Code: Debugging the Gender Gap

Posted on February 24, 2017 Updated on February 24, 2017

Code: Debugging the Gender Gap Screening

On January 31^st, Slover Library, RevolutionVA, and Grow presented a screening of the award-winning documentary Code. The screening was open to the public. Slover’s Girls Who Code group was in attendance.  The overall focus of the film is the scarcity of women and minorities in software engineering. The film also explores the reasons behind the gender gap. The film makers provide an insightful, multi-disciplinary perspective on the gender gap across STEM fields. Code highlights many aspects of women in tech, including the history of women in computer science, gender bias, and inclusivity in the workplace, and universal design. Alex Proaps shares some thoughts about the film.

History

Megan Smith, White House Chief Technology Officer, describes concerns with women’s accomplishments being written out of history. The film traces the history of women in computer science – like Ada Lovelace, Grace Hopper, and the many women who pioneered the computer programming industry during and after WWII. As Gloria Steinem noted, “Women have always been an equal part of the past. We just haven’t been a part of history.”

Gender bias

The film highlights the diverse range of industries that rely on software engineering – such as Pixar animation studios, as well as many successful women working in those industries. A series of experts provided statistics about the lack of diversity in STEM fields and discussed problems of gender bias. I appreciated how much time the film makers spent interviewing neuroscientists and social psychologists. They provided evidence to debunk and clarify myths about women and STEM. The screening of the film happened to take place just a few days before a study, published in Science, shed light on some of the earliest shifts in gender perceptions among children.

Inclusive workplaces

Women’s participation in STEM fields peaked in the 1980s, but has steadily declined. In 2014, only 18% of computer science majors were women. Harvard Business Review estimates that 41% of women working in tech eventually end up leaving the field (compared to just 17% of men). Women in the film discuss how we can create a more inclusive tech culture – by changing the culture in the classroom and in the workplace. It is critical that we all reflect on how we can increase diversity in our own workplaces and hiring practices. I am also a strong advocate for bringing women into computer science through various paths. There are many entry points into computer science that don’t necessarily require a traditional model or pipeline. For example, my field (Human Factors Psychology) bridges multiple disciplines – like psychology, sociology, physics, biology, and engineering.

Universal design

Universal design is good design. Non-inclusive design is an unfortunate extension or consequence of the lack of diversity in tech. The film makers summarize two examples of how crucial it is to design for all. First, designers ignored women’s feedback when developing Clippy. Clippy was perceived as “leering” and masculine and was not well-received. But non-inclusive design can have more tragic repercussions. Airbags were designed using test dummies with male dimensions for many years, which made airbags unsafe (and lethal) for women.

Check it out

Learn more about the film at codedoc.co and check it out on Netflix.

You can also learn more about She’s Coding – shescoding.org. It is an open-source project that provides education, resources and actionable guidelines for anyone who wants to learn to code or help bridge the gender gap in the field of computer science.

HRDevFest and World Usability Day

Posted on November 22, 2016

Hampton Roads DevFest, an annual regional technology conference, kicked off in November. Speakers offered excellent presentations covering a variety of topics across a variety of technology platforms. The event was hosted by IssueTrak and organized by the local nonprofit organization, RevolutionVA. During HRDevFest, UXPA Norfolk also hosted a poster session to celebrate World Usability Day.

Developing for Connection

A highlight of the day was Sarah Bray‘s presentation – Developing for Connection: Building software that people love, buy, & share. She described some challenges leaders may face in inspiring their teams to fall in love with the products they are building. “People are committed to what they help create.”

It’s not about making us look awesome; it’s about showing how awesome other people are.

“Empathy is not a soft skill; it’s a software skill.” – Sarah Bray

She went on to describe the importance of empathy and human-centered approaches to building  products that connect users to their goals, each other, and their best selves.

World Usability Day

World Usability Day is a single day of events occurring around the world that brings together communities who share a common objective: to ensure that the services and products important to life are easier to access and simpler to use. It is about celebration and education – celebrating the strides we have made in creating usable products and educating the masses about how usability impacts our daily lives.It is about making our world work better.

“Good design is sustainable. Great design is responsible.”

This year’s theme was Sustainable UX. Sustainable UX focuses on environmentally responsible design at every stage of a product’s lifecycle.It is about reusing, reducing, and recycling. It is about developing ways to refine and redesign products and services to be more effective, efficient, and reusable while enhancing people’s lives. It is about ensuring products are more ethically disposable. It is about making the world a better place today and for future generations.

We look forward to celebrating World Usability Day again next year. The next RevolutionVA conference, RevolutionConf will take place summer 2017. Be the first to receive event updates and the call for submissions by signing up for our newsletter!

Summer event highlights

Posted on August 18, 2016

We have had a busy summer. We hosted a social event and co-hosted a viewing of Design Disruptors. Chally Meeker shares some highlights from those events below.

UX Speed Networking Recap

On July 21st at Coelacanth [see-lu-kanth] in Norfolk, VA over 20 local practitioners met for a night of networking, food and drinks. Folks talked about perfecting portfolios to current projects they’re working at their jobs. There were UX Designers, Graphic Artists and Students among the group. Networking events are always fun and a good way to meet other people in the industry.

Design Disruptors Pre-Screening Recap

UXPA Norfolk, AIGA Hampton Roads and Grow offered an awesome viewing of InVision’s documentary, Design Disruptors, on July 27th at the Slover Library in Norfolk, VA. Around 40 people attended. There was ample popcorn for everyone thanks to the sponsors.

After the showing, the general consensus was that the documentary was truly inspiring. It was refreshing to see industry leaders put design at the forefront of major companies that are changing our daily lives (e.g. Lyft). The title of the documentary was perfectly fitting.  What seemed to be very gimmicky at first, since “Discrupt” seems to be used everywhere these days, turned out to be the perfect word to describe the film. The companies highlighted in the documentary (Lyft, Facebook, Uber, etc.) were exactly that…disruptors.  Everyone has their own design process and style, but this documentary showed that the ones that were willing to take risks, challenge the status quo, and disrupt the industry were the ones who would create solutions that change the way we live our lives.

2016 UXPA International Conference Highlights

UXPA International hosted their annual meeting in Seattle this year. Around 800 professionals and students from all over the world gathered to share knowledge, learn from one another, discuss the state of the field, and challenge one another to push the field forward. This year, Alex Proaps presented a poster about Visual Perception and Product Design and was among a dozen volunteers who assisted attendees, and recorded and chaired sessions and workshops. Alex shares some of the highlights of the conference below.

Overall Takeaways:

Kelly Goto, digital UX expert, owner of gotoresearch and gotomedia, and author of Web Redesign 2.0 and Emotional UX, presented the opening keynote. There seemed to be three overarching themes that she introduced in her keynote that carried across many of the UXPA 2016 sessions – whether presented as concrete, data-driven recommendations, or as inspirational calls to action for the field as a whole.

First, as scientist-practitioners, we must remember that people don’t evolve as quickly as technology. It’s important that we slow down to improve our understanding of the problem space. “Move fast” works for some engineering problems, but human problems require many small studies in which we can gather ongoing feedback and meaningful stories. This idea of slowing down and diving below the surface to understand what people really need and are feeling: Kansei. We no longer slow down to allow ourselves to have those small meaningful moments. Kansei or sensory engineering focuses on improving or developing products and services through this deeper human understanding. Through Yoyu, the Japanese concept of the “space between things”, we can create that space between. Allow yourself to create the space for extra abundance.

Second, to understand people, we have to be willing and able to see the world as they would see it. We can better discover the why through ethnographic methodologies to understand how people are truly living, so we can understand their needs and emotions. We need deep research insights to inform meaningful UX strategies. Researchers also need to know how to effectively draw stories out of individuals, analyze, and synthesize the data to inform design. Along that same vein, by understanding people, we can understand their pain points and what they actually need with design solutions. Empathy isn’t about putting ourselves in their shoes or framing a solution to a problem based on what we would do; it’s about understanding someone else’s experience. Along that same vein, by understanding people, we can understand their pain points and what they really need.

So, the last core theme this year: It is time to start tackling the hard problems. It is time to start tackling problems that impact overlooked groups of people, such as young, aging and differently-abled populations. We can create experiences that are situationally appropriate and environmentally aware. It is time to bring about a new era of adaptive experiences.

Learn more about the conference:

In his keynote, Nick Finck, Product Design Manager at Facebook, discussed his newest project, UX For Change, for connecting mentors and young professionals on meaningful projects: UXforChange.org

Session slides are available through the online program: uxpa2016.org/program

You can also browse all the amazing photos from Tom Tullis. Check out Day 4: flickr.com/photos/tomtullis/albums/72157669203443756

The call for proposals is now open for the 2017 UXPA International conference in Toronto, Canada. uxpa2017.org

Stay in touch

We post all of our events on social media, so don’t forget to follow us on Facebook and Twitter and to join our LinkedIn group.

You can also subscribe to our monthly newsletter.

Nir Eyal on Building Habit Forming Products

Posted on May 12, 2015 Updated on January 3, 2016

Nir Eyal is a writer for TechCrunch, Forbes, and Psychology Today, writing about how to “help companies create behaviours that benefit their users, while educating people on how to build healthful habits in their own lives.” He is also the author of the book, “Hooked: How to Build Habit-Forming Products.”  In our last meetup, members of UXPA Norfolk gathered to learn from his lecture on “Building Habit Forming Products” featured on The Next Web’s YouTube channel. At the end of the lecture, we had the opportunity for a Q&A session with Nir through video chat.

Nir is no stranger to the science of habit in technology, and he believes we can use it to help people live happier and more connected lives. After studying companies such as Google, Facebook, Pinterest, and Apple, he’s gained much insight on how these companies have shaped user behavior by creating new habits. The definition of a habit is behaviour done with little to no conscious thought. He discussed in-depth how these companies have integrated what’s called the “HOOK,” which is comprised of four basic phases he sees in all habit-forming products:

1. Triggers. Triggers tell us what to do next, and there can be external and internal triggers. External triggers can be buttons on a website or a friend telling you about a new app.  Internal triggers are processed in the user’s mind when we experience a particular emotion, which dictates what we do next or what technology we turn to out of habit.  For instance, when we’re feeling lonely, one technology people may turn to is Facebook.  Nir believes in building for the psychological requirements in an effort to help negative emotions, such as loneliness or boredom, in a good way.
2. Action. The action is the simplest behavior done in an anticipation of a reward; for instance, pushing the play button on a video or scrolling on Pinterest. He shared how you can predict the likelihood of an intended behavior by judging whether or not there was sufficient motivation, ability, and triggers.
3. Reward. The reward is when the user gets what they came for, and Nir discussed how the nucleus accumbens is the most active part of our brain when anticipating a reward. One example of when the nucleus accumbens is stimulated is in the variable nature of social media, when users are looking to scratch the itch of discovering the next notification in products such as Instagram.
4. Investment. Investments are about future rewards, such as money and emotional commitment, and not immediate gratification. Investments increase the likelihood of the next pass through the HOOK by loading the next trigger and becoming more valuable through use. An example of loading the next trigger could be the recommended videos that display after watching a YouTube video. Also, the implementation of reputation on a site like eBay is a form of storing value. Users that have built up a higher reputation are less likely to lose to other competitors on eBay.

Nir concluded that the HOOK is the “experience designed to connect the user’s problem to your solution.” After watching the video lecture, we held a Q&A with Nir. For 45 minutes, Nir shared his thoughts and advice about developing and deigning products that people love. Here are a few questions that were asked:

1.  Can you share your thoughts on designing for children? Nir brought up how he believes in replacing a habit with tools that are good for you. With children, you are competing with TV. He likes the way Netflix was designed, because you can choose what your children watch and when to watch it.
2. Why do you think Google Glass failed? Nir responded that it depends on what you define as failed, because he believed it was simply a product that was ahead of its time and that he definitely foresees a future with wearable head technology. However, he did share a story about someone he knew that wore Google Glass regularly, and how it was always an immediate distraction whenever he would talk to someone.
3. Can you give examples of websites that use good habit-forming design? Nir discussed how Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest can all be habit-forming, and how they are all products that offer rewards by helping to seek connections.

Nir closed the Q&A with a few words of wisdom about the dangers of Evil Design. Instead of building habit-forming products that don’t solve a real problem, we can harness human motivation to make a true impact in the world. We can design habit-forming products that improve human well being. He highlighted a local company that helps people every day, 7 Cups of Tea.

If you’re interested in hearing more from Nir on the topic of Building Habit Forming Products, visit his blog NirandFar.com

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Post by Aimeelyn Dineros. Photos by Alex Proaps.

Thank you to Grow for their sponsorship and to ODU’s Strome Entrpreneurial Center for hosting the event. 

Susan Weinschenk – Q&A with The Brain Lady

Posted on April 22, 2015 Updated on May 6, 2017

Susan Weinshenck

Susan Weinshenck has a Ph.D. in Psychology and over 30 years of experience as a behavioral psychologist. Her clients call her “The Brain Lady” because she applies research on brain science to predict, understand, and explain what motivates people and how they behave. Dr. Weinschenk is the author books like How To Get People To Do Stuff and 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People.

In March, Dr. Weinshenck joined us for a remote Q&A at Dominion Enterprises. Attendees came prepared with insightful questions related to their experiences at work, their interest in design psychology, or their love of her work. She weaved together theory and practice in all her answers, and she was able to immediately recall the supporting research. We’d like to share some of her insights with you.

How do we get people to pay attention to our app when they are overwhelmed with other habit-forming apps?  

We kicked off the evening with a question from one of our members-at-large, Chris Horton. He wanted to know how to communicate with his products users, especially when they needed to know about business-critical changes. If everyone is constantly pushing app notifications and email updates, will consumers get overwhelmed and ignore it all? Weinschenk agreed that notifications and alerts are useful. People respond to any change which alerts them to new information. But it can get overwhelming. She advised us to stand out from the crowd by making those notifications truly meaningful, creating a great product people want to use, and then using things like auditory stimuli to get attention.

Susan gave a thorough explanation of conditioned responses (all the way back to Pavlov). She described how unpredictable, intermittent feedback plays such a significant role in forming habits to these apps. The anticipation of a “ding” makes it addicting because it releases dopamine. This is same type of response that leads to gambling addiction (or why your dog continues to beg at the table when you give him food only some of the time). Now we are overwhelmed with those “dings” so we no longer know which ones we truly need to respond to.

How you can break through the barrier if you’re just adding to the din? Susan recommend thinking about ‘What are the most important notifications people need and want?’ instead of overloading them with notifications.

Should we use more specific or more generic information to engage users?

More specific information will get more clicks. Also build in urgency. Decision making studies over the years indicate that we have a fear of losing things. So incorporate information about what people will lose if they don’t react soon.

In a few sentences, how do you get people to do stuff?

Understand something about the person and figure out which way to motivate someone will work best.

Power house motivators:

1. the need to belong
2. desire for mastery
3. power of stories.

Food, sex, and danger will also always grab attention.

What do you do to motivate yourself? Or do you see through the tactics because you study cognition?

She said that no matter how much we know about motivating others to do things, we are not immune to responding to cues designed to get us to change our behavior. So many things happen unconsciously.

She also said that she loves her work, so she is often motivated. She discussed how important it is to tap into being creative.

1. Tell your executive brain about what you are doing. Be clear with goals.
2. Go away and do something completely different.
3. Go back to it so brain can evaluate all your ideas and give you insight.

Be accepting of your personal creative cycles. Understand what your cycle is for creativity. Creativity is hard work.

How do you get others to be creative – if you can’t force it, how do you ideate?

People must find their own creative outlet. Ideate in sessions. First, establish the question. Working together collaboratively does help.

Regularly brainstorming is not useful. You do need to get ideas out. The first six to ten ideas that come out are not great. Keep going.

If you have a new group, have them work on something that isn’t the real problem first. Ask them to work on something interesting and fun. Get used to the process and each other.

Give people constraints within which to work.

How do individual differences in technology use and preferences impact the design process?

Weinschenk pointed out that customization for individual consumers is a hot topic lately, but it might not be what everyone wants. She noted that research findings varied by generation. It’s important to get good research on these differences since the way you interact with technology as a youngster – up to age 10 – will shape your mental model of technology for the rest of your life. Technology that is ubiquitous when you are growing up forever colors your expectations for how you will interact with technology. For example, a 4 year old wants to swipe a big screen TV. Gen Xers have been doing a lot of the design work even though they are the smaller demographic compared to Millennials and Baby Boomers. So their mental model for how the interact with technology has impacted their design work.

Resources

Here is a roundup of resources from Susan Weinschenk if you want to learn more:

1. Videos and Tutorials:

• Video tutorials from the TeamW video channel
• Courses at Udemy

2. Articles

• How to get people to do what you want,  Psychology Today
• Site Psychology: designs that convert, Internet Retailer
• Use unpredictable rewards to keep behavior going, Psychology Today
• 100 things designers need to know about people, UX Magazine
• Top 10 attributes of a persuasive and usable site, Useful Usability
• What’s in a name: how confusions about terminology can derail projects, UX Magazine
• The Psychology behind Web Design, UX Magazine
• 13 facts presenters should know about people, Business Insider

3. Books

• Neuro web design: what makes them click: A classic in the field, Weinschenk introduces you to the principles and practices of pesuasion design.
• 100 Things every designer needs to know about people: Chock full tips for leveraging design principles to take advantage of human thinking, motivation, and desire, this book is a must read for all visual, graphic, and product designers.
• How to get people to do stuff: Learn how to take advantage of the 7 drives that motivate people. If you want to know the secrets behind all those habit-forming apps you love, this book explains what’s going.

4. Follow:

• Team W Blog
• Team W on Facebook
• Dr. Weinschenk on Google
• @thebrainlady

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Thanks to Kelley Howell and Alex Proaps for contributing to this post.

Storytelling in UX with Andrew Linderman

Posted on March 14, 2015 Updated on March 14, 2015

Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.” –Robert McKee

Storytelling in UX

Many studies over the years suggest that our brains become more engaged by storytelling than hard, cold facts. Storytelling can benefit our everyday lives: from effective teaching to finding a job, from building a startup to designing a website, from managing a team to improving memory. Storytelling can benefit everyone – software developers, graphic designers, teachers, data scientists, project leads, copywriters, journalists, sales people, and marketers.

Storytelling in UX Workshop

Every day in the field of UX, we strive to articulate and share our work with members of our team. In February, we hosted a Storytelling workshop with Andrew Linderman to help UX teams learn to present ideas better, connect with clients and members of their team faster and have more fun at work simply by telling amazing stories. Andrew is a writer, storyteller and story coach based in Brooklyn, NY. He teaches storytelling at Media Bistro, General Assembly, the Brooklyn Brainery and New York University, and is a volunteer story coach with the community education program at The Moth, a MacArthur award-winning non-profit dedicated to the craft of storytelling.  Andrew is also the executive producer of Local Stories, a monthly storytelling series featuring New York’s best writers, performers and comedians. Prior to his work in storytelling, Andrew trained as an actor and improviser at the Upright Citizens Brigade and the Atlantic Theater Company in New York City.

One of our members-at-large, Erin Walsh, shares a summary of the event.

I have always loved stories. I love listening to and sharing stories personally and professionally. I use storytelling to derive requirements, allow customers to explain their product, help users tell me about their experiences, and to improve website content. Between us, I thought I was a pretty good storyteller. Then I attended Andrew Linderman’s Storytelling in UX workshop and realized I was missing core tenants that would make my storytelling more effective.

Andrew opened the session with a video excerpt of Neil Pasricha’s TED talk on The Three A’s of Awesome. In his TED talk, he tells the story of how his award winning blog came to be. After the clip, we were asked what stood out to us in the story. We rattled off all the attributes that made it a good story to us: personal, suspenseful, funny, detailed, relatable, visual, and the list went on. For the next three hours, Andrew returned to these elements to remind us to bring them into our own stories.

By telling his own stories and moderating an exercise where we shared one of our own stories with a partner, Andrew taught us how to improve our storytelling. In the beginning of a story, it is important to set up your character, setting, and problem. Conflict and tension arise in the middle. Will the character be able to resolve the problem in the setting? What does the character have to gain or lose? In the end of the story, we have the climax, where the crisis is resolved and we learn the consequences of the outcome. While this sounds elementary, Andrew introduced a key element that raised the difficulty level: just tell what happens. Strip away judgment, analysis, and explanation. As the exercises progressed, we learned to slowly refine our characters, problems, plot, and resolution to simply relay the events while keeping them specific, honest, and personal.

The workshop concluded with a pitch exercise. We had two minutes to sell an idea to our partner, who played the role of our manager, boss or other team member. In previous exercises that day, I found myself going over time. In the final pitches, it was difficult to fill my allotted time. Andrew then helped us reposition our pitch using the techniques we covered in the session. In the final pitch, we infused our idea with a story demonstrating a personal core value – such as loyalty, empathy, dedication. Through the use of the story, I was able to refine my pitch without use of explanation or judgment, while being specific, honest, and personal.

Since the workshop, I have continued to use storytelling personally and professionally. I now take care to simply say what happened, while being specific, honest, and personal. I continually catch myself mid-story about to inject judgment or analysis, but regroup and proceed following Andrew’s direction.

Key take-aways from the workshop:

Don’t give them 4. Give them 2 + 2. – Andrew Stanton

Be specific. The more detail you provide, the more your audience will believe and connect with your story.

Vulnerability is the birthplace of innovation, creativity and change. – Brené Brown

Make it personal and honest. Be open, be vulnerable. Do you or your listeners have a stake in the outcome of the story?

Honesty is the first chapter in the book of wisdom. – Thomas Jefferson

Be honest. Otherwise, you risk losing credibility or you might get tripped up later.

Eliminate comparatives and superlatives. – Andrew Linderman

Above all, just tell what happened. Don’t analyze and explain. Describe events. Remove judgments about people involved.

Learn more

To learn more about Andrew Linderman and how to incorporate storytelling into your own life and business:

AndrewLinderman.com

The Story Source – Andrew Linderman’s blog

Storytelling Your Way to a Better Job or a Stronger Start-Up – The New York Times

Storytelling to Problem Solve – UX Booth

Simple Science of Good Storytelling – Fast Company

Why Our Brains Crave Storytelling in Marketing – Fast Company

Clues to a Great Story (TED talk) – Andrew Stanton (WALL-E, Toy Story)

The Three A’s of Awesome (TED talk)- Neil Pasricha

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Post by Erin Walsh and Alex Proaps. Event photo via Alex Proaps.

Special thanks to Hatch for hosting us, to O’Reilly for sponsoring our book raffle, and to Grow for their 2015 sponsorship.