Reviewing this article from 2006 from EUI and Jared Spool struck a few key points:

• “Scavenger-hunt tasks work best when you’ve thoroughly researched the types of things people look for on the site. Our tasks came from extensive interviews and field research. Unfortunately, many times, teams just make up their tasks without doing the research. That’s where the problems begin.”
  The act of creating and selecting tasks needs to flow form solid research – so that your assumptions are verified and correct – otherwise UXD practices can easily get off track.
• “We were quick to see that people who had passion for the tasks behaved quite differently than those that didn’t. People with passion demanded more from the content on the site.”
  So true, many tests with “distant” tasks to the user are just quick run-through’s with no emotional investment in them. Finding that sweet spot where the user has interest, vested value and can clearly express their need and goals and get there is ideal. There is a clear sense of what’s worked and what doesn’t – the user has a clear need they want fulfilled.
• “In interview-based tasks, the participants interested are discovered, not assigned. Unlike scavenger-hunt tasks, the test’s facilitator and participant negotiate the tasks during the tests, instead of proceeding down a list of predefined tasks.”
  Not only getting to know the target user groups as a project goal, but also getting to know the particular person right in front of you in testing add value and the best results.
• “With interview-based tasks, participants take us down paths we never expect to go”
  I love this fact! We are so directed by our own understandings, experiences, and mental models. Quality UXD is in the commitment to LISTEN.
• “Terminology emerges to describe user needs in a way we hadn’t previously thought.”
  An open card sort in the context of usability testing – nice.

As always, thanks Jared for sharing.

The challenge in dealing with conformitory bias – “People can reinforce their existing attitudes by selectively collecting new evidence, by interpreting evidence in a biased way or by selectively recalling information from memory.” – is real. Getting “over yourself” and seeking out valid user testing and feedback is a tough call when you’re doing it all yourself, design and testing.

The points that Paul J. Sherman makes in his followup article that strike me most are these:

• Testing is not a Pass/Fail activity – it is a valuable element in the Design Process. Focusing the testing as a part of the path to a valid, usable solution is key.
• Test early, often, and as lo-fi as possible (keeping the initial investment, emotionally as well as in time/cost down).
• Usability testing serves design – use it to improve design.

His points are valid, that in Twitter’s new design the core function of social network is overshadowed by the emerging core function of search (clearly dependent on the successful social network use and content provision). But what is “The Mark” that Twitter want’s to hit and what is “The Mark” Mr. Ritu want’s them to hit?

My response is that Twitter is clearly a classic 80/20 Rule (or quite possibly a 98/2 Rule) where all of Twitter’s content is provided by less than 10% of the users. Twitter needed to build up the network and the site initially was a content collector.

Currently most users who add content, Tweet Creators, to Twitter are using web and mobile apps like Tweetie, TweetDeck, et. al. So they are not really ever seeing or using the Twitter interface.

Moving the interface design more towards the emerging core of Search opens up Twitter to a more popular use by the other 80-90% of users, Tweet Searchers. Here is where Twitter needs to grow, needs to provide value, and needs to discover it’s ultimate ROI. It’s the new Twitter that will use our public posts to provide real-time information to the other 80% of the users consuming the Tweets we make.

I think they are hitting “The Mark” they need to hit, but how does the 20% social app, content creators feel about the expanded use of “their experience”, or more so, the diverted attention they are getting?

“Netflix is looking for an outstanding user interface designer to join our small but amazing team. If you are as passionate about designing great experiences as you are about helping a successful business reach even higher heights, then we would love to talk to you. We are a close-knit team, so our ideal candidate is an excellent collaborator and team player who values complete honesty and candor. Although we are an established company, we still act like a start up in many ways. We offer an opportunity to innovate on a large scale, and our compensation, benefits, and culture are hard to beat.”

Iterative design and rapid releasing of one of the best web apps out there…

Successful Experience Design is at the intersection of the User and the Business – Jared did a great job highlighting the big picture and weaving this truth into each decision, value, and how to gain momentum for solid UX decisions.

A key concept being “Embraceable Change” for the biz and for the user.

I was encouraged by his emphasis on the Experience Story and how “Stories Elicit Change”. Trying to push my work to focus on story in it’s conception, research, vision, testing and documentation – how does it all tell a story – or how CAN it tell a story.

It was very good stuff, more so wanting the business stakeholders and management to attend and “catch the vision” of how solid UX does affect the bottom line and how to set a path to achieve both (would be nice to have a 3rd party expert – Jared – speak on that rather than me as an internal voice, but you take what you can get and keep on keepin on!).