Leanpub: Publish Early, Publish Often

Preamble

**Figure: Tom's Diner**. "Tom's Diner" is an a cappella pop song written in 1981 by American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if "he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and ... like he was the witness to a lot of things but was never really involved in them" ---Image Credit: Wikipedia. — **Figure: Tom’s Diner**. “Tom’s Diner” is an a cappella pop song written in 1981 by American singer-songwriter Suzanne Vega. Vega wrote the song based on a comment by her friend Brian Rose, a photographer, who mentioned that in his work, he sometimes felt as if “he saw his whole life through a pane of glass, and … like he was the witness to a lot of things but was never really involved in them” —Image Credit: Wikipedia.

Welcome to User Experience! For many of you, this is your first exposure to the wider discipline of Human Computer Interaction (HCI) and Human Factors. Some of you may have already experienced some basic HCI work as part of the software engineering lifecycle. However, this text takes a far more in-depth look at the tools, techniques, and knowledge you need to understand the user experience within software engineering.

It is worth noting that this text may be more in depth than those to which you may already have been exposed. But remember, it is by no means intended to teach you everything you need to know about human facing software engineering. Indeed, entire undergraduate degrees are built around the subject of human factors and ergonomics, and you should not confuse this high-level overview of the domain with the knowledge you would acquire in a full three-year degree programme. That said, the aim of this text is to give you, the reader, the tools, techniques, and the mindset necessary to competently approach your first user testing and user experience job. The text is designed from a practical perspective and will enable you to take a junior role in a user experience department or usability company. And will provide you with the overall knowledge to communicate with others and make sensible suggestions regarding UX work. Further, it will provide you with a basis for future self-study within the UX domain or the wider human factors world. In this case, I’ve decided to call the text, more fully, ‘User Experience from 30,000 feet’¹.

As we’ll see later, the UX domain is still very young and in the process of formation. But, it does bring together many already established areas within the human-computer interaction field. As a placeholder, you may wish to think of UX as the practical application of research knowledge repurposed from other domains into the user-facing software engineering process. In this case, suggesting a particular UX text would only serve to skew your education to a particular view of the UX domain (although you may wish to check out some UX books as well: [Unger and Chandler, 2009; Bowles and Box, 2011; Lund, 2011]). I feel it is better for you to understand my view while realising there may be different ones out there. In the end, you will need to decide, after reading this text, the sort of UX you wish to do and how you think about the area. Therefore, this text has been written from scratch and represents an overview of UX as seen by the human factors and web science researchers I work with.

You don’t need to panic! The text is intended to provide you with an overview of the UX field as well as an understanding of the key concepts within this field. Plus a method of assessing your understanding of the topics covered, and finally, a reference to reading material which will enable your deeper study, both now and in your future work.

Finally, I’ve tried to keep the jargon (and explain any I introduce²) to a minimum. And I hope you’ll see that the writing style is ‘formally academic’ but clear and easy to read.

Origins

To give you an idea of how this text arose, it may be useful to give you an idea of it’s origins.

Similar to many Computer Science Departments, the School of Computer Science at Manchester has its roots in the Computer Group of the Electrical Engineering Department and the Computer Laboratory of the Department of Mathematics. After its formation in 1964, it continued to focus on computational hardware and low–level or embedded software. This focus resulted in the world’s first stored–program computer; the Manchester Small–Scale Experimental Machine (SSEM), nicknamed ‘Baby’. The School, run in the early days by such luminaries as Frederic C. Williams, Tom Kilburn, Geoff Tootill, and Alan Turing, continued to focus on the numerate, applied, and engineering aspects of Computer Science.

In this environment there was little focus on the human aspects of computer science. Human aspects that would inevitably come to play an important role as the computer moved from the laboratory to the desktop and onward to be embedded in many more products and devices. However, some of the researchers at the School became increasingly aware that we were not addressing areas which would – we thought – become increasingly important.

In light of this perception a user experience text was developed to serve as a cohesive starting point for us to be able to teach HCI and UX to technical Computer Science, Software Engineering, Hardware Engineering, and Artificial Intelligence students. It is therefore based on the human factors research activity already established within the School over the past 15 years, in support of the embryonic teaching activities arising after 2010.

Before we go any further it may also be useful to make one more point. You will notice that I use the term User Experience Specialist, usability specialist, UX’er, etc. throughout the book when referring to you the reader. This is because I’ve found it useful to reinforce your belief that this is what you can become as you learn more about the field. I think using this terminology also makes you more likely to think of yourselves in a different way to the ‘developers’ that you probably are, and the engineering domain you feel comfortable within.

Text Structure

UX is an empirical discipline, whereby established principles and guidelines are applied to software development and the correctness of that software is established via experimentation in the form of user feedback. In this case, the UX specialist is mainly interested in questioning the development to ascertain its correctness.

This correctness normally exists along many dimensions. But briefly, can be thought of as the primary utility of the development; its effectiveness; its efficiency; and its emotional impact (both tangibly and intangibly, represented by the concept of engagement). In this case, the text structure is intended to give you the principles, tools, and techniques needed for UX work along with a critical and questioning mindset to enable you to apply these techniques effectively.

Therefore, you will learn the tools and techniques needed for effective interaction with each dimension. These include the scientific and empirical techniques to join and apply these principles and tools to a new bespoke development. And the mindset to be critical of, and to question the outcomes of, this development to establish the user experience.

Secondary ‘Text’

“Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (ZAMM) [Pirsig, 1974]” may seem like a strange text to use for a Computer Science based UX course… and it probably is. In reality, I am not interested in you remembering anything in ZAMM – however the critical and questioning skills developed from its analysis will be of use to you. ZAMM is not really about Zen or indeed motorcycle maintenance, it’s about science, quality, and rhetoric; the USA’s Library of Congress describes it as:

“Acclaimed as one of the most exciting books in the history of American letters, this modern epic became an instant bestseller upon publication in 1974, transforming a generation and continuing to inspire millions. This 25th Anniversary Quill Edition features a new introduction by the author important typographical changes and a Reader’s Guide that includes discussion topics, an interview with the author, and letters and documents detailing how this extraordinary book came to be. A narration of a summer motorcycle trip undertaken by a father and his son, the book becomes a personal and philosophical odyssey into fundamental questions of how to live. The narrator’s relationship with his son leads to a powerful self-reckoning the craft of motorcycle maintenance leads to an austerely beautiful process for reconciling science, religion, and humanism. Resonant with the confusions of existence, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance is a touching and transcendent book of life.”

While Wikipedia says:

“The book describes, in the first person, a 17-day journey on his motorcycle from Minnesota to California by the author (though he is not identified in the book) and his son Chris, joined for the first nine days by close friends John and Sylvia Sutherland. The trip is punctuated by numerous philosophical discussions, referred to as Chautauquas by the author, on topics including epistemology, ethical emotivism and the philosophy of science. Many of these discussions are tied together by the story of the narrator’s own past self, who is referred to in the third person as Phaedrus (after Plato’s dialogue). Phaedrus, a teacher of creative and technical writing at a small college, became engrossed in the question of what defines good writing, and what in general defines good, or ‘quality’. His philosophical investigations eventually drove him insane, and he was subjected to electroshock treatment which permanently changed his personality.”

ZAMM is useful to us because it serves as a framework for criticism while enabling us to apply UX principles, rational thought, and scientific argument to a well understood and well-respected text. As for my thoughts on ZAMM; well I might not agree with everything the book has to say, but I do think it is an important and interesting topic and discussion which needs to be had. At this point, you need not worry too much about the book itself – other than the fact that you should read it. All will become obvious as the text progresses. But you may like to read a longer discussion of “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” and its usefulness for UX Teaching in the Appendix.

AI Assistance

As I began updating these notes at the beginning of 2023, ChatGPT and a slew of other AI ‘Assistants’ were released, to general uproar from thought workers, academics, and people in the digital space alike. What will this mean for learning, what will this mean for thought? Well, it is difficult to tell without trying to integrate them into your workflow and using them properly; not just as tests (no matter how extended). It is difficult to know how to think about AI assistants and so I thought I ask an AI.

How should I think about ChatGPT?

ChatGPT is an AI-powered language model developed by OpenAI, which uses a deep learning algorithm to generate responses to user input. As an AI language model, ChatGPT is designed to understand natural language and provide helpful and informative responses to user queries.

You can think of ChatGPT as a tool to help you find answers to your questions or provide you with information on a particular topic. While ChatGPT is not a human expert and may not always provide the exact answer you are looking for, it is capable of providing useful insights and pointing you in the right direction.

It is important to remember that ChatGPT’s responses are generated by an algorithm and may not always be accurate or completely up-to-date. Additionally, because ChatGPT is an AI language model, it may not be able to provide nuanced or context-specific responses in the way that a human expert might.

Overall, ChatGPT can be a useful tool for gaining insights and information, but it is important to use its responses as a starting point and to continue your own research and investigation to ensure that you have a complete and accurate understanding of the topic at hand.

And highlighting the most relevant parts of this response ‘it is capable of providing useful insights and pointing you in the right direction’ and ‘it may not be able to provide nuanced or context-specific responses in the way that a human expert might’ is the most useful and telling after my experiences here.

After using assistance for the update to this text, which in reality only represents around 15 pages of the work, 5 pages could be used for the most part as generated, 5 pages needed extensive modifications, and 5 pages need very extensive correction because concepts and elabotations where just plain incorrect; I found it to be useful for starting text to be modified, or for straightforward work which was just about connecting concepts. In general, it produces adequate but surface-level detail of concepts, does not provide context or nuanced discussion based on an understanding of the real world and so needs human oversight. However, it was very useful as a naive collaborator that provided initial writing waiting for the domain expert (me) to make subsequent ‘passes’ and edits. So if you are looking for text which is not expert but is a starting point then it is a very useful tool akin to spellcheckers or more recently intelligent grammar checkers. The most useful skill a human needs to learn when collaborating with an AI assistant is how to formulate the questions presented to it to generate the best answer.

Now, let’s get on with understanding and shaping the User Experience!