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Tim Chan

Case study — Information Architecture for GoAnimate

October 17, 2016 by Tim Chan

GoAnimate is an online platform that enables people to create professional-looking videos — from scratch — using drag and drop tools. It removes the pain of traditional time-consuming production process by providing pre-made props and templates.

With 10,000+ props in their library that were categorized poorly and with very basic search capability, GoAnimate users had a hard time looking for what they want. GoAnimate needed a better way to organize their contents and improve their search experience, this is were I came in.

A screenshot for the content library

My role

Research and design information architecture, produce tagging and metadata guidelines for content creators, and designed functional spec on improving the searching experience. I was the lead UX designer for this project, and collaborated closely with the content team and one engineer.

The Process

Understanding the existing system

Before I start, I wanted to fully understand why the problem existed in the first place. I did in-depth interviews with the content team to gain a better understanding on how they work.

The biggest problem I uncovered was that there were no guidelines on how contents should be categorized. Each team member will organize contents based on their own feelings. No wonder why contents are scattered along the place. On top of that, the search engine only supported search by file names, which was a really limited experience.

Break down the problem

There are 3 big problems I need to answer:

  1. When should a concept become a category? For example, for an Office table, should it belong to a category called Office or Corporate? Why and why not? What about Furniture?
  2. How to make the categorizaton scheme scalable? I want to create a scheme that not only support what we have currently, but can also support new contents in the future.
  3. How can I make an item retrievable by using multiple keywords? For example, I want to find a Macbook. If I search Mac, Laptop, Electronics or Apple I expect to be to find my Macbook. How do I make that happen?

Research — Understand how human organize information

I knew my problem was not unique, the challenge of organzing information has existed way before I became an UX designer. I decided to do some research on how other people has solved this problem.

Since our library covers a lot of concepts, my research needed to cover a wide range of topics as well. I looked at product based categorisation systems such as ebay, Amazon, Walmart…etc, and activity based such as Meetup.com. I also looked at library classification schemes across the world to have a better understanding on how human classify knowledges. Lastly, I also looked at government websites, yellow page and other recruiting website to understand how we categorize job functions.

Researching different categorization scheme, even yellow page!

I decided that item exists in multiple categories would make most sense to our tool. For concepts that does not have the privilege to become a category, we will use them as tags for search engine retrieval. Below is a sketch on how I was brain-storming how we can categorize a character:

Brain storming how I might want to tag a character

Research part 2— Conduct card sorting exercise

We invited test 3 participants to our office for Open-ended card sorting exercises. We observe how they group things logically together and asked a lot of questions to understand why they chose to group things a certain way. I noted there are similarities between the participants and used that as a guide to create the categorization scheme.

Participant is conducting open-ended card sorting exercise
Card sorting exercise analysis
Brain storm how we can categoize items based on results from card-sorting exercise

Create categorization guideline

Based on the results from the card sorting exercise, I created a categorization guideline internally on how to categorize items inside our library. The guideline went through a few changes afterwards to cover more topics and make the wordings more clear.

This guideline gives us a unify understanding on how contents should be categorized. Instead of debating which content should go under which category, it saves time for the content team to do things that is their expertise — to create remarkable contents.

We also worked with the development team to design an admin UI that allows the admin user to easily assign categories:

Admin UI to assign categories to items

Search

Reusing left-overs

As we are only interested to offer user no more than 30 categories to avoid overwhelming them with choices, not every category name we came up with made it to the final cut.

Those categories names exists because that there is more than one way to categories something, which means that those terms is perfect for us to use as tags which will help us with the search.

Tagging

Search engine retrieves information through meta-data, also known as tags (e.g. hash-tag # in Instagram). It helps the search engine to understand that an item carries multiple meaning. Fundamentally, tag is a category.

It is easy to tag 1 or 2 items, but when you are tagging 10,000+ items, things start to become tricky. You will start to miss some important tags or you will start to over tag, either way, the process is not efficient.

Importance of guidelines

To ensure that each item has good quality tags, I came up with a set of guidelines on how we should tag items, the team has to consider 3 questions for every items:

  1. What is this item.
  2. Where can you find this item.
  3. What does it represents.

The tags will start from specific concepts and gradually move towards more generic ideas. For example, and “Office chair” will have tags the looks something like: Chair → Office → Work…

Guideline on how to tag an item

Other considerations — Variance terms

Language is a tricky thing, there are different words that actually mean the same thing. For example, Cell phone or Mobile Phone refers to that thing you can call people while walking down the street.

To avoid spending time to come up with variations of terms duplicate tagging, we grouped words with similar concept or meanings together. We chose one term — the Controlled term — as the tag we will used internally. Other variations are called Variance terms.

The control term table is very simple spreadsheet file. One column is the control term, and the other columns are the variance terms:

With this Controlled terms table, we don’t have over tag just in case we might miss some keywords.

Now when user search the variance terms, since variance terms and controlled terms are linked, we will be able to return results.

Improving the search experience — Front end level

After I have designed how we can come up with tags and how it would work in the backend, I started to look for some micro-interactions that can improve the search experience. Below are interactions I added:

Search suggestion saves time for user to find keywords
  1. As users types in the search box, provide suggestions based on what he is typing. This helps us to a) educate the user what items we have and b) save the user’s time by making him typing less. Also added arrow keyboard shortcut to help user easily navigate between the suggestions.
  2. Offer typo tolerance such that users do not have to worry if they misspelled something.
  3. Bold the matched text.

Documentation

At this stage, I created a detail document that describes how the search engine works both in the font-end and in the back-end (The algorithm). I worked with the development team to refining the wording multiple times and make sure there is no ambiguity in how we want to make this project work.

The result

The project didn’t just end just because I shipped the feature. Good search experience requires continuous fine-tune and follow up. I set up a review cycle every 2 weeks to understand how well we were doing for the new search engine. We were mostly interested in 2 things:

  • Search term that is “valid” but returning 0 results. This means that the term should return results since the item exist in the library.
  • Search term that was used a lot but return 0 results because the item searched doesn’t exist in the library.
Sample of a search analysis report
Search report on the first few week of the new search engine

Based on the search log, I was able to make some fine-tune on the search experience. For example, we were able to identify items that were searched a lot but was not tagged and also identify the need to add more contents since users were looking for it.

What we planned to do in the future

We had plans to do the following tasks, which I think is going to bring the search experience to a higher level, but in the end I have to drop the features due to time-constrains.

  1. Auto ranking adjustment. Create an automatic system such that, when an item is more popular than others, we will give that item more weight, so it will show up closer to top in the search results.
  2. Create a thesaurus library. A thesaurus library defines the closeness of each terms. Which means apart from the regular search results we show to our users, we can also present relative search results, something very common in the e-commerce world. E.g. “You may be interested to this…”

Reflection and lesson learned

Through out this project, my biggest learning was to understand the concept of Controlled Terms and Variance Terms.

As I was working side by side with the content team, we faced the challenge of constantly thinking of variations of a concept, and try to put all those variations as tags. Things starts to become messy as some items will have like 30 tags because of the team trying to cover every possible keyword we can think of.

It is after I picked up the book: Information Architecture for the World Wide Web — aka, the polar bear book which taught me the concept of Controlled Terms and Variance Terms and the art of organizing information, things start to change and went more smoothly.

My biggest take away is that, although some books are really boring, sometimes you just need to bite the bullet and read it. After all, knowledge is power!


Thank you for reading.

Filed Under: Case study Tagged With: Information Architecture, Portfolio, Search Engines, UX

About me

October 5, 2016 by Tim Chan

Hi, I am Tim Chan.

Currently, I work as an Product Design Lead in HSBC leading a team of product designers. I have designed interactive experience on Tablet that is used by branch staff, and also wealth and insurance products on both mobile and browser.

In my previous role, I spent 4 years in a startup working on a web-app that lets people create videos through drag and drop.

How I got into UX

In my pre-designer life, I had a corporate job in a phone company. While I was there, I learned a great deal about how to apply empathy to customers and see things from their perspectives. This lead to how I became an UX designer later.

I became interested into UX when the company wanted to create an app to help customer pay their bills and track their internet usage. It was a very fun project and I was exposed to the term UX for the first time. I became curious and began to dig in more about it. Soon, I became attracted to the work UX designer does and thought it would be cool if I’d become one.

I self-taught myself about UX by reading tons of books, and also joined a part-time UX course from General Assembly. I applied the things I learned in that project and created a portfolio based on it that helps me land my first UX job in a startup.

Why I love UX

It goes all the way back in high school where I did Design & Technology for my A-level. I was taught the term “Ergonomics” which in simple term means:

The process of designing products so that they fit the people who use them.

For example, if we were to design handrails in a train, what should be the handrail’s diameter? A rail that is too thick or too thin will make it difficult to grab, and this will cause problem to people. Oh, and what kind of texture should we use to increase the gripping power? You get the idea.

Learning about ergonomic changed the way I see design. I think it just make so much sense to think about who will use your product and how they will use it before you get onto the drawing board. This is the reason why I get frustrated when I see a website or any product that is poorly designed because it is clear whoever designed it didn’t put in any effort to think about who will be using it.

For years, I thought I was the only one on earth that cares about these so called “minor issues”. It frustrates me when designers are not considerate and can’t design things properly. Well, not anymore, there are people out there that are just like me and are getting paid to make other people’s life easier. It is AWESOME, I really think there isn’t a job out there that has the following descriptions:

UX designers are on a mission to create products that are functional, reliable, usable and pleasurable.

Wow, isn’t that SEXY? I want to be part of them!

Hobbies

Outside my professional life, computer and card games occupies most of my free-time. Hiking with my dog on weekends and hitting the gym twice a week is about as sporty as I can get. On my creative side, writing, cooking, and drawing comics is how I find my inner peace.

Books I read

I am a big fan of books, here is a list of books I have read since I started documenting my book collections, this list is not just limited to UX related books.

Design

  • The Design of Everyday Things — Don Norman
  • Don’t Make Me Think — Steve Krug
  • Rocket Surgery Made Easy — Steve Krug
  • Information Architecture for the World Wide Web — Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville
  • Forms that work — Caroline Jarret, Gerry Gaffney
  • The User Experience Team of one — Leah Buley
  • The Elements of User Experience 2nd Edition — Jesse Garrett
  • Lean UX — Eric Ries
  • Responsive Web Design — Ethan Marcotte
  • Mobile first — Luke Wroblewski
  • Designing for Emotion — Aarron Walter
  • The elements of content strategy — Erin Kissane
  • Design is a job — Mike Monteiro
  • Content strategy for mobile — Karen McGrane
  • Letting go of words — Janice Redish
  • Quantifying the user experience — Jeff Sauro, James R Lewis
  • Designing social interfaces — Christian Crumlish, Erin Malone
  • The principles of beautiful web design — Jason Beaird
  • The visual display of quantitative information — Edward R. Tufte
  • User interface for programmers — Joel Spolsky

Software design

  • Joel on software — Joel Spolsky
  • Smart and get things done — Joel Spolsky
  • The art of readable code — Dustin Boswell

Copy writing

  • Book 1 — Where Stellar Messages Come From — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 2 — Formatting and the Essentials of Web Writing — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 3 — Headlines Subheads and Value Propositions — Joanna Wiebe
  • Book 4 — Buttons and Click Worthy Calls to Action — Joanna Wiebe
  • Bonus Ebook — 6 Persuasion Strategies — Joanna Wiebe
  • Free Ebook — Using Psychology to boost conversion — Joanna Wiebe
  • Technical Writing Guidelines — Techprose. Ltd

Game design

Game designers has long been solving the problem of how to keep players engaged and keep coming back for more. The principles of game design is universal and timeless. Here are some of the books I read:

  • The art of game design — Jesse Schell
  • Game design workshop — Tracy Fullerton
  • Challenge for game designers — Brenda Brathwaite, Ian Schreiber

Business & Leadership

  • The effective executive — Peter F. Drucker
  • Work the system — Sam Carpenter
  • Start with why — Simon Sinek
  • Zero to One — Peter Thiel
  • The rules of management — Richard Templar
  • Competing against luck — Clayton M. Christensen
  • The innovation dilemma — Clayton M. Christensen
  • Turn the ship around! — L. David Marquet
  • The score takes care of itself — Bill Walsh
  • Project Management Book Of Knowledge — PMI (Originally I wanted to be a PMP, but then I realized I needed 3 years of project management experience in order to be qualified to take the exam. I have only read half of the book, but I have benefit greatly from the knowledge it provided.
  • Rework — 37signals
  • Getting real — 37signals
  • The 4 hour workweek — Timothy Ferris

Self development & others

  • Finding flow — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
  • Quiet — Susan cain
  • Thinking, fast and slow — Daniel Kahneman
  • Justice: What’s the Right Thing to Do? —Michael J. Sandel
  • The war of art — Steven Pressfield
  • The art of thinking clearly — Rolf Dobelli
  • The 10x rule — Grant Cardone
  • Bird by bird — Anne Lamott
  • How not to be wrong — Jordan Ellenberg
  • Talk like TED — Carmine Gallo
  • The story teller’s secret — Carmine Gallo

Filed Under: Personal

10 steps to become an UX designer, guaranteed

September 21, 2016 by Tim Chan

April’s fool special

Let’s face it, nowadays anyone can become an UX designer, even your grandma. For those that hasn’t make it yet, no offence, but you just need to try harder. Alternatively, you can learn from pros who made it (that’s me btw). If you are fresh out and want to become an UX designer quickly, this guide is for you.

1.Stop reading “UX books”. Most website says there a few must reads if you want to become an UX designer, I say screw that, books are for old people and losers. We want to become an UX designer fast and we ain’t got no time to learn these crap. We are looking for quick wins here. That’s why we should…

2. Join any UX course. The beauty of UX courses is that it covers a lot of keywords, such as Wireframe, Persona, User journey…etc. Those keywords are exactly what our future employers are looking for. It doesn’t matter whether the course is well recognized or not. The UX field is too new to be judged by anyone, simply joining a course sends the message to our potential hire that we are serious about this shit.

3.Create a portfolio out of thin-air. Another great thing of joining an UX course is that you always end up creating a portfolio as a deliverable. In terms of what kind of project you should do, a simple rule of thumb is to pick a well recognized website and do a redesign for it. Whether the current website has any problem or not is irrelevant, just redesign it anyway.

4. Create a visually appealing portfolio. Some so-called UX guru said that UX ≠UI. Don’t listen to that nonsense. We all know UX and UI are the same thing. That’s why we are going to spend a lot of time making the portfolio look as graphically appealing as possible. If you are stuck on how to make it look great, here is a tip: Change the fonts to Helvetica Neue. You can thank me later.

5. Use fake persona. Since all our time were spent on making the portfolio look pretty, we don’t really have time to talk to users and do this Persona thing. To get around this, we use one of the greatest tool mankind has ever invented — Imagination. All you need to do is to imagine your user’s needs and goals, and voila! You just made yourself a Persona, it is that easy.

6. Print a name card and call yourself Freelance UX designer. Believe it or not — by definition — anyone who has a portfolio that contains a wireframe is regarded as an UX designer. Which means you are legit now. This is the part where you need to start printing name cards and let everyone know that the big boy(or girl) is in town.

7. Update your LinkedIn title into Freelance UX designer. This is a no-brainer. Just like any romantic relationships, you are not official until you are “Facebook official”. You are not a real freelance UX designer until you have updated your LinkedIn profile.

8. Go to meetups. Everyone knows that networking is important. Ignore the fact that half of the people there whines about their jobs all the time while the other half are unemployed. This is the price to pay to become part of the cool and vibrant design community. Plus, it gives you a great opportunity to expand your network by handing out the 500 name cards you printed earlier to anyone you meet.

9. Apply to any jobs with the word UX attached to it. Since our goal is to become an UX designer quickly. What the company does or whether they understand UX is irrelevant. Some company are obviously looking for UI designers when they said they are looking for UX designers. Because we know that UX and UI is the same thing, this makes us a perfect fit.

10. Throw keywords out during the interview. This is the easy part, as mentioned, UX is a very new field. The hiring manager probably has no idea what your job duty is, so all you have to do is to tell him how much you care about the user. If he is not impressed yet, toss keywords such as: User centric design, Wireframes, User Research, Persona…etc. The hiring manager will be amazed on how knowledgeable you are. After that, it is just a matter of time they will call you for an offer.

So class, this concludes our 10 simple steps to become an UX designer, hope that helps and good luck!

Filed Under: Funny Tagged With: Design, Job Hunting, UX, UX Design, Ux Strategy

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Hi, I am Tim Chan, I want to help 10,000 people get into UX!

Previously, I spent 4 years working as a Product Design Lead at HSBC.

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