. This is true for every interface platform, not just wearables.

But that said, please DO go crazy! Wearable technology is a revolutionary field, and even though you can look out for principles and patterns for a safer job, you should always make some room for crazy, playful ideas that won’t even make sense. You can make your own answers here.

Wearable tech interfaces represent a wide open playing field. Have at it!

This article was originally published on Toptal

References:

http://www.toptal.com/designers/ux/the-psychology-of-wearables

About Author:

Antonio Autiero is a Software Engineer at Toptal. Antonio is a digital art director and UX designer with experience in information architecture, brand development, and business design. He has been working for over 10 years all around the world with amazing clients such as Nike, Rolex, Ferrari, and more. He lives in Gubbio, Italy where he's surrounded by beautiful countryside, and he always likes to meet nice people.
Email: irene@toptal.com

The Chunking way

Have you ever tried to remember a very long number and that still resides in your head? I'm sure that might be a challenge in doing so!. Our brain works really hard to memorize certain things like remembering the huge and long information unless we practice a number of times or try to note down somewhere.

Why our brain is so snoozed at memorizing extensive things? 

Here are a few clarifications about our brain, how it is really going to work. Firstly, our brain consists of Long-Term Memory & Short-Term (Working) Memory. Now let us know, how exactly the human brain going to work on retaining memory. Basically memories are stored as the minute chemical changes at the connection points between neurons in the brain and this connection point is called as Synapses.

These fragments (synapses) responsible for storing and transmitting the information. The parts of the brain that receive these electric impulses are dendrites. Through this information or electrical impulses flow through the neural network of the brain. By this activity of the neurons, which in turn causes these connection points (synapses) to become stronger or weaker in response.

This process of strengthening, and weakening of synapses is how exactly the brain stores the information. And to have an exceptional memory, you may need to go through such flow of connections eminently, which in turn that it could be in that kind of process through neural networks. If the information has processed in this pattern for several times by creating a tracing a mark, that information could dwell permanently in our brain. In fact, in turn doing it, we are actually pushing information further from Short-Term memory to Long-Term memory. By doing so, we are indeed storing information as a memory.

Short-term memory is an essential step toward the next stage of retention for long-term memory. The effort taken to push information from Short-Term memory to Long-Term memory is a procedure, this is how the first information has to be stored in Short-Term memory.

It can only hold a little amount of information (typically around 7 elements or even less than that) in our mind, which is in turn a readily available and in the active mode for a short period of time, ranging between 10 to 15 seconds, or at max of one minute. Now the biggest challenge is how we can achieve it. Chunking is one of the methods which help us to retain the information in the brain.

What's chunking  or chunking psychology then? 

Chunking is the sequence of materials into shorter meaningful groups to make them further manageable. For example, a hyphenated phone number, split into groups of 3 or 4 digits, tends to be easier to remember than a single long number.

The maximum number of chunks that can be efficiently processed by short-term memory is four, more or less. For example, most people can remember a list of five words for 30 seconds, but few can remember only a list of ten words for 30 seconds.

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Method of Chunking

It is the procedure of making more efficient use of short-term memory by grouping and organizing the pieces of information together. This can be used precisely only on the important information need to be chunked. If the short-term memory is stocked up, the new information will just fade away. 

When not to Chunk 

Well, Chunking is often applied as an ordinary technique to simplify method. This is a probable misdeed of the principle. That's the way it can lead to make things tough to scan. If the chunking is applied extensively, since the focus is on the group of items and not the individual items themselves. However, if you apply the concept in combination with other principles it can be used effectively to make more grouping easier to process. The limitations specified by this principle deal specifically with tasks involving memory. Chunk information could be available, when people are required to recall and retain the important information. And also when information is used for problem solving. Do not chunk information that is to be searched or scanned.

So, Designer needs to be smart enough while making decision wisely in chunking information.

 How do you chunk in your designs? Please share your thoughts. 

About Author

Srinivas Ramshetty is Ux evangelist and senior ux consultant at Intergraph. He played multiple roles in the areas of Competency Building, Managing & Leading Ux teams, User Research, User Interface Design, Interaction Design, Information Architecture, Usability Testing and Analysis across multiple business verticals while serving fortune 100 corporations. Srinivas is the certified Usability Analyst from HFI and pursuing Masters in Psychology.

You can connect him at https://in.linkedin.com/in/srinivasramshetty

UX & Virtual Reality - Designing for interfaces without Screens

Virtual Reality

It’s an experience that’s been around since the mid­ 80s, but technology always seemed to hold it back. The advances in smartphones and related technologies have finally brought the incredible potential of VR within reach. Now, we’re in the midst of a virtual reality revolution. The concept was coined around 1955 and so many years later VR is back in a big way with Oculus, Samsung Gear VR, Project Morpheus, Google Cardboard, HTC Vive, OSVR, and other smaller or yet to be announced players. The well-known tech giants Facebook, Google and Microsoft are keenly investing in VR which indirectly proves that it is going to be the game changer of this century.

What are they trying to do with VR?

It’s really just immersive software. You know how your phone is a tiny screen that you sometimes ignore? Virtual reality is pretty much the opposite. It uses a headset (a big pair of glasses) that fills your entire field of view with an image. You turn your head left, you see left. Turn your head right, you see right. You will be framed inside a virtual world with virtual things with which you can interact, play, design and experience.

The VR Process

Designing for a flat 2D screen versus designing for 3D Virtual Space has its own challenging factors. Achieving the best user experience in VR Devices is the key success of the entire concept. As it is a combination of various factors such as Head Movement Tracker, Eye Tracker, Gesture Capture, Mind Map etc., making all these sync together and binding them perfectly with the design and visuals of your application takes a lot of effort and thought process.  

Who can utilize VRs?

Everyone. Yes, VR Headsets are of 3 categories affordable for all set of people around the world. Every single application that you are using in your mobile phones and computers can be designed for Virtual Reality. There is a big misconception among the people saying that VR is favored only for Game Development, which is totally wrong. Interior Designers, Doctors, Industrial Designers, E-Commerce, Banking and every other random line of business can use Virtual Reality for their work.

1. The low-end entry level headset. It’s actually just a fancy smartphone case. You slip your phone into pair of lenses that strap onto your head like a scuba mask, and there you go, you’re into the VR world! You can build these things out of plastic, or even, as Google demoed some years back, Google Cardboard. Samsung has one such model on the market today for $200.

2. The mid-range headset. It’s totally self-contained, like an Oculus Rift or Sony's Project Morpheus, with its own display and probably some headphones. Think of it as a really nice TV or computer monitor for your face. Maybe you plug it into a phone or a PC to play games or watch movies. Oculus which is acquired by Facebook is selling its latest dev kit.

3. The Augmented Reality. It is one step ahead of the Virtual Reality where we are binding the real world visuals with virtual stuffs. Imagine, you walk on the road and you can see the visuals, pins, navigations of the Google Map on your path. Two Big companies, Microsoft with its HoloLens and a headset by Magic Leap are trying to accomplish this concept.

UX Principles for designing Virtual Reality

1. Everything Should Be Reactive 

Every interactive object should respond to any casual movement. For example, if something is a button, any casual touch should provoke movement, even if that movement does not result in the button being fully pushed. When this happens, the haptic response of the object coincides with a mental model, allowing people to move their muscles to interact with objects. When designing a button: use a shadow from the hand to indicate where the user’s hand is in relation to button, create a glow from the button that can be reflected on the hand to help understand the relationship, use sound to indicate when the button has been pressed (“click”) 

2. Restrict Motions to Interaction

The display should respond to the user’s movements at all times, without exception. Even in menus, when the game is paused, or during cut scenes, users should be able to look around. Avoiding Simulator Sickness and slowness is the key part of improving the UX in Virtual Reality Applications. Do not instigate any movement without user input. Reduce neck strain with experiences that reward a significant degree of looking around. Try to restrict movement in the periphery.

3. Text and Image Legibility

Bigger, brighter and bold texts should be used to indicate widgets. Images should be realistic and appealing to the user. The mind of the user is going to be entirely mapped into the virtual reality for a prolonged amount of time. Texts should be readable and legible for unstrained viewing of the user. Brighter and vivid the colors are, more involved the users will be.

4. Ergonomics

Designing based on how the human body works is an essential to bringing any new interface to life. Our bodies tend to move in arcs, rather than straight lines, so it’s important to compensate by allowing for arcs in 3D space

5. Sound Effects

Sound is an essential aspect of truly immersive VR. Combined with hand tracking and visual feedback, it can be used to create the “illusion” of tactile sensation. It can also be very effective in communicating the success or failure of interactions.

Google’s Design Guidelines for Virtual Reality

Google has listed some key principles involving physiological and ergonomics  consideration to be noted while designing for Apps that can run on Google Cardboard. They are pretty much straight-forward for the designers to understand. 

1. Using a Reticle

2. UI Depth & Eye Strain

3. Using Constant Velocity

4. Keeping the User Grounded

5. Maintaining Head Tracking

6. Guiding with Light

7. Leveraging Scale

8. Spatial Audio

9. Gaze Cues

10. Make it Beautiful

References

Google’s Cardboard Guidelines, Best Practices for Designing Oculus Rift

About Author 

Prashanth Shanmugam

With 3 Years of Professional Experience in Design and technology, I have a great passion for UX Design, Usability Testing and User Research. With a formal knowledge of Design Process, I prototype Interactive and Intuitive Designs for Desktops, Mobiles and Wearable Technologies.