creating Usable eXperiences
Andreas Johansson | Ericsson AB
Programmer
Designer
Andreas
UX
strategy
Ericsson
(BSS, MCommerce)
› Why is UX important?
› Between December 1993 and December 2004, the UK Design Council
tracked the share prices of publicly quoted companies that performed
well in a number of design awards. The Council found that design-aware
companies out-performed the FTSE 100 and FTSE All Share indexes by
more than 200 percent.
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Why is UX important?
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Inspired by the UK Design Council report, a Canadian design agency created the UX
Fund in 2006. Criteria were that the company cares about design, possesses a
history of innovation, inspires loyalty in their customer base and fosters a positive
user experience.
They invested $50,000, with the original intent to sell after one year. In that year,
the fund matured 39.3%. Four and a half years later, the fund had matured
+101.8%.
› Why is UX important?
› In short, leading UX companies outperform the rest of their market by far.
› In other words: Take notes for your stock portfolio… 
So what is UX then?
Usefulness
Usability
Usercentered
instead of
objectcentered
Business
needs
Branding
Colors
Adhere to
conventions
User
needs
Among
others
…
Interaction
flows
Fonts
UX without user research is not UX
Worry about designing the right
product first, then designing the
product right
Business
model
Competitor
analysis
Business
needs
Support
channels
User
research
Usefulness
User
feedback
Analytics
As a user I want to
achieve the
following…
First I need…
Then I need…
Goal!
Design for three things
1
Design for 0 data
2
Design for the “happy path”
3
Design for error handling
› User’s mental model vs implementation model
› Might not be the same terminology in back-end compared to frontend
› Might not be the same flow and relations between objects in the
front-end compared to the back-end
› In fact, 99% of the time they are different 
UX without user testing is not UX
› “Classic” user testing
›
›
User testing (simplified explanation) is basically when you get a hold of some
representative users of your product and ask them to perform representative tasks using
the product. You then observe the users doing so and learn where they succeed/have
difficulties with the product.
User testing can be a very lean and cost-efficient activity; The best results come from
testing no more than 5 users and running as many small tests as you can afford.
› Perform user testing as early as possible
›
›
›
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Ideally on paper prototypes
Doing so lets you fix UX issues before you waste money implementing something that
doesn't work (and which you “won’t have time” to perform user testing on anyway)
Performing “bad” user testing is better than performing no user testing at all
Performing user testing with one user is better than performing no user testing at all
› What about automated testing & UX?
›
›
›
As part of research made in this area around 2012, it was estimated that it’s
possible to automate ~35-40% of usability guidelines from usability.gov
overall
Same idea can of course be applied in other UX-related areas, e.g. branding
and accessibility… It all depends on the context!
http://usabilitygeek.com/mainstreaming-web-site-usability-throughautomated-usability-evaluation/
Sometimes the best way to end a
meeting where assumptions are being
made is to state, “Let’s test it!”
UX Resources
›
Web sites
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http://www.goodui.org/
http://ux.stackexchange.com/
http://www.nngroup.com/
http://uxmag.com/
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/
Books
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Don't Make Me Think!: a Common Sense Approach to Web Usability by Steve Krug
The Inmates are Running the Asylum by Alan Cooper
The Design of Everyday Things by Donald A. Norman
Designing Web Interfaces: Principles and Patterns for Rich Interactions by Theresa Neil
Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring by Stephen Few
Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks by Luke Wroblewski
Thanks!
And remember, UX is not UI 