Who Are You and What Do you Want?

Why would an experience design brief be important?

To complete any design project, there needs to be some sort of brief between the client and the designer. Without a brief, we are just guessing. With no understanding of the basics: like what is the job for? and who is the target market? it would be like playing pin the tail on the donkey: we know we are supposed to do but is it actually a donkey what sort of tail would he like?

When taking an effect brief from a client, we need to take in so much more than only what the client is saying with intuition playing a huge role in gaining an understanding of not only what the client wants but also who they are. Taking the brief is one thing but, if not undertaking the design work yourself, you then need to effectively communicate to the designer working on the project all of those vital and unsaid details.

In my office, we have a briefing sheet that we give to our clients that tries to dig up some of these unsaid details. Funnily enough more often than not these questions are left unanswered with comments being ‘we don’t know’ which means more digging on our part.

Well written briefs are great if you have that initial understanding of the client, with new clients however, only having a brief, no matter how well written, can be missing that little extra if you can’t talk directly to the client. In my experience when working with an account manager that doesn’t want the designer to talk to the client???, the situation can go pear shaped because they haven’t been able to communicate the clients needs effectively. In one case, the account exec was putting their own spin on what the client wanted. Disaster!!!

So after my rambling, briefs are very important to the design process because that help make sure everyone is on the same page and stay on brief and target for the project. There is however no substitute for meeting with the client and designers to discuss the project to gain the best understanding possible of the requirement for the job.

So why are experience design briefs important? So that the experience designer can clearly articulate to the designers and developers how the personality of a website need to be developed so as to maximise the user experience in a particular way. I also think that the greatest benefit of an experience design brief, is to assist those who don’t necessarily have the ability to understand an experience or empathise with a persona do so.

Cheers Paul

To Redesign or Not to Redesign..? That is the question…

Thanks to Tor for this link to Jakob Nielsen’s article on how aggressively you should redesign an existing website: http://www.useit.com/alertbox/familiar-design.html

I thought it was a great article and one worth sharing.

Cheers Paul

HotelClub Site Map and Task flow for Member Login

Below is Draft 1 of the site map for the redesign of the HotelClub website. My main focus here is the user experience for members of HotelClub and their login process.

Image 1 is the overall site map. Although on a whole it isn’t hugely different to the existing website – the general information/FAQs sections etc haven’t changed in their structure a great deal, my focus is on the login process as show in image 2 below.

Image 1 – HotelClub Site Map

Image 2 shows the login process for HotelClub members. The aim of this new process is to create a more personal experience for the user when they are booking their overseas accommodation through HotelClub.

HotelClub member login process

The goal of this redesign is to enhance the member experience and increase returning member bookings by creating a more personal approach to the online experience for members of www.hotelclub.com.

How I design for people in my practice…

Everyone has their own way of approaching a design problem, for me though, when designing or at least these acting in the role of creative director/art director I find I rely considerably on intuition. Obviously this intuition is based on as much information as a can get a hold of from the client about their end users be they their own staff or outside customers, but there is a certain skill in being able to listening to the client and extract what they are looking for. I think this is what sets us as designers apart from the rest of the world. An innate understanding of people and how it all works.

What I do find a little frustrating sometimes though is the client’s lack of understanding of their customer and their needs and often have to get them to look at themselves from the customers point of view. This means dropping their own preconceived ideas of what they think their customer’s want and identifying what they actually need.

I also find empathizing with the customer helps – ‘what would I like to see/experience if I was using/reading this?’

I also start nutting out my design solutions on paper sketching things out first and refine later. I’m old school and everything starts with sketches on paper, even my notes to post on here. I just find that there is a far greater connection between my thoughts, the pen and the paper.

When is comes to designing, especially when it’s print design, my argument has always been that if its ending up on paper it should start on paper. Astoundingly, some designers I’ve worked with have actually taken a job from brief to first draft without printing the job out just to see how it looks on the page. However… I digress…

I spend the majority of my time talking to the client, taking briefs and then working with my team of designers to produce outcomes. This all takes place on the page. From roughed out concepts discussed with the clients to the translation of these with my designers. Of course the final presentation to the client is always refined, however there is a certain freedom in being able to scrawl ideas down quickly, developing and discarding as you go.

I have found a handy tool in the development of any design is the use of moods boards. Basically these are a collection examples of images, thoughts, layout styles, colour palettes and font examples. As the name suggests, the mood board allows us to preset the client with an expression or a feel for the style and ‘mood’ we are going for. This is especially helpful when the client is unable to express or visualise what they are looking for. The mood boards can also be used as a kind of watch dog for the project, similar to how personas can keep us focused on who the end user will be.

Requirements and Sketches

Learning Activity 2.2 – Sketching ideas

HotelClub is an online accommodation and booking for hotels worldwide. The website allows the user to search for discounted accommodation in 5600 cities in 126 countries and HotelClub members can earn member dollars for every booking made through the site which can be used to pay for future bookings. Although the website offers a comprehensive search facility the site does take some getting used when navigating the site (a lot of doubled up navigation options) and when using the booking service. For HotelClub membership is for both individuals and corporate users however on a whole, it doesn’t feel much like a club.

Business Needs

– Comprehensive online booking service including:

• Accommodation search and booking service
• Flights and transfers
• Car hire
• Travel insurance
• Group bookings and sightseeing tours

– Self managed bookings for Hotel Club users

– Portal for HotelClub business partners to access HotelClub users

– Rewards program for HotelClub Members

– Site accessible to users in different languages

User needs

I will be focussing on the New User and Hotel Club Members

– Provide easy to follow directions when first accessing the site, for example:

• Where to start
• How to access the search facility

– HotelClub membership sign-up process:

• Call to action
• Explanation of the member rewards program
• Member profile and personalisation of the search facility

– Existing member sign in process to include:

• Hotel recommendations based on profile and previous bookings
• Sign in at anytime during the search and payment process to access member dollars
• Welcome back page after signing in.

– A facility to save hotel searches to a favourites list

Requirements

– The website has some layout inconsistencies between the various sections of the website that need to be revised.

– The site lacks direction for the user to know which steps to take first when using the site especially for the first time user and for the sign up process.

– The member rewards program doesn’t require you to sign in before searching for accommodation however, to access the member benefits the user must be signed in. The current system does not allow members to sign in after a selection has been made without having to begin the process again.

– Create more of a community feel for HotelClub members that goes beyond the HotelClub Travel Blog.

Below is a sketch of how this may all work…

New Users and HotelClub Members

Member Login in more detail...