Reference presentation from MKE UX, on July 14th.

1. MY EXPERIENCE IN
USER EXPERIENCE
(the smart alarm story)
Thursday, July 15, 2010

2. This is an open forum
presentation
Thursday, July 15, 2010

3. Introduction
Mike Massie
Thursday, July 15, 2010

4. Introduction
Mike Massie
is an ex, ex Graphic Designer
Thursday, July 15, 2010

5. Introduction
Mike Massie
is an ex, ex Graphic Designer
is an Autodidact
Thursday, July 15, 2010

6. Introduction
Mike Massie
is an ex, ex Graphic Designer
is an Autodidact
is a user
Thursday, July 15, 2010

7. Introduction
Mike Massie
is an ex, ex Graphic Designer
is an Autodidact
is a user
is like electricity
Thursday, July 15, 2010

8. Thursday, July 15, 2010

9. “Follows the path resistance”
of least
- Jan Massie
How this trait is reflected in my UX design:
Donʼt interfere unless you have to
If your app can do it, do it
It pisses me off to leave an app to perform
a task to come back to the app
How many buttons do we actually need?
Thursday, July 15, 2010

10. Limitations
Application Programmer
Interface - APIs
A programmer to a designer lesson:
You’re only as good as your APIs
It’s really bright when you’re trying to sleep.
You have to leave the app on, to work.
Can’t link to data in some native DB’s, like
the Calendar would be nice.
Hardware
Battery - Query weather all night, or
only before the earliest alert?
Antenna - Out of coverage = Our fault
or not, we fail the user if there is bad
weather
Thursday, July 15, 2010

11. UX Decision
Finding the location
Started as only a zip code entry field
Added a GPS button next to the zip
entry field
Wanted to move the GPS check to the
front of the app, during boot-up
Compromise was to show the current
zip code on boot.
Final - Went to Yahoo! to grab city
name from zip to display
Thursday, July 15, 2010

12. UX Decision
Button Layout
Action v Cognitive Action
On/Off at the top = Fail
How many buttons do we actually need?
Feedback: No sun? Always waking with
an image, or not?
Thursday, July 15, 2010

13. People v Machines
Working with a Designer
v Programmer
v
1.0 2.0
Thursday, July 15, 2010

14. Thank You
@mmassie
mike@michaelmassie.com
www.michaelmassie.com
www.thesmartalarmapp.com
Thursday, July 15, 2010