Wanted to do a… I'm gonna do a bookend, Gary?
This meeting is being recorded.
Gary!
Recorded. Turn the record button, here you know.
Here are you now.
Bookend! Ready?
Okay. You ready, Stan? Okay. Bookend! Welcome! Welcome to the St. Louis Unix Users Group for St. Louis Unix…
Linux Unix Users Group. It's our list of, usually on the third Thursday of the month, but check the calendar, just in case. And today's date is Tuesday.
Tuesday, September the 8th… I'm sorry, Thursday, September the 18th, 2025. Our speaker tonight will be, uh, Scott Granaman. Uh, Scott is the, uh, uh, long-time member of the group, former vice president of the group.
And, uh, he's going to speak tonight on an introduction to UX design user experience design.
Um, so with that, we'll… Move on with our meeting tonight.
Let's see, what else can we get? Uh, sequel to the… Okay, uh… We usually do a little introduction here on the front, uh, but…
And, uh, announces. Uh, one of his side to which tent.
Uh, coming up to the end of… A lot of movies, they get support, so, uh…
Be prepared to field questions. People who might want to move to Linux.
But we are… St. Louis, Lexi.
Your voice seems to be gargled, Gary.
Our corporation, uh, uh, really deal with any sort of old… Oops, sorry about that. Uh, so, uh, if this is really bad, uh, James, can you pick up on MC?
Sure, it, um, it does sound like a travel process.
Yeah, we'll wait to hear of James. Of course, there's, um… I couldn't understand James.
Okay, so… Could anyone else understand me?
I hate… I understand you, James, but Gary, you seem to be echoing everything.
Could anyone else understand me? I think I… I understand you, James, but…
Turn your… mute yourself.
Gary, you seem to be at the echo on everything.
Thank you, Gary. So, as he was saying, the St. Louis Linux users group.
Was founded as a special interest group of the St. Louis Unix users group.
And it usually meets, uh, about 8 days after the slug general meeting, sometimes 12.
Either the third or fourth Thursday of each month, depending on when the slug.
Medium is, we don't want them two weeks in a row, or even on the same week.
That's why we do that. And we are supported by Slug with email and web servers. All of our meetings are free and open to the public.
There is no individual membership fee. Yeah. And our mission is to educate, inform, and support Linux users!
We have lots of information on our website, including. How we are scheduled, uh, every meeting. We either use Jiu-Jitsu or Zoom.
All of the archives of all our meetings. Meeting order or sequence PDFs, PDF handouts, and more things, more sorted links.
Our meetings generally start around 6 p.m, so that you all can come in, test your chat, microphone, sound.
And then at 6.30, we start to have our introductions. And, uh, sponsored meetings, archives, calendars, mails lists, called for help.
Oh, do we need help? Has anyone got a topic for next month?
And then, around 6.45, the presentation. Starts with questions.
After the meeting for a discussion as possible on our mailing lists.
Recorded chat, slide work, videos, go to archives within a day or two, or, you know, several.
As for introductions, I'm the community chair. Our established and. Honorable? Nah, not quite the word, but MC is Gary Meyer, our host for this meeting is Lee Lambitt.
Mambert of Omnitech? Who generously provides us servers and mailing and every… all that fun stuff.
Production is spam. And, ooh, we need someone to start.
Monitoring the chat, other people to wrangle topics, and we always need more speakers.
The next SLUG meeting is September 18th, October 16th, and November 20th.
And 5 days from now is new Linux meeting. It's usually the fourth Tuesday.
The next slug general meeting is on the second Wednesday of each month, and just some fun, uh, dates to keep track of.
October 14th this year, Microsoft Windows 10 is officially end of life.
And the… 26th of, well, what, March next year? We have the official trailer for Project Hail Mary, or is that the, uh, release in the actu?
The movie's released on the 26th, that's a link to the official trailer.
Length of the official trailer, yeah. I read the e-book, or listened to the audiobook, it's very good.
And are there any other announcements?
Yes, there's a book that's available, uh, Bye By Windows 10 is the title.
It can be… there's a free PDF of the book available at those various links.
It's also on Amazon paperback copy for $11.95. If you've got Amazon Kindle, you can get a free copy.
Of the… of the book. Um, if you just did a Google search for the title, Bye Bye Windows 10, you should be able to find it quite easily.
Uh, the nice thing about this book, it's for helping people to deal with the end of life for Windows 10.
Half of the book deals with how to continue using Windows and find a machine.
Uh, that's capable of running Windows 11. The other half of the book is… Switching over to Linux, and it's a very well-balanced, uh.
And highly recommended, uh, reading. Also, there's a project, you started in Europe called n10.org.
Uh, it's… designed to… to… to highlight events and places, uh.
People that are, uh, providing free or… installation by, uh… Uh, for money or whatever.
And if you go to the website. Uh, I'm actually gonna do a… I'll link to this real quick.
I can get it to come up, right? Where'd this thing go?
Here we go. This is what the site looks like, and it's got places, events, it's got a whole bunch of interesting stuff on here.
And if you actually… go to it, it's got all kinds of things. Also, for the.
Both the places and events, it comes up, we can load a map.
And… boom! It shows spots! We've got some stuff for St. Louis!
Next, I got the next new Linux Beginner Workshop online, uh… fourth Tuesday of each month.
And a couple other, uh, events here in the… Otherwise, it's all listed by alphabetical. It's kind of hard to find, but…
If it's properly coded. The, uh…
The graphical entry will bring you to that. Let me jump back out of that.
If I can find the right button. Bit… bit… Okay.
Go ahead, James.
James, can you continue?
Yeah, can we continue? Uh, so are we on to introducing the topic?
I'm sorry, I didn't know, uh, prep for this. Yeah, so, uh.
Just announcing our privacy and security. Are, uh, Slug and Linux meetings are posted, recorded and posted.
Linux meetings will be recorded, plus it is posted and shared. Note that anyone here can report, uh, record. The chat, slides, and video are also posted to our sites and YouTube.
Anyone might be recording. If you want to do your own recording.
Oh, yeah. Do something? But only… yeah, um, see the Slug 2020, uh, October sessions on simple screen recorder for a demo and explanation of how to.
Yeah, only… we are also archiving the Unix and Linux meetings.
They are archived, uh, recorded chat, slide work, and video will be available within the next couple of days.
And listen. Yep, uh, Slug provides a graphical calendar for technical events.
In and around primarily St. Louis, but all over the country at this point.
It has, uh, meetups. Events, all sorts of fun things, anniversaries.
And Slug-sponsored events are highlighted in red. Or a slugg.
We also have mailing lists. We have the announce, very limited traffic.
Usually just how to get to these meetings, discuss for general discussions, opinions, questions, and reviews. Steering committee.
Every opinion counts, IDEAs are welcome. And… but watch out, you might be elected to a chair.
And then the sysadmin for our volunteer staff support.
Here are our sponsored meetings, the Linux Users Group. At STLinux.org, newlinux at newlinux.org.
And the St. Louis Area Computer Club at slack.org.
And here is our call for help. Our members ask questions, sometimes provide answers from novices to Greybeard, all experience is valued. We have various use cases.
And lots of questions, please ask them in discuss. What did you break recently? What did you fix recently? What was an interesting piece of technology you've come across, and what's up?
Surprising or unusual answer to your problems.
Oh, I think Gary was having some surprising audio issues this evening, and I think James.
The question for you is, do you feel sufficiently heckled? Or do we need to try harder?
My wife decided to call me right in the middle of that, so I did not hear any heckles. So I think you need to know better.
Well, she was part of the gig. Yep, yep.
She was in on it.
Thank you for stepping in. We appreciate all the help.
Oh, it's no problem.
Does anybody else have a… issue that they need help with at this point. Otherwise…
Going watch, going twice… Three times!
In general, our Linux presentation covers. Linux-focused topics.
Either personal or enterprise. Uh, tonight's, uh, topic is gonna be a little more…
I, uh… not necessarily Linux-focused, but…
It has to do with computers.
All of them, and more.
We're gonna go ahead and turn it over to Scott. Yeah, and it's… Scott…
Software development's on Linux, if we're designing things, it should be there, too.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay, uh…
So we're going to… Turn it over to Scott Graniman here.
Uh, Scott, do you want people to ask questions or comment during the presentation, or hold?
If they could hold, I think that's best, or put them in the chat.
I'll have the chat open.
Okay? All right.
But I'm not guaranteeing I'm gonna look at it every minute, but I will have it open.
Okay, I think at this point, we'll just have you take over, Scott. Thank you.
Thank you! That's what I've always wanted, power.
Let me share my screen…
There we go.
Okay, so you guys can all see?
Dang it.
They see that Intro to UX Design. Boom! Ooh.
Yep, but it's moving all over the place. What's going on?
It's not going where I want it to.
Hold on…
Uh… this is annoying.
Let's try that one more time, people.
There we go. Much better.
Okay, so, uh, as some of you may or may not know, I teach a class at Webster
called UX Design.
And, uh, I think it's a fascinating subject.
When they asked me to teach it about 8 years ago, I said, absolutely, I'd love to, because
It's something I've always been interested in.
But I'd never taught a class in it. And so, it turned out, I really like it, it's a lot of fun to teach.
And it's really changed how I think about all sorts of stuff.
And I think it's probably gonna change the way some of you guys
Think to an art as well, because
you're gonna find out very soon, UX design really isn't what I bet most of you think it is. It certainly isn't what I thought it was.
A while back. So, uh, I guarantee you're going to learn some stuff. You may, again, have realized that what you thought was UX is not.
I think you'll find some interesting, funny stuff in here as well, so let's go ahead and jump right in.
Um, now, I took my intro slides for my class and heavily modified them for you guys.
So these are actually links to the class one.
Um, I'm going to actually, uh, take some stuff I've done for you and put it back in the class one, because I was like, oh, that's good, that's a good idea.
That really adds a lot, so… but these are the ones, if you want the ones I actually use for my class, which again…
Uh, I took stuff out, but then I added stuff in that I'm gonna fold back into the one for the class.
And this is a shortcut to all of my presentations at my website. So feel free to go there and look around.
Um, it's totally available to everybody.
So, this is a colossus.
Yes.
Thank you!
Scott, we're no longer seeing your share screen.
Let me figure out why…
Because I didn't share anything.
Thank you.
Go back a slide. Alright, let's start over.
My apologies.
Was that a test? Did Stan pass?
Well, I had… I turned it off.
Because it was misbehaving.
It started out as shared, and then it went away.
Alright, can you guys see now, Intro to UX Design?
Yes, I can.
Cool. Alright, so I said, here are links to the slides and notes.
that are keyed to every slide, but these are for my course intro.
But what I did is I took my course intro slides, I took a bunch of stuff out that didn't relate to you guys,
And then I added a bunch of stuff in,
And I really like what I added in for you guys, so I'm actually going to take it and fold it back into the class slides.
So, if you download these, I don't think you'll have any problem, just give me a day or two to add the new stuff I've done for you back into it.
Um, but I think it vastly improves it.
And then this is…
When you improve the slides, those links still work?
Oh yeah, these are permanent. This is my standard Intro to UX links for PDF and the text notes that are keyed to every slide.
And then these are links to all of my presentations on my website.
So, if you ever want to go take a look at that, and they're all under Creative Commons license, so go nuts.
So, this is a classic example of
Core UI and poor UX, right?
It's when you walk up to a door, and you're like, have you ever… I know everybody's done this, you walk up to a door, and you're like, oh, I need to push it, and you end up crashing into the door.
Or, you walk up and think you need to pull, and you grab, and it doesn't move, and you realize, oh, I have to push it.
So, I love this sign because it's getting to brass tacks. Hey, push! If that doesn't work, pull. If that doesn't work either, we're closed.
So, very helpful right there.
Now, this is a classic door. Now, we're going to be looking at a guy called… named Don Norman.
He invented the concept of UX, he's a UX expert, and he has a collection of what he calls Norman doors, and these are doors that don't quite work the way you would want them to work, or act weird.
And so, this is a classic Norman door. Okay, it says pull…
How am I gonna do that?
There is no knob or bar allowing me to pull, so we've got a problem.
And then this is probably my favorite, I found this one.
So, this next one, somebody was like, I am so smart…
I am going to, um…
let people know I'm actually gonna push… put on the door, push or pull, so people know what to do.
Because this is a glass door in a fancy place, and they don't, you know, they don't want to have handles on there.
So, you can push or pull. So, here's what they did. They put push and pull…
on the door,
Except, they put them in the same place on a glass door, which means
It's extremely difficult to read what you're supposed to do, so it really didn't improve much.
It really didn't improve very much.
Now, going from doors, here's another classic example.
of very poor UX, and I know you guys are gonna love this.
Like, what genius made Stop Green and Start Red?
Right? That's not the colors we associate, so what you end up with, either the user has to do a lot of extra cognitive work to go, wait a sec,
Or, they're gonna do, like, probably I would do, because I go very fast, I just hit green, assuming that's start, only to wonder why is everything shutting down.
So, not a good choice.
Now, we're going to be talking a lot, obviously, about design tonight.
And Saul Bass was one of the greatest logo designers of all time. I guarantee you guys have all seen logos designed by Saul Bass.
He also designed a lot of movie credit scenes as well.
And I really like this quote. Design is thinking made visual.
That is all designed, and I'm going to show you a lot of different design methods and a lot of different design areas tonight.
But in every single case…
The design is part of taking the thought process that hopefully you've
spent some time going through.
And turning it into something visual for people to use, uh, educate themselves, appreciate, entertain, whatever it may be.
Now, as you probably all know, Steve Jobs was
really, really great at design. He really knew a lot about it. It was… a lot of it was intuitive.
a lot of it was what he'd studied during his semester at college.
Um, but this was one of his most famous quotes, and I really like it. It says so much.
Design is a funny word.
Some people think design means how it looks.
But of course, if you dig deeper, it's really how it works.
That's ultimately the test of the design.
Is it doing the job to enable people to do what they need to do? It might look beautiful,
It might look absolutely beautiful, but if it doesn't allow you to get the job done, or it makes it more difficult…
then it's not good design, regardless of how beautiful it is. So, for a good example of this, I've been… in June, Apple announced they were upgrading all their operating systems.
diversion 26,
And they were moving to a unified design framework for everything called liquid glass.
And it was developed by their lead designer, Alan Dye.
And I have been following that very carefully.
Four days ago, on Monday, or 3 days ago, on Monday, they released updates to everything.
So now the updates are out. So they announced it in June, they released it on Monday.
And here's the deal. I am normally a guy that updates everything on the first day.
I upgraded my phone. There's a few issues.
I upgraded my iPad. There's a few issues, but overall good. I am not upgrading my Mac.
For a long time, because the design on the Mac looks really cool,
But it falls down all over the place. It's a very, very, very poor design. And I've been following that carefully. Part of the problem is the lead designer at Apple
was not trained in software design. Uh, he was trained as a package designer.
So, I think the guy should get fired.
He's, I think, incompetent, but, um, we are where we are.
So, again, design is how it works.
So, let's start with, what is UX?
What is UX? What's user experience? Now,
When you start learning and talking to people and reading and studying UX design,
You're gonna see a whole bunch of alphabet soup.
Because there's a whole bunch of other
acronyms, initialisms, other terms that are related to UX, but often they don't have anything to do with it, or it's tangential, but people get confused.
So, to start… so the problem is, people use these terms interchangeably,
And that's not the case. For instance,
A UX is a lot more than websites, I've already shown you with doors, and software. So, there's a lot of things
that UX involves that has nothing to do with the web, has nothing to do with software.
Now, throughout this talk, we are going to be seeing lots of examples, real world, software, and so on,
But, we're going to be talking about the web a lot, too, because the web is the premier digital delivery tool of our time, so we're gonna spend some time looking at that.
So, to start with,
Let's talk about what graphic design is, because this is an aspect
of UX. It's not the whole thing at all, it's a small part of it, but it's important.
So, I love Wikipedia, I've always liked, you know, using Wikipedia as a start. So, graphic design…
Consistent projecting, there's that word, visual communication,
intended to transmit specific messages to social groups with specific objectives.
So, the job of the graphic designer is communication,
Through interpretation, ordering, and presentation of visual messages. And I think this is really vital
to think about, because…
People think, oh, graphic design, that's to make it look pretty.
Right? Oh, they picked nice fonts and nice colors, that's graphic design. That's not graphic design.
Graphic design says, I have an objective. We need to communicate something to this group of people.
And so, how do I best visually communicate that?
Two, the people we want to target are interest.
Using interpretation, ordering, and presentation.
That's what graphic design is all about. So again, once again, it goes back to use. Is it useful? Is it communicating the message? So again, it could be beautiful.
But if it's not communicating the right message to the right audience, it's a failure.
It didn't do the job.
So, the graphic designer can be involved in all sorts of stuff.
The graphic design is a fascinating field, and a good major for students,
Because you can use it everywhere. Obviously, web design, branding,
Our illustration typography, signs, signs, whether they're billboards or a poster,
involve graphic design, photography, layout,
Uh, packaging. Icons. What icons are we gonna use for buttons and so on?
Uh, infographics, image manipulation, video editing.
is graphic design. Uh…
AR, VR, animation, presentations. I spend a lot of time…
on my presentations, thinking, how do I best design this to communicate what I want to commute to my audience?
Um, social media, advertising, of course.
accessibility, programming, and a lot more. So graphic designers can touch any of these.
and be evolved with this process.
Now, currently, there's over a quarter million working graphic designers in the U.S. This is based on the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.
From 2024, so I know they're accurate, they haven't been tampered with.
And it's projected that every year over the coming decade, there's gonna be 21,000 more job openings, so…
That's a pretty good field to look at. We're gonna need…
graphic designers constantly. The median salary is about $58,000. Of course, that's because there are graphic designers in little bitty towns, there are graphic designers in New York City.
The median is $58,000.
So, that's graphic design.
Now, let's look at industrial design.
Industrial design…
is the process of designing
products, devices, objects, and services used by people all over the world every day.
Industrial designers focus on the appearance,
the functionality and the manufacturability.
Okay, and that's different than graphic designers.
Okay? So, they worry about what's it gonna look like,
How's it gonna function
And how easy is it for us to make this?
Because, for instance, there are…
Industrial designers at car companies, obviously.
Cars are a great example of industrial design. There are
Thousands of parts in a car.
Every single one had to be designed.
They had to be designed with an eye to…
How they look, now that's more on the outside than the inside.
How do they work, and can we manufacture these in the millions quickly, efficiently, efficiently, and cheaply?
So those are the kinds of things industrial designers think about. And at this point,
I would ask you to look around the room you're in.
And just look at how many things in your room, wherever you are, are the product of industrial design. So I'm looking at my computer, I'm looking at my monitor, I'm looking at my remote control,
my mouse, my water bottle, this is industrial design, the lid for the water bottle.
a microphone, obviously an iPhone or iPad or a hard drive.
That's industrial design.
You know, the desk I'm standing in front of, I'm looking at a printer, a chair, a bed, a dresser, all of that's industrial design.
So, we touch industrial design…
I don't know, a thousand times during the day as we go about our business. Everything… if you buy a coffee at Starbucks…
The mug and the sleeve around it to keep it so it doesn't burn your hand, the lid
All of that was industrial design.
So, it's everywhere.
And the thing is, for an industrial designer, you're going to need a lot of different skill sets.
to pull together to do a job well. So that might be 3D modeling, it might be research, that's obviously important to industrial design.
Uh, storytelling, prototyping, uh, engineering and fabrication, what parts are we gonna use, what materials?
How do we make them? Uh, programming?
Understanding the entire process of manufacturing, marketing and branding is part of this as well. And so, on the right are just some of the areas
That industrial designers would touch. Now, I mentioned automotive.
That's obvious. But again, think of all the objects we see around us.
Right? When you go to the doctor and they use a stethoscope, or they look in your ear,
Or maybe you have to have an MRI that's all industrial design.
All of that is industrial design.
Now, I love this quote. Theodore Levitt at Harvard Business School. I think this really captures the…
point I'm trying to make about it. People don't want to buy a drill, they want to buy a hole.
So, what do people want when they buy a drill? They're not going, you know, I'm going to go out today and buy a drill bit.
They're thinking, I need to make a hole right here.
So, again, industrial design is about solving the problem the users have.
The problem's not I need a drill bit, the problem is I got a hole.
I want to make a hole. So, if you keep that in mind,
That'll kind of help you sometimes, and that's also why sometimes you're like, well, I'm supposed to be able to easily drink out of this. This is… I'm not, I want to buy a bottle.
It's, I want something that'll be able for me to quickly and easily drink cold water.
Well, I've owned some bottles that it was next to impossible to get the lid on, and so often I would tilt it, and I'd get water running down my chin.
Right? Well, that did not solve my problem.
Right? I wasn't buying a bottle, I was buying the ability to drink cold water easily without making a mess. So, eh.
That got tossed.
Now, uh, there are about 34,000 industrial designers in the U.S.,
is projected they're going to be about $2,300 a year needed over the next decade.
Their median salary's a bit higher.
At 76,000.
And I don't think this is going to surprise you guys, the top 3 states that employ industrial designers are going to be California, Michigan,
In New York. No big surprise on that.
So, that brings us to UX design.
And this is where I think you're going to learn that UX design is a lot more than you thought.
I just realized I have videos, and I didn't share with the right… so I'm gonna have to get out of this and reshare again, but we'll… when we get to it.
So, user experience was a term…
that arose during the 70s and 80s. It's not some really old term, it's also not
you know, real recent. Um, it used to be used by the human computer interaction community,
to talk about user-centered design.
But then, in 1993,
Don Norman, who I've already mentioned.
Joined Apple, and he got to select his title.
And he chose User Experience Architect.
And he is so well known and well-respected,
In fact, I can't… I cannot urge you enough to read his books. His books are fascinating, they're written in a very…
um, easy-to-understand manner with a million examples.
I think almost anybody watching this, you guys tend to be curious about a lot of different things.
Uh, I would highly recommend his books.
So, because of the respect and the high, um…
The high respect he's accorded in the field, the term user experience became much more widely known and used.
Taking us to today.
So, here's what Don Norman has to say about the term.
I invented the term user experience…
Because I thought human interface and usability were too narrow.
I wanted to cover ALL aspects.
of the person's experience with the system, including industrial design graphics, the interface,
the physical interaction, the manual?
Since then, the term has spread widely, so much so it's starting to lose its meaning. Well, let's try to bring it back to its real meaning.
So, Jacob Nielsen's on the left, Don Norman's on the right, uh, Nielsen is an expert at UI,
Don Norman's an expert at UX.
And they formed the Nielsen Norman Group.
And I highly recommend you go to their website, they've got a million articles you can read. They're great.
They've got a ton of videos, they have courses, they have all sorts of stuff.
It's one of those sites you could spend
weeks and weeks at, and never exhaust it.
And they were discussing…
about UX.
And so, this is what they said.
The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact
needs of the customer without fuss or bother.
Next comes Simplicity and elegance.
They produce products that are a joy to own and a joy to use. And what I… what I want you to do now is think…
Think about all the products you use every day. How many would you call a joy to use?
Right? I mean, I would say not many.
Right? There are some.
You know, I thoroughly enjoy using my iPhone and my iPad. Those are generally a joy to use, although it can be frustrating.
Um, there's a few other things. You know, I've got some really good knives that are a joy to use.
Um, uh, I have a Vitamix blender, that's a joy to use when I use it, but there's not a lot.
Because a lot of stuff, and if you think about this, I'm gonna think about examples in your head…
Um, a lot of stuff…
They didn't start with the needs of the customer.
They started with the needs of the business.
Right? They started by thinking, how can we meet our needs
And the concerns of the user, customer, whatever, are secondary sometimes, at best, and often not even secondary. Way down the chart.
Now, you guys have all heard the term in the last year, year and a half or so, Corey Doctoro, in…
coined the term inshidification.
Right? That's the process by which services, sometimes products,
become worse and worse and worse over time.
So, this is, you know, think about how many processes of how many software, services,
applications you use that have gradually gotten and shitified.
Over time, and there's a lot.
Happens all the time. For instance, I know many of you would think this too. Whenever I read about a small company,
that does something really well and charges a reasonable price with good support,
Where the founders are really into it. Whenever I see they've been bought by a big company,
I'm like, well, it's only a matter of time until acidification sets in.
The founders will leave, the people running the big company are going to start putting their needs of the business on there, and it's going to acidify over time.
One of the best examples… now, I don't use it,
But I know, because I read a lot about it, I talk to people, is Instagram.
Instagram, before it was bought by Facebook, people loved it.
And then once Facebook bought it,
Over time, it's gradually gotten more and more inshidified, because, uh, now, I hear people say it's like ads.
You know, you're looking at an image, you look at an image, you look at an image, add. You look at an image, you look at an image, you look at an image, add.
intrusive ads, um, they've added more and more features, and this isn't what users want, it's what Facebook wants.
Because they want to make money.
But they continue.
Whoops. In order to achieve high-quality user experience,
There must be a seamless merging
of the services of multiple disciplines.
Including engineering.
marketing. Graphical and industrial design,
and interface design. So UX covers a lot more stuff than just how it looks.
That's part of it. But it's not the entirety.
And I love this website. The Interaction Design Foundation is another one you could spend weeks there.
They have so many great things to read.
And I really like what they say here. A UX designer is someone who investigates.
In other words, they're not coming up with this full-born, sprung from the head. They have done research.
They have contacted or watched users. They have seen what people want. They've investigated this, and…
thought about it during the process of discovery.
And then analyze how users feel about the products he or she is offering them.
thinking of offering them.
UX designers then apply that knowledge to product development in order to ensure that users have the best
possible experience with a product.
That's what UX designers do.
You research, uh, discover,
make hypotheses,
figure out what's needed, test those hypotheses, and then proceed forward, making sure that the user's gonna have the best possible experience with the product.
Now, as part of this, we have human-centered design. Those are goals we should adhere to when we are doing UX design.
And there are four of them, 4 principles. Number 1 has to be people-centered.
You have to focus on humans, on people.
That's the important thing.
Um, and not, not, not the company's needs on the people who are actually going to be using it. That's the essential thing.
Number two, you have to try to figure out what's the real problem.
I have had… I know some of you guys that do, um…
Like Lee Lamert and others that interact with clients. I know you've had this experience too,
Where the client comes to you with a solution.
I want… I want this.
Well, of course, it'd be easy just to go, okay!
No problem. But a good…
vendor, a good person working with the client, will say, well, what's the problem you're trying to solve?
What's the… what's the issue here?
And often, they're like, well, we have this problem.
And that's not the real problem.
The real problem is something else, and you have to dig down, down, down to find out what the real problem is. And once you've expressed that to the client,
They might suddenly realize, oh yeah, that solution wouldn't work at all, would it? That's not going to solve our problem.
For you, the person with knowledge and wisdom they're paying, is able to say,
Well, the best solution would be
this to solve the real problem.
Number 3, everything is a system of interconnected parts.
You can't just focus on one little part, it's all interconnected.
And you're gonna hear Don Norman in this video coming up. I'm gonna play for you, where he talks about UX design. And you're gonna realize, it's all sorts of things.
Your UX design, when you buy a computer,
is not just the keyboard, the screen, the ports, it's a lot more than that when you buy a computer.
It's not just simply, well, how do I get into the car and drive it? UX with a car is
Far, far more than that, as you're gonna see.
And the final thing is, you want to do small, simple interventions, because you're continually
iterating. You have an idea, you create a prototype, you test it, you refine.
You then prototype a next thing for that. Test, refine.
And so, you keep focusing and iterating on it to make sure that you're getting the best solution that helps the people you're targeting.
To help. Now, I have a feeling the video's not gonna work.
So, I'm gonna play this, and I'm gonna ask, can you guys hear anything? So let me know.
Hi, I'm Angie Lee, and I'm here at the UX Conference in San Francisco.
I got to ask Dawn Norman what he thinks about the term UX.
Yes.
Once upon a time, a very long time ago,
I was at Apple.
And, you know, we said,
The experience of using these computers is weak. Uh, the experience, when you first discover it, when you see it in the store, when you buy it, when you… ooh.
Can't fit it into the cars in this great big box. It doesn't fit into the car, and when you finally do get it home, the opening in the box up, and…
Ooh, it looks scary. I don't know if I dare put this computer together. All of that is user experience. It's everything that touches upon your experience with
The product, and it may not even be near the product. It may be when you're telling somebody else about it. That's what we meant when we devised the term user experience and set up what we call the user experience architect's Office at Apple to try to
enhance things. Now, Apple was already pretty good, so we were starting with a good product, making it even better.
Today, that term has been horribly misused. It's used by people to say, I'm a user experience designer, I design websites, or I design apps, and they have no clues to what they're doing, and they think,
The experience is that simple device, the website or the app, or…
Who knows what? No! It's everything. It's a way you experience the world. It's the way you experience your life, it's the way you experience the service.
Or… yeah, an app, or a… or a computer system.
But it's a system that's everything.
Got it? What's up?
I really like what Don has to say there, because this gets to the heart of what UX is, and this is something most people do not understand or think about.
I didn't. And that is…
When you decide to buy a laptop,
UX starts with your research.
So, what websites do you go to? Who do you talk to? Do you go to the store? That's UX.
When you go to the store, and you're looking at the computer,
Right? Or you're looking at the box, or you're test-driving it. That's UX.
When you go buy it, that's UX. And I love the example he said about, you get a box that you can't fit in your car.
That's not good UX.
Right? And you guys all remember these towers and these gigantic monitors we used to have, right? That you'd have a hell of a time fitting in a small car. That's UX.
Opening the boxes, UX.
Right? Unpackaging it is UX. Setting it up is UX. The screens you see when you start a computer for the first time.
That's UX. Figuring out what devices you can plug into it, that's UX.
Now, once you're using the computer, you UX encompasses the operating system,
It encompasses any part of the hardware you're interacting with. It encompasses, if you plug an external monitor in to use that as a second monitor,
That's UX as well. But here's the deal. UX is also, how do I get to support?
Do I have to call somebody in a foreign country that's reading from a script and isn't allowed to think for themselves? Uh, can I go to the Apple store and talk to a human being that will actually think and interact with you?
What about manuals? What about looking up help online?
That's all involved with UX. And in fact, it goes all the way to the end of your time with that device.
How do I dispose of it? How do I sell it? Who do I give it to?
All of that, and then what do I do with the manuals? What do I do with the boxes? Right? All of that's UX. So UX encompasses, from your very first interactions with the product,
to the very end of the product.
That's UX, and that's why we say UX is a big topic.
that people tend to ignore, because they focus on UI.
And as you're about to see, UI is part of UX, but it's not UX.
Now, usability is an important term when we're talking about this.
Usability is important to UX, but it is a part of UX. It is not the entire thing.
So, usability is the capacity of a system to provide a condition for users to perform the tasks they need to perform safely, effectively, and efficiently, hopefully while enjoying the experience.
Okay? So, we've all used websites,
that were not very usable, right? It was difficult to figure out
How do… how to perform a task.
When you were doing it, it was, you know, you had to go through all these steps, or, you know, I clicked here and nothing happened.
And also efficient. So, I had this actually happen today.
Um, I subscribed to this podcast, and I pay the guy 5 bucks a month to make the podcast.
And for people that are backers, he has a public podcast, anybody can subscribe to, but people that are backers get access to another podcast he does every week that's about 20-30 minutes.
that is… it's about music. So the main podcast is about a major artist and a major song.
The Subscribers Only podcast
is shorter, and it focuses on a minor artist and a minor song.
Well, somehow, I delete… and you have to have a custom URL to put into your podcast reader to get that private…
donors-only podcast. Well, somehow I deleted that out of my podcast program on my iPhone.
And I realized that today, I'm like, wait, where's the podcast for that? I know he came out with a new one.
So I'm like, oh, it's a custom thing, I gotta go find it.
I spent 15 minutes at Patreon trying to find the link
to my custom podcast.
15 minutes. I went to it on my phone,
could not find it. I opened it up on my Mac.
Couldn't find it. I was about to ask ChatGPT,
where to find it. When I kept clicking, and finally…
I found it, and it took me 15 minutes, and I kinda know how to use websites.
Because it was labeled poorly,
And there was a lot of white space,
And then at the bottom, it just had a copy button.
But when you click copy, it copied the URL, but it did not make that clear, that's what it was copying.
Because I clicked copy, and I'm like…
Was that the URL? Is that what I just copied?
With that button, and I paste it in, and lo and behold, it worked.
Bad usability, right? Sure, it was safe.
I wasn't gonna blow anything up, but it was hardly effective, and it was hardly efficient, and I was getting very frustrated. So I did not enjoy the experience.
That's poor usability.
Now, here are some examples. You guys are gonna love these.
So, um…
This is at Packed Pub. They have books… they make electronic books available to people.
And so I was creating an account,
And as part of it, it says, what are your tech interests?
And so, because they're gonna show you books about things you're interested in.
So, I realized, you click in the box, and you don't type in it,
You have a drop-down menu.
Okay? But I realized, very quickly,
That drop-down menu is probably 200 items long, I am not joking.
And it's not in alphabetic order.
So I'm like, I started scrolling.
Like, okay, I don't want… I don't care about that, I don't care about that. Finally, I found web design. I'm like, okay.
I click that. But, you know, I'd kind of like to find books about CSS and JavaScript, and HTML, and design.
Other types of design.
I finally gave up. I scrolled a little farther, saw Bootstrap. I scrolled a little farther and found Git, and I'm like, look where the thumb is. So if you guys can see, right here, that's how much more I have to go, and I was like, screw it.
I'm done. I'm not gonna waste my time.
Going through this list, when these bozos did not make an alphabetical order and provide a search box.
So, screw it! I left! This is a horrible, horrible, horrible usability.
Terrible UI, terrible usability.
Here's another one. This was at Wash U. So, I had to register my car.
with them. And so they want to know the color. Okay, this is only about 25,
But they're not in alphabetical order.
Why aren't they in alphabetical order?
Now, I know what these people did.
Because right here, where it says aluminum silver, they're sorting by the S.
But they put aluminum first.
Well, if they do that, it could be with the A's, not the S's. Or they should have done silver slash aluminum.
You know? Um, same thing with, uh, what was the other one I saw that was weird? Burgundy Maroon.
Like, guys, why are you doing this? Did nobody look at this and think about how to sort? This tells me it was manually sorted, not alphabetically sorted.
So, that's bad. That's bad.
Here's another one. Oh, I hate PayPal. I just hate them so much.
Their usability is crap.
And they don't care. So…
It… I use a password manager. I think I've spoken to you guys about password managers before.
When I make a password, I make it ideally 35 characters or 4 long words.
I try to make it as long as possible.
Okay? Especially if it has to do with money.
If it has to do with money, or banks, or anything like that, I want it to be as long as possible.
And what I'm gonna do is, I'm gonna go to my password manager, I'm gonna generate a new password, I'm gonna copy it, I'm gonna go back to the website where I'm creating an account, and I'm gonna paste it.
Well, guess what? PayPal basically says, no.
No. So, when you click here, it says…
You have to use 8 to 20 characters.
So I'm like, why are you limiting me?
to 20 characters,
Right? And, here's the part, they don't allow you to paste the password in.
So, you can't generate a 20-character random password, and then paste it in, because these a-holes
disable paste.
So what's that gonna encourage? That's gonna encourage people to do bad passwords.
STL Cardinals.
Because that's easy to type.
Nobody wants to sit here and go,
Um, S3, capital R, 6,
lowercase w,
Capital A. Nobody wants to type that, so that's going to cause people to try to default to bad passwords because of the restrictions they put in place for no good reason.
And you guys are gonna love this one. Now, I do not like…
I am not a fan of some of these interfaces, and I saw this and was like,
What are they doing? So…
This is a carousel.
Okay? You guys have all seen carousels. Sometimes you load a web page, and you see an image,
And it slides automatically, and you see the next. Other times, there's an arrow you can click…
To advance it, or go back.
Right? You guys have all seen these, you've probably used them at least once.
So, I'm looking here at this
website, which is going to show me apps that are on sale.
So, what do you expect to happen?
If there's a right arrow,
On the right side of a carousel,
What do you expect to happen when you click it? You expect it to advance.
Watch what the geniuses who designed this did.
Well, there's the right arrow, cool.
What?
So every time you click,
It goes up, down, backwards, left, right?
You never know!
Horrible! There is no consistency to this thing whatsoever.
It's absolutely horrible.
Plus, there's all these transitions doing stuff.
So, you see what I mean? That's awful usability, terrible UI, because
You're not allowing people to take their experience with other websites and apply it here.
You're doing something completely bizarre and unique that nobody's ever seen before, and that doesn't make any sense on top of it.
That brings me to UI design.
User interface design.
You are design is the process designers use to build interfaces.
In computers, computerized devices,
Focused on looks and style,
and usability. Designers aim to create interfaces which users find easy to use and pleasurable.
You are design refers to user interfaces, other forms, like voice control.
That's UI. I'm gonna talk about that in just a minute.
UI design is more concerned with the surface and feel.
of the design. But usability's gotta play a part in this.
So, that calculator you see on the left there, that's one of the most famously designed calculators in the world. A world-famous designer called… named Dieter Rams.
Who has designed the most iconic, beautiful stuff from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s.
German, of course.
designed just amazingly gorgeous stuff. Very well known, deservedly so.
Well, uh, that is… and he worked for a company called Braun.
Okay? So, um, I have a brawn, um…
Uh, drill that's really nice.
So, this is a calculator he designed.
for Braun, uh, from 1987.
That's when this calculator came out.
Now, this is an iconic design…
calculator. This design influenced a whole lot of other stuff.
In fact, the former design… head of design at Apple was Johnny Ive.
And Johnny Ive really, really, really loved Dieter Rams and the way he designed stuff.
So much so…
That the calculator app on the original iPhone?
was designed by that calculator.
So, the calculator came out in 1987.
The iPhone rolls out in 2007?
So, 20 years later,
Johnny Ive crates…
Something evoking the original Braun calculator for the phone.
I think that's great. Utterly fascinating.
Now, we us nerds…
When we think of UI, we tend to think of computers.
Okay? Like this excellent UI here that many of you
got to experience back in the 80s.
Okay? Windows 3.1.
Awesome. So, we think of computers. Like, oh, KDE, that's a UI. GNOME, that's a UI. Windows, Mac OS.
Android, iPhone, iOS,
Those are UI, but it's a lot more than that.
So, here's an example of weird UI in KDE. This is from Kubuntu 1504.
So, if you look here,
Why is the go-back button after the continue button?
That makes no sense to me.
Those should be switched.
If I'm going back, shouldn't that be on the left, not the right?
And the continue button, which is gonna take you forward,
Shouldn't that be on the right? And not the left?
Okay? But here's where it gets better.
If you look more carefully, oh, there we have back install now. So, they have two different kinds of orders for buttons.
Within the same installation app.
Not good. Not good UI design.
When people say?
Oh, that's good, about the Army.
You don't like the Bron character layout, huh?
Number layout opposite of number layout on my phone.
phone. Oh, I get it.
I get it. Okay. I get that.
Okay. Well, voice!
Voice needs UI as well. When you use Siri…
When you use Alexa, when you use Google Assistant, when you use ChatGPT, I can chat to ChatGPT and it'll answer back. Whenever you do that, that's UI.
Except it's a user interface for voice. How easy is it to tell it to insert punctuation? Do you have to?
I often don't have to at all to chat GPT. I can just talk, and it puts in the right punctuation.
Even commas. Um, how easy is it to fix it?
How easy… how well does it understand you?
How are the responses? Do they make sense? Do they come back in a reasonable amount of time, so you're not sitting there going,
You know? Are they correct?
That's one of the problems with Siri, of course. One of the big problems with Siri is…
You could say, when are the Jets playing
you know, some other football team, and it would come back and say, the Jets play the so-and-sos on Sunday, November 3rd. And then you'd be… or Saturday, November 3rd. And then you'd be like, what time is the game? And it'll go, I don't know what you're talking about.
Like, really? Seriously.
That's bad usability with voice.
It's getting better. But obviously, any sort of a generative chat AI we use now had no problem with that whatsoever.
I love this one. Physical UI is very important. You guys are gonna love this. This is a real elevator.
Check those buttons out.
How would you guys like to get in an elevator and see those buttons?
Is that awesome?
That is so…
bizarre and difficult to use.
It's awful. And I want to know,
Negative 1, negative 1R,
Negative 2, I assume those are, like, underground?
But what's the difference between negative 1 and negative 1R? I have no idea.
And by the way, if you didn't like the number layout on the Braun calculator, I doubt you're gonna like this layout much better. This is horrific.
Okay, I also love this one. Pull! Do not pull the door handle.
Okay? Thank you. First of all, I want to know the story behind that sign. I bet it's good.
And second of all, that's really bad usability!
and UI design. You're telling me to do something, but somebody has to put a sign next to it saying, actually don't do that.
That's really bad. Now, this next one is a picture I took.
My previous car…
was a 2010 Toyota Prius, and I had heated seats, and of course, I loved it. Heated seats are amazing.
Well, if you look, those are the buttons you use…
to heat the seats.
Do you guys notice a problem with the layout?
I was like, who thought this was a good layout?
For these buttons, this doesn't make any sense. If it's left and right, shouldn't that be going
Horizontally, not vertically?
That's not good UI. At all.
Here's one more example that you're gonna love.
Okay?
This was… these are visual UI. So what kind of visual cues
Is it giving you as to what you're supposed to do?
Now, this was in a hospital.
And it was in a New Zealand hospital.
And they decided it would be really cute…
To use Kiwi footprints to indicate the direction you're supposed to go, except that's what they look like.
Well, here's the problem with that. You're supposed to be going toward the bottom of the picture.
But the problem is, Kiwi footprints look like arrows. So, it looks like you're meant to go
up, but in actuality, no, no, no, you're meant to go down. That's bad UI design.
Maybe we shouldn't have used Kiwi footprints.
for, uh, or directions, because the inherent nature of those footprints
is difficult to understand. Now, this next one's one of my absolute favorites of all time. This is real.
I am not making this up.
This is from a children's hospital. They designed, decided to paint the floors to help kids understand where to go, and they decided to use bright colors, because kids like bright colors.
And that's what they did. That looks like you are been dragging a dead, bleeding body
through the hospital, right? That is not going to be reassuring to a lot of kids or parents.
Right? I love that, though. I think. Who thought of this? Who thought, oh yeah, let's paint a red stripe?
Going down the hall to indicate where people are supposed to go.
It's… I like it, I like horror movies. I think it's great, but you know a lot of people are going,
What? Now, there's other user interfaces.
Okay? Gestures. If you've ever waved your hands to open a door, or to turn on lights in a room,
That's gesture. There's non-voice auditory. So, for instance, beeps and boops. When you're a microwave dings,
Right? When your oven makes a noise that is now preheated, or whatever, those are non-voice, but they're still auditory UI.
Uh, environmental. That could be lighting, it could be automated faucets, or dryers, where you put your hands under. Typically, those have terrible UI.
If you guys have ever, you know, gone someplace and they don't have knobs, and you're supposed to position your hands the right way to get water and or soap…
It always takes me a little bit to get it. I'm like, aren't you going?
Um, cognitive would be like a HUD.
or smart glasses.
Multimodal is a combination.
So, for instance, smartwatches? Smartwatches have buttons, they have touch, and they have haptics.
Where they vibrate to indicate things to you. That's all part of
You are designed.
So, unlike UI design…
Which focuses solely on the design of the interface, UX design encompasses
all aspects.
of the user's perceived experience with a product or website.
All of it goes into UX, UI is only a tiny part.
And so, speaking of this, I know you guys will appreciate that, right? Hey, the developer? Let's make a simple UI, and then the users come along and start using it.
And they always make… you… there's a saying, you know, um…
you never know how people are going to use your app.
You might have designed your website or app, and you're like, it's crystal clear what you're supposed to do!
But then the users get a hold of it, and you're like, I never thought anybody would do that. And my favorite example of that is my brother Gus.
So, for 30 years, my brother Gus was the equipment director for the New York Jets.
And they used to be out on Long Island.
And then 15, 20 years ago, they moved to Jersey.
And they built a brand new complex.
And they involve… the architects involved every department head, like, okay, what do you need in the new complex for your department? What do you need?
And obviously, equipment's important, so my brother spent a lot of time working with…
the architects to say, well, this is what we really need, we need shelves that can collapse and unfold, we need tables, we need this or that or this or that.
And I was talking to my brother one day,
And he said, I just had a meeting with the architects.
I'm like, oh, cool, how'd it go? He goes, oh, they said they were very impressed, they'd never seen anything like this before. And I was like,
Well, what do you mean? And he goes, well, I showed them my layout for the floor plan of how I wanted the equipment room.
And I'm thinking to myself,
Did my brother learn to use a CAD program?
Or did he learn to use, like, a sketch diagramming program? How did he do this?
And I go, well, what did you use to make the floor plan? And he goes, oh, I used Excel.
And I'm like, you used Excel?!
And he goes, yeah, I made each cell square,
And then I put borders on everything.
And a solid border was a wall, and a different kind of border was a window, and a different kind of border was a door, and then I did everything, like, using Excel.
And I said, Gus?
I bet no one at Microsoft…
Ever thought, when they were developing Excel,
People are going to use this to make floor plans.
Um, I understand now why the architect said,
This is impressive, we've never seen anything like this before, because I bet no other person has ever walked in with a floor plan, a complete, complicated floor plan,
done in Microsoft Excel.
So, here's another way to think about it.
And this is for users
to developers. Every time you redesign your app,
You vaporize all the experience built up by everyone who's been using the current version.
It better be fucking worth it.
And that's one of the things I'm upset with Apple about, with Alan Dye, because they changed all sorts of stuff in the Mac,
And they clearly do not know the Mac history. They clearly do not know why certain things are done the way they are. They do not respect
what Apple has done before in terms of UI design, and it's really kind of a disaster right now, which is why I'm not upgrading it.
That's one of those things. Now, have any of you ever heard of G.K. Chesterson's Fence?
Chesterton's fence. G.K. Chesterton was a writer.
Um, and he had a… he came up with this analogy of the fence, and he said, some people, when they see a fence in a road, are gonna say, well, I don't understand why it's here. Tear it down.
He said, you shouldn't do that. Instead, before doing that, you should investigate and find out, why is this fence here? Because it might not be obvious to you.
There may be a really, really good reason that fence is in the middle of that road or lane.
It's just, you don't know the history. You don't know why.
And so you're just simply seeing it as a nuisance and tear it down.
That's the same thing with the UIs.
When people basically are saying, eh, let's just change everything…
And ignore what people have already learned, gotten used to, ignored history, ignored good reasons.
That's a problem. And the last one is experience design, XD. This is kind of a fun one.
XD is a hybrid discipline that looks at environment
and multi-sensory design, especially for installations, are digital displays.
And so, some of you have probably seen these in action. So, there was a Van Gogh exhibit.
Van Gogh, the immersive experience, where you walked in and you were inside Starry Night.
Okay? That's what I'm talking about. That's experience design.
Right? What happened? Disney is amazing at this. Disney World, Disneyland are…
absolutely frickin' amazing at experience design.
They've thought of everything, from how do we entertain people waiting in long lines,
Right? How do we, uh, position food? How do we get the characters around the park? They go through tunnels, you never see
Mickey Mouse or Goofy walking around. They go into a hidden area, go into a hidden tunnel, and pop up elsewhere.
And so on and so forth. So, that's experience design.
Now, one of the things we have to talk about…
is complexity and difficulty.
Because sometimes…
Complexity…
isn't as complex as you think, and sometimes we need complexity.
But sometimes we do.
This is an actual example. I took this photograph.
I had to go to the hospital to get tested for something, I don't remember what it was.
And I have to lay down on this metal, you know, cold metal thing, and they position this thing over me,
And, you know, beep boop, boop! And they did it. And I got up…
And I was talking to the guy who did it, I was like, hey, you know, how many of these do you do a day? How much training do you have to do? You know, do you find it interesting?
And I looked over at the machine,
that he'd been using?
And I looked in the top left,
And it said, tape measure.
This is a hundred-something-thousand-dollar machine, most likely.
very sophisticated, you know, modern electronics and sensors and design.
And in the top left, it says,
tape measure. And I was like…
tape measure, does that, like, mean a tape measure? And he's like, oh yeah.
And I'm like…
Where's the tape measure? And he says, oh, it's right down there.
And sure enough, if you look there, there's a little tiny tape measure you can grab and pull down, and it's exactly like the one… it's not like the metal ones that we use to measure, like, rooms and beds and things like that. It's more like the soft one.
Like, my mom had one for fabric.
It's one of those. You pull it down, and then you can pull it, and it goes back up.
And I'm like, why does this…
incredibly sophisticated, expensive machine have a tape measure. And he said, because sometimes we need to position it right above certain people at a certain distance.
And that's how it's built in.
And I'm like, that's amazing. I never would have thought of that.
Ever. When I saw a tape measure, I thought, that can't be, like, a real tape measure.
But it is, and here you have this incredibly expensive equipment,
And it has a little tape measure like my mom used with fabric to solve a simple problem.
So, Don Norman, I love this analogy. Someone else's kitchen looks complicated and confusing,
But yours doesn't. You know where everything is.
Complexity is essential.
It is confusion that's undesirable.
How do we avoid confusion? This is where the designer's skills come into play. And I was actually talking about this very thing today with my students at St. Charles Community College.
And I was pointing out, when you walk into somebody's kitchen,
And let's say they give you food, but they forget to give you a utensil. And you're like, okay, I gotta get a fork.
You're not gonna start opening cabinets looking for forks.
Now, here's the deal. You don't know where the forks are.
But because you live in America, and our culture has a certain
way of placing things.
You're not gonna start looking in cabinets, and you're not gonna look in cabinets below.
You're gonna look for drawers.
And the drawer you look for…
is probably going to be the drawer closest to the sink, or closest to the oven.
That's where you're gonna start.
Right? So…
You don't know how the kitchen's laid out. You don't know what's where.
But you have a pretty good idea where to start, because you're familiar with American kitchens.
Now, in other countries, could be done completely differently. I don't know.
But, as for American kitchens, there's a standard way. You're ignorant of exactly the place, but you have a good idea where to start.
So, should anything be difficult to use?
Should anything be purposely
difficult to use.
Well, there are a few things that should be difficult to use.
Now, Don Norman, in his classic, classic book, and this is the one I would recommend all of you start with,
The design of everyday things.
points out several situations in which
Difficulty is necessary.
It is part of the requirements.
Okay? For instance,
Doors that keep certain people out.
or other things in or out.
Doors with locks, chains, uh, special codes, uh, finger readers, eye readers,
Those are used to be perfectly difficult,
To keep people in or out. And I love this example.
That's right, Stan, you got one right there.
So, here's a classic example of a door that has been made purposely difficult
But for a really good reason.
And this is from the first episode of The Walking Dead.
This guy's woken up from a coma.
He's been, uh, in a coma for weeks.
wakes up in this hospital, and he's like, where's everybody? Why is this torn to hell? What's going on? And he sees this door!
That has not only a bar, but chains and a lock.
It says, dead inside, do not open.
That is a door you really want to make difficult to open.
Because you want to keep things in, and you want to keep people from going…
in as well. Sorry, you want to keep those in and not going out. You want to prevent people from going in, because they won't return.
Here's another example. Security systems are areas that are only available to users, right?
Um, you might be able to walk into the Pentagon, you have to prove you're supposed to be able to do that, but you can't walk anywhere inside the Pentagon, you have to have the right clearance to go certain places.
So, I love this example from the movie Monsters vs. Aliens. I think it's absolutely hilarious, and it
really points out
this idea.
Obviously, this is Mark… modeled on Doctor Strangelove, this room.
It's the war room. Gentlemen, quit fighting, this is the War Room. So, I love all the steps he had to go through. I mean, who would think of a butt print? I think that could be very useful.
Although, I would hope they would clean the glass off immediately.
But here's another thing, and it's from the same movie.
Dangerous equipment. You want to make it hard for people to use.
dangerous equipment if they don't know what they're doing and haven't been trained.
and know the results. So here's another example. If that thing walks into a populated area…
There will be a major catastrophe! We need our top scientific minds on this. Get India on the phone. Can we transport to the United States to a safer planet? I say we give this alien a green card to make him
I'm proud to be an American. Sir, to dire times like this, when I stomp and ask myself,
What would Oprah do? Hang it all! What's the point?
It's a disaster. Stop!
launches all of our nuclear missiles! Well then, which button gets me a latte?
Uh, that would be the other one, sir.
What idiot designed this thing? You did, sir.
Fair enough. There you go.
Not good design at all.
I like that. Another example…
would be, if there's something that could lead to people dying, or getting seriously injured,
You want to make that difficult, right? MRI machines.
If you don't have all the metal out…
Whether you're observing or in there, you're gonna have a major problem. And I have read many examples
of people, idiots, that…
Don't take the guns out of their pockets and get shot, even killed. I've read about people having stuff rip out of themselves.
Uh, people dying, uh, accidents where somebody left a fire extinguisher in the room, and it went
right into the machine when they started it, so…
very dangerous. And of course, another one is secret doors, secret cabinets, secret safes, secret keys that you want to use to hide to get into your house.
Right? You want those to be difficult to find. And my favorite example ever…
I'm sure one of my favorite movies. I saw when it came out when I was 6 years old, and this, to me, is the best example of a secret door, and I hope…
Many of you guys have seen the movie, and that is, of course, Young Frankenstein. So, here's a scene where Dr. Frankenstein and his assistant Inga
have just gotten into the castle, and they wake up in the middle of the night to hear music.
You were right. It's coming from behind this wall.
Where is it? Where is it?
What? There's always a device.
If I can just spot the triggering mechanism…
Hello?
It seems louder over here.
Hand me that candle, will you?
Put the candle
Alright? I think I have it figured out now.
Take out the candle,
I don't block the bookcase with my body.
Now, listen to me very carefully.
Don't put the candle back.
If all of your might.
Charles, what comes the other side of the bookcase.
This is a perfectly clear.
I think so.
Good girl.
Oh, look, Doctor! A passageway! Whatever that music is, it's coming from down there.
I'd better take a look. Oh, let me convince you, Doctor, please.
I don't want to stay up here alone. All right, then.
Close your robe and follow me. Oh, Doctor?
So, Kendall.
Good thinking. Let's try this one.
Stand back!
There you go.
There you go. That's a… I love… I just love that bit, with the door, the secret door, and the candle.
Um,
Now, here's another thing.
Sometimes, you want to deliberately disrupt routine activities,
for a very good reason. So, for instance, I have 3 nice examples. Number 1…
You don't want it to make it easy for people to accidentally
fire or fire extinguisher, you have a pin in there, you have to pull first, right? So that prevents people from accidentally setting it off.
If you have a gun, there should be a safety you have to turn on and off.
Right? Before you fire it. And, now I turn this off on my computer, I don't need to be told this, but I know for a lot of people, the fact that they're asked, do you really want to erase the trash?
or recycle bin is a good thing for them, because they want to make sure they have to approve that.
Uh, and I understand that. Again, I turn that off.
Also, and this stand goes to what you were talking about,
Um…
Controls that require two people to operate them simultaneously and apart.
And so, here's a great scene from another really good movie I hope most of you have seen this movie.
From the 80s, showing exactly
that. That's from War Games.
Skybird. This is Dropkick with a red-alpha message in two parts. Break, break. Red Dash Alpha. Alpha.
Romeo, Oscar, November, Charlie.
Tango! Tango! Lima! Alpha.
Authentication. 2.
0, 4…
Zero. Delta Lima.
I have a valid message. Stand by to authenticate. I agree with authentication also, sir.
Enter a launch code. Entering launch code.
Launch order confirmed. Holy shit.
Target selection complete. Time on target sequence complete.
Yield selection complete. Begin countdown.
All right, let's do it. Insert launch key. Stand by.
Launch key inserted. Roger!
Am I mark? Rotate launch key to set.
3… 2… 1…
Mark? T-50.
There you go. Now, you might have noticed
One of the fail-safes for this is, the keys are so far apart, one person can't turn them both. They're purposely requires
two people to do it.
At the same time. Um, so, there you go. And I think, from what I've read, that's pretty accurate.
From what I've read, that's a pretty accurate…
depiction of what would happen.
if they were to go through with this.
So that's one example. Uh, another one would be childproof cabinets, childproof bottles,
You want to make it purposely difficult for kids to open that stuff, or to open cabinets.
Right? Where there might be chemicals, or cleaners, or just where you don't want them to get wedged, or…
or hurt. So, that's, uh, that's another one.
Also, games. Uh, there are certain games where you have, you have puzzles.
And you have to figure out what to do, and how to do it.
Now, there's a game called Half-Life that came out in 1988, it's one of the best games ever made. It's awesome.
And there was a section of it called Lambda Core that I hated, because you had to figure out there were all these little portals,
And you had to figure out what order to go in on which floor, and I…
I was like, I'm not gonna do that. I'm not gonna sit here and figure that crap out, so I just looked it up.
You know, go to the third floor, go into this portal. Okay, you're gonna appear here, now go down to the first floor. Go in this portal.
Because I was like, no, I'm not gonna do it. So, here's an example.
what I'm talking about, huh? No. There you go.
So, which of these do you go in, and in what order, and which floor?
Okay? Now you have to go inside that thing.
In the right order.
Nope, you died. That was not so smart. Yup.
So, you know what I mean? So this person's throwing them out?
Okay, cool. Uh…
Now, uh, which one am I gonna go in now?
I need to get up there.
Okay, I'll go in here.
Okay, I'm in a room with stuff, but I'm not…
need to be, I want to go back to this. Oh, which one?
Okay, let's try that. Nope.
What about this? See what I mean?
I was like, no, I'm not gonna do that. That's not fun.
Now, some people are like, that's really fun. I like figuring out those puzzles. I like figuring out some puzzles.
But not that. So…
All these designs are difficult. Everything I've shown you for the last 15 minutes or so is an example of a difficult design.
However, as Norman says, even deliberately difficult designs aren't entirely difficult.
Usually, there's one difficult part.
Designed to keep unauthorized people from using the device,
The rest of it should follow normal practices of good design.
Right? So, once you turn the child lock, you can take the lid off easily, get the pills out, put it back on.
And every single thing we've looked at so far, there is something difficult you have to do, but then…
It should follow good design after that.
Now, as part of the process, and I alluded this
to this earlier.
Where you need to work with a client and figure out what the real problem is.
Okay? That's critical.
And when Janz and I started out with our web development company, Web Sanity, we didn't know what we were doing.
Now, fortunately, nobody else did either. It was 1995, the web was brand new.
people were… people took another 10 years for people to figure stuff out.
So, we didn't know how to…
Try to find the real problem. We would meet with the client, and they'd say, we want X, and we'd go, okay.
We wouldn't ask why,
And then we'll Y that, and why that to try to get to the root of the problem. Now we do that, we know better.
And so, this is a technique that I think all of you might find useful with various things, even in your own life.
Called the five whys. Now, it was developed at Toyota in the 1930s.
Because they were trying to solve the problem of, how do you find the underlying cause for a specific problem?
Because too often, people treat the symptoms…
But not the cause. Well, if you treat the symptom, it's going to be fixed for the moment.
But it's gonna show up again because you haven't fixed the cause. You have to actually figure out what's the cause, and once you fix that,
All the symptoms associated with that will go away.
So, you can sit there and just fix the problem over and over and over and over and over again,
But if it's not the real problem, you're gonna be doing it over and over and over again.
So, the five whys are an iterative, interrogative technique, where you're asking questions and you iterate.
Okay? So, again, you don't want to solve the symptom, you want to get to the root cause,
and solve that. So here's an example.
The robot stopped.
Why? Oh, well, the circuit overloaded, making a fuse blow. Now, if people stopped there, they'd say, oh, just put a new fuse in.
You know, and then later it's gonna blow again. We'll put a new fuse in.
Now, every time that happens, the line slows down, things don't work, it's gonna cost more money, it's gonna cost labor time,
Right? Well, okay, let's ask more questions. So, the circuit overloaded, making a fuse blow. Okay, why?
Well, there was insufficient lubrication on the bearings, so they locked up.
Okay, we'll go lube them, we're done! No?
Why? The oil pump on the robot wasn't circulating enough oil.
Hmm, okay.
Why? The plump intake was clogged
with metal shavings. Now, again, somebody might go, well, get the metal shavings out, let's move on!
But that's not the real problem.
The why? There was no filter on the pump.
If there's no filter on the pump,
It's gonna lead to all these other problems slash symptoms. So, if you get to the final bottom root cause, there's no filter on the pump,
Solve that, and everything above it
will be fixed. So that's an example.
Where you want to use… where you use the five wives to get to the root of wives, not five wives. Five Ys to get to the root of the problem. Here's another example.
The caterer delivered food to 2 hours late.
Right? Well, a lot of people would just say, fire the caterer, get a new caterer,
Okay, why'd they delete… deliver food to 2 hours late? Well, we didn't prepare the purchase order on time.
Oh, why? We didn't get all the approval signatures on time.
Why? Well, we prepared the PO 3 days before the event.
Why? Well, we forgot to prepare a P.O.
Why? We don't have a checklist to clearly identify the tasks we need to complete at what time.
That's the root cause of the problem.
If we can make a checklist that clearly identifies the task and what needs to happen at what time, we will know, oh,
We have to prepare a purchase order this much in advance.
And again, this is why I always tell my students, write things down.
If you figure out a process, not just for web development, not just for your computer, if you have to figure out something about your car, about cooking, about clothing,
whatever, write it down in your note-taking app.
So you have it there, and you don't need to look it up again.
I think that's extremely valuable advice. I adhere to that very carefully.
very religiously, right? Have checklists. Have… I have one for travel.
Okay, I am gonna go on a 3-day trip. I have a checklist. What do I need to bring?
Versus, I am going to go on a 7-day or longer trip.
what do I need to bring? Because I know all of us have done this, I'd pack my bags, then go, I forgot my charging cable.
You know, or, oh crap, I forgot to pack a tie,
for this event, I'm gonna need a tie it. Now I gotta go out and buy a tie, or whatever.
Right? I forgot my swim trunks!
So, now I have a checklist for short trips and long trips to make sure I don't forget anything. And if I discover something new,
I add it to the checklist. So again, this is an exact example of that.
Okay, one more. Oh, sorry. These are rules for doing 5 Y's.
Okay, number one, don't use a computer. Write it down on paper, write it on a whiteboard.
Transfer to computer if you need to later. Don't focus on that, because you're going to screw around,
picking an app and picking a font, and doing blah blah blah, and formatting.
Just don't do that. Write it on paper.
Write it on a whiteboard. Then, make sure you're distinguishing a cause from a symptom.
Don't get hung up when it's a symptom. Try to get to the underlying cause. Also,
Don't make conclusions.
Don't get too down and go, oh, I see what it is, we need to do blah blah.
No. Do this step by step by step.
Don't jump to conclusions that seem maybe obvious to you.
Base your statements on facts and knowledge, not guesses, not how you feel.
Focus on the facts.
And lastly,
The root cause cannot be things that can't be improved or specific people.
So you can't say, well, human error is the cause,
That's not a root cause.
Something is causing the human error.
Right? Oh, the workers weren't attentive. That is not the root cause. Or my favorite, Shannon in accounting, again!
Well, no, it's not Shannon in accounting, it's something that has to do with the process we have in place that Shannon Accounting is or is not using.
So, this technique…
It can be really handy at the start of a design process, whether that's a paper, a program, a website.
a poster, anything.
Okay? When you're trying to understand what is the problem. A business method.
So, when clients bring solutions, that's not your job to implement them.
Your job is to ask why until you get you and them at the root cause of the problem, so that is the thing that can be addressed.
Now, another way to help think about this is called a fishbone diagram, or an Ishikawa diagram.
And it looks like this.
Right? So, the problem is… this processing is behind schedule, and so, okay, well, these people did it. Why did these people do it? Because of management. Why did management do it? Because of the process. Why did the process happen? Because of the methods.
And so, you can have very complicated things if you really, really, really, really need to go in depth.
Okay? Now, these are… there's… there's 5 whys.
But there's a lot of stuff under each one explaining why that happened that way.
You do not need to make it this difficult at all.
But, sometimes it can really help, especially if you're trying to figure out the complex process behind each of these.
Now, there's other categories people use that you can use.
Uh, the 3Ms and the P, my methods, materials, machinery, people. That can be a way of getting to the root problem.
Uh, policies, procedure, people plant.
Machine, method, materials, measurement, man, Mother Nature.
the 8 P's, the four S's…
So, any of these can help you get to the root of the problem.
Now, you can also use a spreadsheet.
There are techniques for using spreadsheets, not just for planning floor plans of equipment rooms, you can also use spreadsheets, it turns out.
to do a five whys analysis. So, here's a sample template.
Where, here's the problem, Y1, Y2, Y3, and you can use branching.
in there, to help start figuring out what's the cause. There was staff resistance. Okay, why was there staff resistance? Well, that was actually composed of
Four different things.
What about each of those? That leads to another why. Are branching more Ys?
Until finally, you get to the last, the five Y's, the last step of the process.
And now we're understanding, okay, we understand what the problem was,
And here are the root causes.
that we can start addressing, and then…
Here's how we prevent them from recurring.
So, this is a really nice example, I think,
showing you, um, some of the techniques you can use to get to that root problem. And again, you can use them in your own life.
Right? You know, uh, there's a problem with the dishwasher. Why? Well, this keeps happening.
Why? Well, this happened.
Why? Uh, because I need to clean the filter, okay? Why? Why wasn't the filter cleaned in the dishwasher? Because we don't have it on a schedule.
We need to put it on a standing schedule. Every 6 months, we're going to clean the filter.
Things like that you can use yourself.
So, what can people do with UX if you study it?
Um, and want to graduate and focus on UX?
Right? Well, you can solve real-world problems.
But you can also specialize if you want. You could be a UX designer for automobiles. If you're a car person,
You can do that. You can do UX at a computer company, or a software company, or all sorts of other companies.
The nice thing about UX is it's going to require you to be both creative and logical.
So, both sides of your brain are going to have to work on this together to get to these problems, and then solve them.
Um, this isn't a case where tools aren't as important.
So, um, instead, principles, knowledge, and skills are what's important. So, for instance, I was talking to my students the other day about
When you're trying to figure out what the navigation of a website's going to be, that's called top-down information architecture.
So, we've got home, okay.
What is home? What's going to be the main navigation on home, and what are the subpages under each of those?
Now, a lot of companies…
We'll make these beautiful, glossy diagrams with org chart diagrams, and they've got all this information and colors, and it's on glossy paper, and it looks gorgeous.
And I pointed out to my student,
Why do it that way? I mean, now, if the client's willing to pay you 500 bucks to do it,
Okay, go ahead, do it. But if they're not, why waste all your time making something fancy-schmancy in software that's gonna slow you down, because you're trying to be precise about stuff?
When we already have a great tool available to us to help plan the navigation of a website.
And that's called an outline. And you can make an outline on paper, you can make an outline on a whiteboard, you can make an outline in Word, you can make an outline in any text editor or code editor.
You can use an outline tool. I have outlining software on my computer that I use for outlining.
So, everybody understands an outline. You can very quickly make an outline. You can very quickly move things around in an outline that would be a pain in the ass to move if you've got this beautiful diagram.
So, that's an example where the tools aren't what's important, use the simplest tool for the job.
Instead, what's important is, okay, we're gonna make an outline.
What are the principles, knowledge, and skills we bring together to help figure out what the best navigational structure should be for the website?
The other thing is, you can often do the work remotely. That's always nice, and it is a growing field.
High demand, good pay.
And in fact, this is a chart from 2021 showing UX designer salaries around the world.
Okay? And so,
U.S., $105,000.
You know, Kenya, 16, which is a lot of money in Kenya.
Australia, $76,000. UK, $65,000, and so on.
So this shows you the payment you can expect around the world. Now, in fact, in 2023, the median salary for UX designers is $93,000.
That's a good salary. I wish I made that.
That'd be great. All teachers should be paid that.
Right? That's a pretty good salary to make.
And so, let's kind of look at what our old friend Don Norman has to say.
about the future of UX.
You know, I've been in this field a really long time. In fact, if you will, I helped start the field.
But what's really exciting is the way things are changing so rapidly today. We have whole new systems, we have whole new approaches, we have all sorts of things we never dreamed of. For example, autonomous cars, cars that drive by themselves. Well…
So why does that need user experience design? Well, you know, it may drive by itself, but what if you're not comfortable with the way it's driving? Or what if you change your mind part of the way through? Or what if you say, oh, I need some lunch, could you stop off at a lunch place? Well, you know, all sorts of things are going to happen that we have to interact with a car, and for that matter, suppose you're a pedestrian, you're crossing the street, and here comes a car with no driver.
How do I know it's seen me? How do I know I can go on? Or can I wave it on? I mean, if I waved it on, how do I know that it saw me wave it on? Can it wave me on? And if it's waving me on, how do I know it means me and not just the people on the other side of me? Those are really important problems.
And they're difficult to solve.
that the very first solution that comes to your mind?
Lots of people have thought of that solution that it won't work, I betcha. I have a rule, by the way, that if there's a really difficult problem, and when you're told of it, you immediately think of a solution,
Lots of other people, hundreds, thousands of people have thought of that solution, and the fact it isn't there means, well, it isn't that simple. Or maybe it isn't right.
So, this is, though, the excitement. We have virtual reality, we have augmented reality, we have new ways of interacting by gesture, or just by being there, or just by the time of day, just how you're standing, who you are. Are those good? Are those bad? Do we lose privacy? Does it enhance our experience?
frustrate us and make us scared? These are the big problems facing us.
How do people work together in groups? You know, everything we've designed is kind of as if it was one person doing one thing, but real work and real play and activities are done by groups. Sponsoring and making it work for groups, that's a real challenge, too.
If you think it's hardly designed for one person, imagine designing for a variety of people simultaneous challenges. Challenges are where the fun is.
So yeah, there are problems in front of us, but think of the problems as challenges. This is an exciting time.
There you go, I think he was great. I love how he said, your first solution's probably wrong. If you immediately go, well, it's obvious, do this!
that's not gonna be the right answer.
It's just not. So, that's why it always annoys me when people like Elon Musk and other people are like,
they post on there, like, well, we should just do this! You don't think people have already thought of that, and maybe even tried it, and it didn't work?
Just because you're rich does not mean you automatically have the best ideas in the world, that's kind of obvious with lots of them.
So, you know, this is the thing I always do tell my students.
I see many designers in my generation frustrated.
Because UX Bootcamps and design courses,
made us believe we'd all guide organizations toward user-centered solutions.
Only to realize many companies hire us to execute, not to transform.
So, that's it. You get hired, but they're not hiring you to come up with new, innovative solutions to problems. They're just like, yeah, just make this.
And that can be very, very frustrating.
So, by the way, I always like reassuring people of this, even the experts get things wrong.
So, for years…
Jacob Nielsen had his own website.
Once he joined Nielsen Norman Group, that all got folded in.
But for years, Jacob Nielsen had his own website, and that's what it looked like.
And it was…
The content was excellent.
The content was excellent. And in fact, we would be talking to clients and say, well, that's a bad idea UI-wise, or this is a… this is a thing you should do.
And they'd be like, well, why? And we'd say, well, we can send you an article about it where the person did a study and explains why. And we would send them links to this guy's website,
They wouldn't even read them. They'd get to the site and go, why should I listen to this guy about UI?
His website is so ugly and basic…
why should I listen to what he has to say? And we'd have to say, well, he's trying to adhere to the principle that content's more important than the design, so he keeps it purposely very, very, very basic.
Just ignore that, and the problem was, his decisions on design were undercutting…
His reputation and the way people would approach seeing his work. It didn't validate him.
The design invalidated the really good content.
So, that was a great example. We're like, dude!
Don't do that! Well,
Once, he and Don Norman got together, they had a much better website.
All the old articles migrated to this, now they look better, obviously, it looks much more professional, it looks designed.
Right? However…
Even these guys have a problem.
So, you notice up in the top right there, there's your search box, right? Well, depending on where you click around,
Oh. Wait a sec.
Now there's two search boxes.
That's not good. That's very confusing.
Because I could see somebody going, now, wait a sec.
is this search…
different than this search?
In actuality, when you do a search,
It takes you to this page.
That's dumb, because that's confusing.
And that's one of the reasons we tell people, never actually put a search box
Up in the top right corner, or on the page, on every page.
Because, two reasons.
When people do a search, that's gonna be confusing if there's another search box on the page, and number two, um…
The problem is, people will use it.
And you might be thinking, well, yeah, duh, that's why it's there. Well, the thing is, studies have shown the more people search trying to find something, the worse they do.
And so, you actually want to discourage search. You want to encourage clicking around.
That's why the old sitemap page, I've always thought was a good idea. You want to encourage people trying to figure it out, and only THEN go to search.
So what you would do is, instead of putting a search box up here, you put a little magnifying glass.
or a box that says, a button that says search, or a link. And when you click that, you go to the search page,
And that's where the search form is.
That's far better, far simpler, far more understandable, far less likely to cause confusion.
end users, if you simply do it that way.
Now, another one I'm going to show you…
There's a man named Edward Tufte,
Who is a world expert at information visualization and presentation.
That's his expertise. He is amazing. He's written 5 books that are classics in the field. He teaches courses.
Um, brilliant man.
Former Yale professor.
When you go to his website, and he is very picky…
about how things look, about how they lay out. He's got his own systems for everything, not just the books. He lays out the books himself. That's how picky he is.
He has them printed under his supervision.
The website is designed to look like the books.
So, really smart, good stuff. However, when you go to the books page…
That's how you go between books!
Like, what?
So, I want to… I wanna read this book called Visualizing Information.
is that 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, or 8.
That's horrible.
Horrible design.
So, this is a guy that's an expert in information visualization and design, and
This is horrific. So, like I said, even the experts are going to be making mistakes.
Okay. That's it!
I've now got time for…
questions. And or other examples. I have tons of examples.
So, um, anybody, go ahead, if you've got any questions, let her rip.
Or not.
Gary, you said Wise 5, the magic number, because it is.
That's why. It's the magic number.
Sometimes 3's the magic number. Okay, nobody has any questions?
Okay, I'm gonna start going around, asking you what you found most interesting.
Yes. Yes.
That's on the phone.
Suggestion… what was a suggestion. Um, what was that website you were talking about in the beginning that, um, you couldn't copy and paste a password in?
Pass, uh, PayPal.
Hey, Bell, did you try the keyboard? You were on a computer, I assume?
No, I was using the keyboard.
I was using the keyboard.
Yeah, Command-V, yeah. Yeah. No, I couldn't do it.
Okay. Like, like, CTRL-V, or… Hurt?
Shift insert. Shift insert sometimes works. Yeah.
Didn't do that. I did not try that. Now, one of the methods you can do is, if you go and look at the code, you can oftentimes remove the bit of JavaScript, or remove the thing that's causing that, and then do it.
You know? But it's a… but if you're on a mobile device, you can't do that. You're screwed.
Yeah. I've… I've, um… Yeah. Well, also, this doesn't also not work on a mobile device.
Mm-hmm.
But I found that, you know, they have, you know, password and verified password. That always annoyed me to no end, that they… You couldn't copy and paste? Like, I typed it right the first time. I'm not gonna type it again.
So usually what I do is highlight and drag and drop, and that works.
Oh, good, okay, that's a good idea.
Yeah, I just copy… I go copy-paste, paste.
You know? And I think there should only be one also. If they show you the password.
If I can see the password, I don't need to retype it, because I can see it right there, right? Now, again, most websites hide it, but I think that's kind of dumb.
Because here's the deal. Why do they hide it? Well, that way, if somebody's looking over your shoulder,
they won't see it. Well, if somebody's looking over my shoulder while I'm trying to put a password in, I think I'm gonna notice, and I'm gonna say back up.
Get away, you know? If I was leaning over Gary's shoulder while he was trying to put a password in,
I have the feeling Gary's gonna notice and ask me politely to back up.
So, I think that's a silly reason, just display the password.
But, great question.
Oh, man. Uh, comment on the five questions? When I was at IBM.
More than a decade ago. Um, in RCAs, there was always the five whys, or nominally, five.
Um, sometimes, very rarely, you can get to the actual root cause in four.
Yes.
Sometimes it's as high as 7, but 5 is statistically where.
Most of the answers are, so… make sure you ask 5.
Yeah. Good! That's great. Thank you, Grant.
That's an excellent point. And I knew IBM used it.
You know, because it…
Yeah, and Fishbone as well, and sometimes… you start to do the RCA 5Ys, it's like, uh, there's a whole bunch of contributing factors.
Mm-hmm.
Do a fishbone to find the major things. That percolate, because, you know, it's like, you don't want to say, well, it was a stuck key on a keyboard.
Right. Yeah, that's a great point. Thank you.
As part of an RCA.
That's super. Anybody else got a question or comment?
Wow.
Anybody? Now's the time.
Nope.
Yeah, go ahead, Stan.
Uh, this…
Uh, this is Stan. Uh, I wanted to… there was a, uh, uh…
One of the… Steve Gibson Security Now episodes, he talked about… they said it.
There was a report that they actually. On the nuclear bombers, they made the launch code.
For the bombs was 000000. Because the study said that.
They were concerned that it would… in a stressful situation, they would mess up the code.
And get locked out of the system. And couldn't launch the bomb.
I think they could find some sort of middle point?
for those two problems?
Right.
Well, you know, I'm just saying that's what the report said, that they actually used 00000.
Well, again, I would assume that somebody could do a study and say, we can't have 000,
We can't also make it too complicated. Where can we find a middle ground that'll work?
That's interesting. Good point.
Anybody else?
Yeah.
Oh, this is Randy. I, um… I like your point when you said we need to get to the root of the problem.
Mm-hmm.
And when we go and see a doctor. And you say, I have this problem.
Mm-hmm.
How often does the doctor say. The problem is this.
Mm-hmm.
And this is how we're going to solve it. But most of the time, you get a pill.
Right. Right.
To cover it up, as opposed to… and see, one of the things that I do when I go to the doctor.
Is… no, you don't understand. I don't want just a pill to cover it up, I want to figure out what the problem is.
Right. Yeah.
And how do we fix it? It's a little bit like, uh, I have essential tremors, okay?
Mm-hmm.
And so there is no fix. I mean, there is a… there are surgeries and…
Mm-hmm.
Tools that they can use. When your essential tremors are extreme.
But in the meantime. You take medication and suffer.
Right, right.
So, there are, um, exceptions. But if you don't say.
Mm-hmm.
How do we fix it? You never will know, and you'll only get a.
Yeah.
Cover-up. It's like putting a sheet of paper over the problem, going like.
But you can't look underneath that sheet of paper. You're not allowed.
Right. And I would say, I would argue part of that is because of the amount of time doctors are allowed to meet with patients, right? They only have 10 minutes or 15 minutes.
So, they don't have time to go into detail, and they don't have time to ask why, and try to figure that out. So…
You know, that's another… I think that's a contributing factor into the big problem you're describing.
Absolutely.
That's good.
Yeah, no, I don't let them get away with that. Um, you know, if I don't get the solution.
Good. Be tenacious.
And I don't stop until I do.
Anybody else comment, question?
Anyone? Anyone?
Yes. Scott, you hear me? Look at me.
Yeah! Hey, Rich!
Uh, an observation. In our society now, we have a very large problem.
Mm-hmm.
Throwing things away. We have… Terrible problem of… of that big…
Mm-hmm.
Don't keep we're building. And I noticed in your design, industrial design.
I think the root of the problem, we'll get to the root of the problem with outside questions this time.
There were only 3… things you mentioned… Applications…
Or the, uh, the application… Appearance, the function.
Yeah, manufacturability, yeah.
Usability or manufacturability. Yeah. The big problem is…
You're missing one of the major design functions that we used to have way back in the.
Right.
Yeah. Yup.
Years ago, maintainability. If you're not designing for maintainability, you're designing for…
obsolescence. Yeah.
Yeah. Oh, absolutely.
Throwing things away.
Yeah, yeah, we all have, like, we all have that relative that has a refrigerator from the 50s that still works fine.
Now, of course, they weren't designed with handles, so if somebody gets in it, they die.
You know, my grandparents have one of those refrigerators where if a kid got in that fridge, they were not getting out. That was locked.
Yep.
And obviously, that's been updated. But yeah, uh, that whole problem of e-waste, as well as other forms of waste, uh, that's absolutely a big issue.
And obviously, planned obsolescence is not going to be helpful to that problem at all.
You know, I do think some companies are trying to make it a little better,
Um, but it is definitely a problem.
And in a throwaway society like ours, it's always going to be a big problem.
Absolutely. That's why I remember the phrase is,
Yeah. And if…
um, reduce, reuse, recycle.
Right? Ideally, reduce your need to buy whatever it is, and if you do have it, reuse it in some way when it's worn out.
And only the last resort should be recycling.
So, I've always… I've always kept that little mantra in my head. I think it's incredibly valuable.
Right.
Yeah.
And it, it is. But you've got to… you know, the problem starts at the design.
Yeah.
If you don't have the design for maintainability. Not… you're not gonna get it later.
Right, you're absolutely right.
That's good, yeah, excellent, excellent point, absolutely.
Yeah. Anybody else?
Yes.
I was gonna add that, um. When I was a consultant for about a decade.
I would routinely… customers would ask me, hey, can you help us do this?
Yes, I can. But I want to talk about it first.
Right.
What are you actually wanting to do? You know. I can help you put this server in, but what's the other problem?
And figure out the actual need, and something… that fits that need better.
Yup.
One of the other things I would frequently do, and sometimes would have to do off the clock to keep my.
Manager happy. Was I would ask for a tour.
Or something of the clients to understand. How they work as a business, and they would.
Yeah.
Ask why, and it's like. Well, first of all, I'm just selfishly curious. I like learning.
Mm-hmm.
Two, and more importantly for you. It helps me understand.
Where you might be headed. With technology, which helps me make better decisions.
Oh, yeah.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely.
Or other things for you.
That's the discovery process.
That's great, absolutely.
That's actually… that's the discovery and definition process.
Right? The first steps before you do anything…
creative, or whatever.
Yeah, that's absolutely great. That's why… and that's the mark of a difference between a…
Yeah.
a more experienced…
uh, consultant,
and an inexperienced consultant.
Right? It's one of those things you learn over time.
or by mentorship, that…
you know, otherwise you're not… it's gonna take you a while to figure it out.
Like I said, it took us years to figure that out.
Yeah, and… I actually…
I kind of went through some evolution. And it's like, yes, I can and will help you do that.
However, I have some questions first. I went through some friction, where it's like, I have questions. Well, no, we want you to do this. It's like, okay, yes, I'll help you do it, so I kind of stacked the deck of.
Yes, I hope you do it, is that what we really want to do?
Right. And sometimes they just say, we don't care, we don't want to talk about it, just do it.
Okay? You've made a decision. I will do it for you.
Yep. Yep. We had a… we used to do the ACLU of Connecticut's website, and the guy that was the executive director there…
was… he thought he was a designer. And he called Janz and go… and I'm, like, twisting the words here to make it funny,
Fair.
But he would basically call Jan's and go, hey, I have this really stupid idea I want to do on the website. Can you please implement my stupid idea? No matter what it was, you know? And Dan's would very patiently explain, well, that's not a good idea,
Um, here's why, it's not, you know, it would actually be bad, and Roger would go,
Oh, okay. Well, go ahead and do it.
And then, he started calling, and we love this.
He would call and go, hey, Jans, I need your opinion.
What would you think about if I had you guys do this? And Janice would go, well,
Uh, my opinion is that there's a better way to do it, and this is the way to do it. And Roger would go,
Huh. Okay, we'll go ahead and do it. And so Jan said, after the third time, he would go, can you give me my opinion about that? And James would go, sure, and he'd say, what do you think about this? And Jan's go, sounds good.
Because he never wanted to hear your opinion.
He wanted to go ahead and do his idea, so we said, okay, we'll do that stupid, idiotic thing you want us to do, no problem.
And so that's what we did, because it was useless otherwise. Whereas we have other people that will listen, and
converse and allow us to talk to them and figure problems out, and that always results in a better website and a better solution.
And a better relationship.
Yes.
Yeah, there's a process of training clients to how to interact with them.
Yes.
And it kind of weeds out, okay, we don't want them as a client more than about.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
This project go away.
Absolutely. Yeah. That's good. Thanks, Grant.
By the way, Grant, while I got you talking, what's the most interesting thing you heard tonight?
I'm gonna go around and ask everybody.
So be ready.
Fair. Um, I've been somewhat distracted, and… 3 quarters listening, working on things.
Good.
I liked hearing the RCA and Fishbone. As, um… reaffirming in a completely different channel what I have.
Learned at IBM in the past. Um, some other things outside of it that support it, uh, the…
Comment about actually figuring out why they want something done, like we were just talking about a moment ago.
Yeah.
It's external confirmation of things that I've inherently done. It's nice to go, yeah, see, it's not just me.
That's right. Good! Thank you.
Uh, Robert Levitt, what'd you find most interesting?
Robert Levitt.
Can't hear you. I'll come back.
John… John Steinmeier, what'd you find most interesting?
Well, actually, I joined you very late, so I… I kind of missed out on… on the main part of it.
Okay. So basically, the last thing I said is the most interesting.
No problem, thanks, not a big deal.
Randy, how about you?
Yeah, we're all, you know…
Yeah.
What'd you find most useful… interesting?
Well, actually, I found several things, uh… a very interesting, um… Uh, one, um, that, uh, resonated with me is.
Good.
Get into the root cause. And then the Y's, I thought, were very important, um…
It's a little bit like when a customer calls me and says, I need to do this, and I'm going like, okay.
Mm-hmm.
And then I asked them. Why?
Mm-hmm.
Uh, is there, uh… an alternative to…
Uh, doing what you want. A lot of times, if I don't agree with.
Let's say the, um… premise or the approach?
Right.
No, that's smart. Absolutely.
Then I'll back out and let somebody else do it. And then I wanted to mention one other thing that, uh, uh, when you…
Had mentioned about…
Mm-hmm.
Trying to come up with a solution to a problem. And there… and there's no doubt, you know, you've got to ask those questions. I mean, obviously.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
But… Uh, the first answer.
All right.
Like you said, is not the solution. One of the things that I've learned, and also because I fit into that category, is ask a neurodivergent person.
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.
Yeah.
Who doesn't think like you. And, uh, they think outside the box.
Yeah, yeah.
Right. Yeah?
So whatever box you're looking at, and they go, well… What about that box over there?
Yeah, good point. Great point.
Absolutely, yeah.
I like it. Oh, well, thank you.
So, uh, but anyway, I enjoyed your presentation, and thanks for it.
Appreciate it. Thank you very much. Robert Elevitt, it looks like you're here now. What'd you find interesting?
Well, thank you.
Well, I thought the entire presentation was interesting.
Was there anything in particular that stuck out to you?
Not really.
Okay. I did see you laughing during Young Frankenstein, so I felt good about that. I'm glad I…
Glad I got… I got you laughing.
Okay, that's cool. Mm-hmm.
Uh, Tony, looks like your hand's up. What do you, uh, what'd you find interesting?
Yeah, I was, uh, curious why you, um… We're… we're hitting the, um, the salaries. You're talking about salaries a couple times.
Um, because that's what I tell my students, and I forgot to take those slides out.
That's why.
Yeah. So you're not trying to, uh, get us to sign up for… You are… UI designer, U.S. Design?
UX design? Oh, no, if you want to take the class, I'd love to have anybody in it, but…
Um, no, the only reason… they were slides. Well, I left them in. I did look at them tonight, and I was like, you know, they might find that interesting.
So I left it, but I probably should have taken it out. That's why.
It does… it… it does validate that they are useful, uh.
So, uh…
Yeah.
But it's gonna take, what, it's gonna take… it takes a college degree, though, to get into it, right?
Careers.
Well, that, or like an apprenticeship or something, yeah.
It takes 40.
You know, but the cool thing is, you could study graphic design, and then take some UX classes,
What's an apprenticeship?
And, you know, transition and so on. So…
you know, there's lots of… there's lots of opportunities.
And then not be any good at it.
Of course, of course, there's people that are terrible at all sorts of stuff that they studied.
Yeah, believe me, I see that. I see.
Like, that girl in accounting you're talking about.
Yes, or I see work by students their senior year, and I'm like…
Yeah, I don't see how you're gonna get a job as a graphic designer, or a web developer, or whatever, but okay.
Uh, Gary Meyer, what about you? What'd you find interesting?
Okay, hopefully I got enough network bandwidth that this is not garbled. Can you hear me?
No, it's good. Yeah, really well.
No, it's good. Okay. Yeah, really well. Well, I've got a… I've got 3 different things.
Okay.
First off, interesting, the young Frankenstein clip. After all. Terry Gar was in it, it was an interesting clip, so I appreciated that one.
Yes. No problem.
Uh, second was, uh, the concept of the five… the always ask five questions and drill it down that far.
Not only interesting, also very useful. Uh, but perhaps the most interesting of them all.
Was your brother's innovative technique of using the spreadsheet for the floor plan.
It's very innovative.
Yeah.
Uh, thinking outside the box? It's very innovative. Innovative use of a tool? You could probably have him call Excel, or, you know, and, hey, you know, here's a new use, you know, market this.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm sure if I called Microsoft,
I've done that.
So, those are my three things. Thank you very much. I've done that. I'm sure if I called Microsoft.
Oh, no problem. I'm sure if I'd called Microsoft and been like, hey, have you guys thought of this? They'd be like,
So, yeah, that was great.
Uh, Lee Lambert, what did you find most interesting?
Oh, good. I have many more.
All the horrible examples.
I have so many horrible examples of UI, design,
everything. I should, uh… I should do, um, uh…
the shorter presentation one night.
I can just show you guys for a half hour horrible examples of UI and design. You would be extremely entertained.
Trust me. So I'm glad you like that.
Uh…
That half hour would make a great base presentation at the main session.
Yeah, that's what I meant. That's what I meant. I'd be happy to do it. I've got everything already.
Um, Gary, remember that. Uh, Vincent, how about you? What'd you find most interesting?
Wake up, Gary!
Okay? Vincent might not be there. Philip! What'd you find most interesting?
Well, all of it, but um… The examples you gave of things that were…
Uh-huh.
Bad designs we've all experienced. And we continue to experience them.
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah.
And I can't remember your exact words or what it… was, but, um…
And there's something I have to remind myself. Everything's connected.
It's all a system.
Yes. That it's all a system, and there's lots of little parts connecting each other, and if you pull or push one, it might affect other things you didn't think about.
Yeah, yeah, a long time ago, way back. Um, there was some book I read called The Systems Approach.
Mm-hmm.
Back during the heyday of systems thinking.
It was back in the 60s. And, um, and…
Yeah.
Yeah. And that was being young at that time. Uh, that was very helpful to think, yeah.
Yeah.
I have to remember, everything is a big system.
Yes, that's right. And, by the way, on that topic, I know pretty much everybody here knows Admiral Grace Hopper was, right? She invented the term bug.
and printed, uh, uh…
Was it Fortran?
Yeah.
What was the language she invented?
I can't remember. COBOL! And, um…
Cobol.
She famously said, I love this quote, she said, life was easy before World War II. After that, we had systems.
I always thought that was great.
I thought COBOL with somebody else. Wouldn't Algol? Grace Hopper?
I think…
I don't remember.
No, it was… it was, uh, Cobalt, because she, uh, she was in a session one time, and she showed them that they could.
Do everything in… French, and the guys at IBM said, no, we want it all in English.
Yes, she developed, uh, she was the first to devise the theory of machine-independent programming languages, and used this theory to develop the Flomatic programming language and COBOL.
So, yep. Pretty amazing woman.
Okay, thank you, Philip.
Okay.
Uh, Steve, do you have any, uh, anything you found most interesting?
No, the microphone don't work. I can see you and hear you.
Okay.
Okay. Good.
That's enough for most people.
But… I enjoyed the whole thing. I guess if I had a comment…
Mm-hmm.
It would be… Why do the children writing software.
Yeah. Yeah.
Never test it.
Well,
Yeah, I think nowadays, though, there's more of a…
Or why won't their bosses let them test it?
push toward testing, and including tests in part of your development process. I know Buchak could talk about that.
Uh, well, some do and some don't.
Left the people writing software for phones.
Yeah, right. But yeah, things can always use more. Good!
Thank you.
Yeah. Samsung doesn't, I can tell you that.
Oh.
Uh, Rich, did you say something?
Positive.
That was interesting to you?
Rich, you there? Okay. Vincent, are you there?
He did earlier, yes.
Oh, go ahead, Rich, go ahead.
Yeah, well, I have… A little more.
Yeah, I found a lot of things interesting in that I was… Happened to be getting involved with UI…
In the 80s, that was… I don't recall we used… had the term UX at that time.
But we were talking about a lot of the things that you… represent… or that you've been talking about.
Mm-hmm.
And they were the same problems. We had a lot of problems figuring out.
Solutions, some of which… We've come to some…
Right.
Collisions. Uh, one of the things that. I noticed was, you talked about doing small steps.
small iterative steps.
Well, yes, small iterative steps. And that was… I was with a big corporation at that time, man.
So, our customers for software. Was where, uh… operating units.
They wanted the software. But they steadfastly, absolutely refused to provide.
Mmm…
Any direct feedback. At all. In other words.
That's not helpful.
You have the… what I'd call it is the… Bring me a rock.
Right, right, right, right, right.
Right.
Design of software. Everybody done software, you recognize it. Anybody done software understands.
Not that one.
Bring me a rock. That actually…
Right?
Nope. Bring me another rock. Nope, not that one.
Yeah, that's Bring Me a Rock, yeah.
Now, yep, that's the wrong color, and it's too big. Not that one. That's bring me a rock.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And that actually kind of guided me into doing other things.
Yeah.
No, that's a terrible game, but some people like to play it.
Because I just could not stand that game.
And we've had people like that.
Yeah. Uh… The other thing that… that struck me interesting…
Uh-huh.
Is you talked about search a little bit. And search is becoming, actually.
It's becoming a bigger problem now than it was before. Because the Tome of knowledge is so…
Right.
Oh, Lord.
Much larger. That the simple search that we use just isn't up to the game.
Yeah.
Now, there was, back in the day. This was probably, again, 40 years ago.
A database, and I don't remember… What it was, what database it was, but I'm pretty sure it was a database.
That have the concept. In search that you could do a search.
And that would produce a result. And then you could take that result and search on that result.
Sure.
In other words, you could do iterative or drill-down type searches.
Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.
And I really don't see that much in the UIs of today, or the UX of today.
Right. Yeah.
I saw something like that, but it's been a looong time.
Since I saw that. But yeah, good point!
That's an excellent point, Rich, thank you.
Appreciate that.
Cool. Okay, Vincent, last chance.
Okay, that's it for me.
Last chance, Vincent!
Nope. Okay.
Okay, no problem, no problem. Um…
Vincent never… Vincent never talks in any of these sessions.
Does anybody… did I miss anybody?
Is there anybody I missed?
Stan who? No, go ahead, Stan.
Stan?
What do you find most interesting?
Uh, first off. Well, first off, I'd like to say, as always, you provide 150% more than I expect.
Thank you. Thank you.
Thank you. So wait, you expect me to suck, and then I surprise you? Is that what you're saying?
Great, always. Uh…
No, not that. Uh, of course.
There is an unnumbered slide that you presented after the five whys.
Uh-huh.
That talked about all these different. Things like plan, procedure, et cetera, et cetera.
That major slide, I found that the most interesting. I know I will go back and review that.
Okay, cool.
Cool! Absolutely, man, thanks!
Well, uh, it's 10 to 9?
That I found the most interesting. Thank you.
Pretty good, time-wise?
I'm actually letting you guys out on time, instead of keeping you…
Really late. Um…
It's been worth it.
Yeah, thanks. I enjoyed… I'm glad we got to do this. Uh, I hope you guys found it… I know it's not Linux, but we talked a little bit about Linux, but I think it's a subject that…
it's important to all of us. It's something we should all think about and talk about, and it helps us
understand the systems we're using.
Whether by choice or because we have to.
So, um, anyway, I just want to thank you guys, it was a lot of fun.
And I look forward to seeing you guys soon.
Thanks! I'm gonna go…
Thank you, Scott. Great.
Yes?
Oh, no problem, thank you!
Thank you.
As always, a big thank you, Scott. One of these times, we're gonna have you… Thank you.
I'm kind of scared, because all I heard from Gary is one of these times we're going to have you, and then he cut out, and I'm a little worried…
Kind of scared, because all I heard from Gary is, one of these times we'll just have you, and you cut out, and I'm a little worried.
And I'm…
I said, we're gonna have you do a dramatic reading from the Linux Phrasebook.
Okay. I can do that.
I'd be happy to do it.
Let me throw in some Milton Paradise Love, too.
I've never mind, dude.
Yeah.
Yeah. Great.
All right, thank you all.
Let me tell you.
I'm gonna head, but…
Take care, guys.
Thanks, Scott.
All right, Gary, you want to put a bookend on?
What was the question? I shouldn't want to do a bookend?
I said, you want to do a bookend?
Oh, bookend! Uh, this was Thursday, the 18th of September, 2025.
Our speaker tonight was Scott Graneman. He was talking about UX design.
User experience design. And, uh. Uh, thank you all for coming. Yeah, this was the St. Louis Linux user group. St. Louis look.
Good night.