What makes an effective workspace design? This is often what a lot of people in any professional field need to answer. For me, the answer to this question depends on two things. The definition/scope of a workspace, and an understanding of what makes it effective.

A workspace could mean just about a medium, virtual or real-world, where productive activity is intended to be executed. Microsoft Word, for example can be considered a workspace, and for that matter so can a university classroom, or your personal study table. In order to recognize how to build an effective environment for productivity, on needs to first recognize the workspaces being used. Then an inquiry into how, and to what extent, they are being used should also be conducted.

In terms of virtual workspaces, we’ve talked system design, heuristics and usability principles. Ideally, in order to understand the effectiveness of of a virtual, we have usability tests and design/usability principles & ethics evaluated. The same, in fact, can be applied to a real-world workspace.

In Robin Patricia Williams book, ‘The Non-Designer’s Design Book‘ She talks about 4 core-design principles: Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity… Also known as our CRAP principles. Here’s how they may apply to real-life work spaces.

• Contrast: In order to broaden the appeal of a design, visually or otherwise, contrast is required. It is possible to create contrast by adjusting the variation in design elements such as color, size, texture, lighting, occupational density of objects & even sometimes sounds. The scope of creating workspace appeal by contrast obviously does extend beyond the scope of these varying just these elements, but overall, the use of contrast can be certainly tricky is not used in balance. If the designers use an abundance of contrast, it could confuse users and may prevent them from focusing on the primary purpose of the product as intended by the designer. However, if the product we were to lack contrast, it could make the design look bland and unappealing. A designer almost certainly always wants to increase their user’s utility, allowing them to better engage with their products. For example, in a workspace with the right amount of contrast of design elements, including visual appearance, resources available and arrangement of spaces, a worker could better engage with their surroundings in order to maximize productivity.

• Repetition: To retain a user’s focus on a product or design, often there should be a sense of consistency in design elements to some degree. This sense of consistency might sometimes be used to contain excessive contrast, in order to promote a balance of product engagement and retention retention of user focus. They key here, similar to contrast, is about balance.
  

• Alignment: The way things are arranged, such as furniture and technology in an office space, or stationery and objects on your desk, can have very major impacts on your workflow, an overall productivity. Often times, the way we arrange things can also help us differentiate between the significance of things for example, placing a large shape on the middle of a blank paper, allows us to focus on the center. This is often times where the focus of productivity is centered in a lot of workspaces, such as a notebook on a table, or a meeting room/group of cubicles in the middle of an office space. The corners on the other hand are usually associated with separation, and exclusivity. Corner areas in office spaces, for example, are usually given to upper brass, or are sectioned into a separate section for distinct use. The same way objects on the corners of a desk are often compartmentalizations, the arrangement of items in a workspace can help maximize workflow and productivity.
  

• Proximity: We often want to separate and group things together in any design. Often, we would like to keep similar design objects closer, and distinct design objects separate. For example, in an office we usually tend to group either branches, or teams together, based on the office environment. For offices that group teams together, they often have the design team and engineering management team closely together… While they may keep the marketing or business teams a bit further away in order to prevent a clash of professional ideologies and affect the overall productivity.

In terms of design/usability ethics, there are two main points of focus:

• Universal Design: Designers would like to use universal or all-inclusive design as much as they have the extent. Not only do products with universal design fulfill a designer’s ethical duty to prevent exclusion of groups with particular handicaps or disabilities, but also often allow a much higher utility potential than products without universal design. SMS texting, for example was made as a universal design in order to allow those with hearing ailments to communicate with each other and other people. Today, texting is by far amore common form of communication as opposed to voice calling features.

• Accessibility: Accessibility is a bit different from in nature from universal design. While both concepts consider accommodation, universal design strives to be as inclusive as possible, while accessibility strives to ease the difficulties of those of with specific handicaps or disabilities. Hearing aids are an example of accessibility over universal design. In order to facilitate users as inclusively as possible, sometimes accessibility is required, especially for when universal design may not be possible to incorporate. One of the problems with accessibility is that, according to some, may promote a sense of division in ability, as opposed to the all inclusive nature of universal design. But we do find that in a lot of cases, accessible options are sometimes cheaper, and easier to obtain or build than products with universal design, and they generally tend to have a positive impact in the productivity of a work space.

According to Cheryl Geisler, to understand the full complexity of language on need to:

• Understand language as multidimensional/multimodal
• Understand language as rhetorical
• Understand that language requires interpretation
• Understand that language interpretation depends of context

Coding is one of the most common analytical techniques in writing research. Geisler states that “Coding is the analytic task of assigning codes to nonnumeric data“. Most people tend to associate coding with ‘systematicity‘, which is fundamentally using an “articulated, orderly procedure.” The ability to systemize data whilst coding allows coders to create research that is replicable, aggregatable, and data supported.

Geisler argues that, coders should also consider the complexity of language as a factor when coding. While systematicity is at the heart of coding, solely viewing code as a quantitative analytic activity deviates from one of the premises of writing research: qualitative analysis. As such, we ignore softwares such as Microsoft Word when it comes to non numerical coding.

Fundamentally coding can be found in three out of four distinct forms of text analysis (Pollach 2012). Firstly in ‘human coding’, content is analyzed using a codebook in a way that attempts to be complete and unambiguous so as to “eliminate the individual differences among coders”. Secondly, in tradition qualitative analysis, words and phrases are either created or assigned in order to symbolize, summarize or capture some attribute of visual or language based data. Lastly, in text mining, through machine learning or otherwise, language can be used to code a foundation for the machine or bot to ‘learn’ (usually ‘object-oriented’) .

In all these cases, coders often give priority to systematicity of data. However, softwares such as Microsoft Office and MAXQDA are fundamentally built for a coder to consider the qualitative analysis of data, with the complexity of language in mind. The ways the systematize and analyze qualitative, language-based and visual data could take the form of a coding scheme, also known as a coding tree or a coding system. Understanding the complexities of language can often help us curate and optimize the efficiency of the code. This also means, that the coding software should enable the coder to support multiple dimensions to coding in order to conduct a complex analysis of language.

As it is now, technology can make access to information dyadic & interactive, viral & spreadable, public & archived, fast & mobile. As technology evolves, the nature of our access to information should grow in terms of traditional convenience. However, that convenience often comes with a cost.

Take for example, the option of geolocation. A geolocation feature can often allow us to find our friends, who are using the same application, on a map. This feature can help us meet up with them conveniently, or provide them with recommendations on places to visit, or help them navigate to a certain location. While this feature may seem convenient to some, in order to stay connected with the people close to them, it may intrude on some user’s privacy. Since the popularization of the geolocation feature, incidences of stalking have gone up. Especially, for victims of domestic violence, this feature has aided abusive partners track down victims.

As such, user-centered design is an incredibly integral part of creating and improving the functions of a system. User centered design fundamentally requires its user to employ a mix of investigative (surveys, interviews etc.) and generative (brainstorming, concept mapping etc.) methods and tools in order to develop understanding of user needs.

User centered design is fundamentally an iterative process, with four distinct phases as shown in the image above. Firstly, the designers try to understand the context in which users may use the system. Next, they try to identify and specify the user’s requirements for using the system. Then, the designers try to develop design solutions, before finally evaluating the context, requirements and design solutions again.

When considering UCD, designers often consider the whole user experience. Therefore, they often try to include professionals from multiple disciplines, such as psychologists, ethnographers and software/hardware engineers. Furthermore, users themselves should be very involved in the process of user-centered design. “Bringing the users into every stage of the design process is an investment of effort and other resources of the design team, which makes understanding the benefits of a user-centered design approach relevant”(1).

According to Professor David Benyon, there are four ways in which user-centered design pays off (2):

1. With close user involvement, products are more likely to meet users’ expectations and requirements. This leads to increased sales and lower costs incurred by customer services.
2. Systems designers tailor products for people in specific contexts and with specific tasks, thereby reducing the chances of situations with a high risk of human error arising. UCD leads to safer products.
3. Putting designers in close contact with users means a deeper sense of empathy emerges. This is essential in creating ethical designs that respect privacy and the quality of life.
4. By focusing on all users of a product, designers can recognize the diversity of cultures and human values through UCD – a step in the right direction towards creating sustainable businesses.

(1) https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design

(2) https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/user-centered-design

Often times, as a part of a usability test team, you will gather expected and unexpected results through usability tests. These usability test could be in the form of heuristic evaluations, participant user research or other forms. Ultimately, as a part of the usability testing team, we would want to fix all the flaws in the system as soon possible. However, it is first imperative that we make sense of all out findings first before we provide our blueprint for curating and improving the system for better usability.

Analyzing Findings:

• Determining Causes of Problems: Often times, determining the cause of problems may not be simple. Although sometimes we can identify a problem by segregating it into a type or category, such as navigation, concept or terminology. Often times, working as a team, or listening to users in participant tests can be very helpful in helping identifying problems, as well as their causes.
• Determining Scope & Severity of Problems: Although one might find multiple problems and issues with their system during a usability test, they may not be of the same magnitude. Some problems for example, may severely affect the usability of the system, while other may not. In order to help the tester distinguish the gravity and urgency of solving a problem, it is most helpful for them devise a system that can help quantify the scope and severity of the problems. We may see some users implement a rating scale for example, where the lower numbers such as 1 or 2 may indicate a problem of low severity, and higher numbers such as 9 or 10 may indicate an issue that is severely impeding usability. Others may use label such as ‘Not Serious’ or ‘Catastrophic’
• Making Recommendations: Solely identifying the usability problems in a system, and their causes, is not enough to produce a satisfactory analysis of findings. A tester will need to provide their understanding of how to either fix, or ameliorate problems in a system.

Reporting Results:

Often times the results are reported in a written Usability Test Report format. When writing a Usability Test Report we will need to provide information in such a way that both, a general audience without experience with usability testing, as well as insiders with plenty of experience, may be able to understand the results of the study. At its most general, the audience should be able to understand the goals, structure and outcomes of the test. For insiders, they may be more interested in the the methodology and an evaluation of strengths and weaknesses of the methodology. A formal Usability Test Report should have the following:

• Cover Memo or Letter
• Executive Summary
• Introduction
• Methodology
• Results
• Recommendations/Actions
• Appendices

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We previously understood how Heuristic Evaluations could be an effective template to evaluate the usability of a product. While Jakob Nielsen’s heuristic guidelines is most widely used, in order to create a more effective heuristic model for a product, an individual needs to have more in depth understanding of the audience and purpose of the product in question.

According to Todd Ohanian ” [Jakob Nielsen’s Heuristic Guidelines] are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.” (1). Ohanian and Rich Staats (2) focuses on 10 particular heuristics from Nielsen’s guidelines that best applies to Web Design in particular:

• Visibility of System Status: users need to understand the status of the website they are using. For example, if their site is loading, a loading icon would help them understand that they’ll need to wait for content to load. “The user should be informed in where they are within the application flow”
• Match Between System & the Real World: The language and content used on the website should be easily understood and familiar to the user.
• User Control & Freedom: The users should be able to move and switch between content easily. For example, keeping a home icon that takes the user back to the original page gives the user the freedom to go back to the home page anytime they wish. Another example, a WordPress user could easily access a bunch of pages through their index and profile icon.
• Consistency & Standards: The use of a consistent design scheme is the basics standard design principles. According to Ohanian “All pages in a site should have a consistent format that follows an internal flow and designing to meet standards allows your site to be accessible via most platforms.”
• Error Prevention: A good user interface should fundamentally warn users before they make errors. For example, Gmail produces a warning before a user sends a mail without a user, or content in order to make sure that the user doesn’t accidentally forward an unintended mail. Another example, most widely used is the use of red underlines on words that the computer believes has incorrect spelling or grammar.
• Recognition Over Recall: A good web page should enable the user to navigate through the web interface without using a surplus of mental effort. One of the simplest ways of doing this is by making simple and recognizable web functions on the page that would enable the user to achieve their desired actions, as opposed to using their own memory and ‘Valuable Mental Real Estate’.
• Flexibility & Efficiency of Use: Nielsen encourages the use of ‘accelerators’, which are ‘”features that speed up the application interaction for experts but are unseen by less familiar users.” A great example of this are keyboard shortcuts. We see a lot of websites and web applications nowadays that allow users to use quick keyboard commands that allow users to achieve their objectives in and flexible and efficient manner.
• Aesthetic & Minimal Design: One of the core design principles is minimalism: the action of removing everything except the elements that would be considered necessary and wanted by the user. According to Staats “Every extra unit of [information] competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.”
• Helping Users Recognize, Diagnose & Recover from Errors: Users are eventually going to end up making mistakes. They might for example, misunderstand how to use your webpage/web application, or they may have simple forgotten to save their work before quitting their browser. While a part of heuristics is to prevent errors, not all errors can be predicted or fixed effectively. In those instances, allowing users to undo their mistakes may not be possible. Notifying the user on what to do, and communicating with them in simple, easy-to-understand language would be a much better move.
• Help & Documentation: Although most websites are built to be simple to use, it might be difficult to predict user behavior. Therefore, a lot of web designers and developers provide tutorials, steps and FAQ’s in order to help the user navigate and use their product effectively.

Steven Douglas, on the other hand, give his own take on a Heuristic Model, more specifically for UI design (3). According to him “UI design is less about making something look [attractive] and more knowing how to create a valid path from idea to execution, backed with statistics and evidence, for the benefit of our users. ” He states that, even though Jakob Nielsen’s 1994 Heuristic guidelines have been more ubiquitous, they are not the only one available. “There are even guidelines from 1986 which include over 944 heuristics.” I his model he states that UI designers should:

• Strive for Consistency: This is essentially similar to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Consistency & Standards’ . Douglas states that “UI designers should ensure that any prompts, dialogue boxes, and menus should all share the same characteristics. The same is to be said of [color], typography and layout.“
• Keep Users in Control: Douglas states that users should not encounter any unnecessary surprises during their experience with your product. “Users need familiarity. [When] a user wants information, it is best to just give it to them when they want it”. Ultimately, UI designers want make users feel that they are in control of how they use the product.
• Reduce User’s Minimum Steps: This is fairly similar to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Flexibility & Efficiency of Use’ and ‘Recognition over Recall’. Ultimately, if a user want to get from point A to Point B, the UI should enable them to with as much ease as possible.
• Allow Users to Know Where They Are: A designer would always want their users to easily navigate from page-to-page without getting lost. The addition of a home button or an index page could be a simple example of helping users navigate a webpage. However, navigation could get a lot harder to simplify if the user wishes to access periphery UI options.
• Avoid Obtuse Language: This is similar to the Nielsen’s Principle of ‘Match Between System & Real World.’ The UI should speak in the user’s language, by avoiding excessive jargon and esoteric language. It would be more effective for the designers to use familiar terms and real world concepts in order to allow their audience to generally engage better with the product.
• Make The UI Aesthetically Appropriate: Two of the fundamental principles of design are contrast and repetition of design elements. in other words, effective design requires visual appeal from contrasting visual elements, and uniformity/consistency by repetition of elements. Although Douglas states that a designer should prioritize function over ‘attractiveness’, aesthetics is a huge part of cultivating a positive user experience. According to Weinschenk and Barker (4), UI design should maintain ‘aesthetic integrity’ and be tailored to appeal to its intended audience.
• Present New Information with Meaningful Aids to Interpretation: This is a somewhat similar principle to Nielsen’s principle of ‘Match between System & Real World.’ Essentially users may not always be familiar with how to navigate and use a UI. However, by presenting UI elements in way familiar to the real world can help maximize User efficiency and utility. Douglas gives the example of desktop folders that hold files. “[They] are not really folders, but they have visually represented this way for users to understand concepts, systems and frameworks more easily.“

While we do see a lot of similarities between Nielsen’s and Douglas’ heuristic models, they prioritize principles and explain them a bit differently. This is because, user experience is fundamentally subjective in nature, and the only true way of understanding how to maximize usability and utility is through subjective understanding. In his article, Staats stated that “[Heuristics] don’t aim to provide the best possible answer, rather a good enough answer.“

(1) https://medium.com/@toddohanian/10-usability-heuristics-for-user-interfaces-in-web-design-c179aa39b54e

(2) https://www.secretstache.com/blog/usability-heuristics/

(3) https://usabilitygeek.com/usability-heuristics-ui-designers-know/

(4) https://www.cheatography.com/davidpol/cheat-sheets/weinschenk-and-barker-classification/

In the previous post we defined usability. But in reality, several formal and informal definitions exist. Although, even if the definition is up for discussion, we can definitely experience it. For example, it’s easy for us to figure out when something lacks usability. In a 2004 study (1) , it was evaluated that a system that lacks usability can be characterized by:

• Existence of workarounds – because the interface is difficult or does not match workflow in the real world, users develop workarounds to compensate for the inadequacies of the system
• Low usage levels – Users use the system as little as possible.
• Dissatisfaction – Users, and particularly novices, will find the system difficult or frustrating to use
• Rework or double-handling – Inefficient design often means that the same data may need to be entered or read more often than is necessary.

These characteristics of lack of usability were derived after thorough research on how people experience the use of a product. Similarly, the characteristics of usability can also be derived based on research of user experience. However since there are multiple credible and significant studies done, each with their own empirical and statistical evidence, the characteristics often differ based on their objective definition of usability.

Ultimately, based on the individual objective definitions, we can derive specific principles of usability. Ultimately, these principles of usability give us a template to evaluate whether a product is usable, by comparing aspects of the product to a list of practices and principles conventionally required for us consider any product as usable.

We call this type of evaluation a Heuristic Evaluation.  In order to understand how to conduct a heuristic evaluation, it would be best to understand which template to use. For example, Consider the Nielsen Heuristic Evaluation (2):

• Visibility of system status: The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
  
• Match between system and the real world: The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
• User control and freedom: Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
  
• Consistency and standards: Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
  
• Error prevention: Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
  
• Recognition rather than recall: Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
  
• Flexibility and efficiency of use: Accelerators—unseen by the novice user—may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
  
• Aesthetic and minimalist design: Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
  
• Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors: Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
  
• Help and documentation: Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

The set of principles of usability are highlighted in bold. this set was originally developed in 1990 by Jakob Nielsen and Rolf Molich, later refined by Nielsen in 1994. Although many other heuristics evaluations have developed, the Nielsen usability principles for heuristic evaluations are very well-known and credible.

Although heuristic evaluations are a great way to evaluate the usability of a product, it does come with disadvantages (2).

• It requires knowledge and experience to apply heuristics effectively.
  
• Trained usability experts are sometimes hard to find and can be expensive.
  
• You should use multiple experts and aggregate their results.
  
• The evaluation may identify more minor issues and fewer major issues.

Due to the disadvantages heuristic evaluations may present, they are often used in the earlier stages of usability testing. They produce quick and inexpensive feedback to designers earlier in the design process. They could also help designers discover potential corrective measures.

(1)https://infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources/articles/technicalcommunicators/

(2) https://www.usability.gov/how-to-and-tools/methods/heuristic-evaluation.html

What is usability? Most people I’ve talked to think it has to do with the simplicity of using items, applications and ilk. They’re not wrong… but that’s only a part of understanding what usability means more specifically. According to Developing Connections among Usability, Rhetoric and Writing (2018), the authors state “Usability is about users. [It is] concerned with anticipating users’ needs and expectations as well as designing texts, documents text, documents, systems, platforms, spaces, softwares – and may other things, with a purpose in mind that is appropriate to and tailored for that audience of users.”

In much simpler terms, we could say that usability is all about designing objects and products with a strong consideration for an intended audience. For example, the study of universally accessible design falls under this category, since you’d want to make sure an intended product is most usable to its audience with universal simplicity. Unsurprisingly, in most cases products that are considered most usable by the general population are the ones designed to aid those with a physical disability.

Take the advent of SMS texting, for example. Texting was initially a feature introduced on phones in order to help those with speech or aural difficulties communicate via their personal devices. Nowadays, we see that more people send texts rather than call each other. This is because we realize in most cases, it would be more convenient and simpler to text. This is because we consider texting a more usable form of communication.

Having a strong consideration for an intended audience isn’t solely restricted to considering “How many people will be able to use my product? “. Effective usability also requires considering “Who is my audience? ” Understanding the demographics (age, gender, location) and context (Kairos, economic, cultural) of our intended audience is necessary if we wish to make sure that our product usability would be maximized by considering their specific needs and expectations.

Ultimately, usability is fundamentally and truly understood through individual experience. It’s only by using products that we can understand:

• How convenient and easy we find using them
• How much and how frequently we’d like to use them
• How we ultimately prefer using them (regardless of how they were originally intended to be used)

I intend to explore and elucidate the concept of usability more in my future post. I personally believe that it is critical to effectively understand the importance of usability, purpose and audience if an individual wishes to succeed in an industry, since industry works within society, and society essentially comprises of people. People all have their need and expectations, and it is an industry’s job is to maximize its social utility in order thrive, and does this by understanding the demand of the intended demographic/audience.