Kathy Sierra Keynote at NMC 2009

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Kathy Sierra, of O’Reilly’s Head First Series, presented 10 tricks to improve the user experience during her opening keynote at the 2009 NMC Summer Conference. Kathy was a very entertaining speaker, and had a number of useful messages.

1. Focus on what the user does, not what you do. For example, instead of focusing on developing a better camera (product), focus on creating a better photographer (user).
2. Give the user superpowers quickly. Users are often discouraged if they’re not “experts” or have problems using products, help them develop practical skills quickly to give them a sense of power.
3. Make the user smarter.
4. *Don’t focus on [/fusion_builder_column][fusion_builder_column type=”1_1″ background_position=”left top” background_color=”” border_size=”” border_color=”” border_style=”solid” spacing=”yes” background_image=”” background_repeat=”no-repeat” padding=”” margin_top=”0px” margin_bottom=”0px” class=”” id=”” animation_type=”” animation_speed=”0.3″ animation_direction=”left” hide_on_mobile=”no” center_content=”no” min_height=”none”][x], ask what [x] is a subset of… What’s the bigger thing/idea that your product is part of? For example, don’t blog about a camera (product), but blog about photography.
5. Shrink the 10,000 hours. Create a culture of practice. Instead of requiring or expecting 10,000 hours of experience for expertise, design products to help the user get better/good in less time.
6. Make your product reflect their feelings. How you make them feel about themselves drives how they feel about you.
7. *Create a culture of support. [Policies and scaffolding are important.] Convert people from askers to answerers…if users help other users, they’ll feel better about their mastery of the product, and they’ll help you out by reducing company-provided support needs.
8. Do not insist on “inclusivity”. You experienced users will “talk differently”, embrace that. [I’m not sure if this is really good or not, or if I just missed something.]
9. *Make the right thing easy, wrong thing difficult. Amen, I’d add an addendum “simplicity, simplicity, simplicity”.
10. *Total immersion jams. To learn a product, to get a project done, and so on. Frequency matters: spend 16 hours over two days, instead of spending 16 hours over two months.

For OEIT, I think the asterisked items are particularly important.

Also, I think the items on Kathy Sierra’s list are very complementary to my recent post on Messaging.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]