photoUX

I seem to post a lot on here these days about personas and photography.

I hope this is indicative of people paying photos more attention and creating better photos to accompany their UX deliverables.

This latest example by Jason Traviscaught my eye because the objects beneath the people help to tell us a bit more about that person. Perhaps this was for a bag design project?

What would be cool are persona photos that demonstrate key behaviours in some way.

I’m going to have a think about that for my next persona project.

Some thoughts from Dave Rupert on where we are with responsive images

MailChimp have posted a really interesting article that tells the story of how their new personas came to be.

I like their idea of getting large portrait photos of their personas framed and hung in their office. 

In the article Gregg describes the value of this…

“…so we could better empathize with them, and in turn design for and delight them..”

Yet another nice example of how photos can be used effectively within the user centred design process.

I spotted this tweet recently and was interested to see that ASOS were increasing the size of photos to be the same size on their category pages as their product pages.

I think this is indicative of how important the photos are on category pages to allow customers to scan for products they might be interested in.

It can be a pain to find avatars of people to use in design work.

The kind folks at UIfaces.com have solved this problem for us all by providing lots of photos for you to use.

DITTO glasses lets you to take a photo of yourself with your webcam so you can see if you like the look of their glasses.

It’s a nice application of technology that fulfils a fundamental user need.

Clearly it’s cheaper to buy glasses online but there is the obvious hurdle of picking the ones you like.

I haven’t seen many sites that do this but can imagine this approach being taken for other fashion and clothing sites.

And no, I didn’t buy any glasses!

In his ‘8 Guidelines and 1 Rule for Responsive Images’ article Jason Grigsby (@grigs) shares some great tips to help you to deal with photos on your next responsive design project.

(via @lukejones)

I’ve recently published an article over at UXMagazine that shows you how to use my new photo usability checklist.

In the article I show you how to use the checklist to evaluate the effectiveness and usability of photos from a hotel website.

The checklist has been designed to be used to evaluate photos (in an expert review situation) and also to help people to determine their own photo requirements.

I launched the checklist in my “Usability of web photos’ eBook and article represents the first public demo of how to use it.

It is with great pleasure that I can now announce that my new eBook ‘Usability of web photos’ is now available to buy from Five Simple Steps (£2).

I believe that this is the first book of it’s kind on this topic.

I’m particularly excited because within it I share my new photo usability checklist (Excel, 83kb). It is a simple tool for you to use to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of photos in your own work.

The book will appeal to anyone who wants to learn more about the impact that the photos are having within their digital product or service. It will also be useful for photographers to use to help them to plan to take more effective and usable photos. 

Within the 60 odd pages of the book I cover:

Part 1 - What are usable photos and why are they so important?

I explain what I mean by a usable photo and introduce some of the psychological reasons behind why they are so important.

Part 2 - Photo usability stories from the coalface

In every research project I see usability problems with photos. In this chapter I share some of my favourites.

Part 3 - How do you know if a photo is usable or not?

I have developed a photo usability checklist for you to use to evaluate the usability of photos in your own projects. In this chapter I introduce the checklist and explain it in detail.

Part 4 - The digital design process and web photo usability

I interviewed a commercial photographer and a digital designer to understand the issues they face when producing and working with the photos that we see online. This chapter identifies some of the problems that we face in typical design projects that directly impact upon the photos that end up on the web.

Part 5 - User-centred design techniques to improve photo usability

In this chapter I share some techniques that I’ve used during user centred design projects that have helped to improve the usability of the photos that were selected for the final product.

A cut of the book is being donated to Children in need.

I hope you enjoy it, drop me a line via @chudders to let me know what you think of it

This is the official resources list to accompany my ‘Usability of web photos’ eBook:

Downloads:

• My photo usability checklist (Excel, 82k) to use to evaluate the usability and effectiveness of photos (to accompany chapter 3 of the book).
• Our poster ‘10 simple ways to use photos to improve usability’ (PDF, 4.5mb) from UPA 2012 with Susan Weinschenk (@thebrainlady).

Blogs & Articles:

• My Smashing Magazine article ‘How to use photos to sell more online’.
• My cxpartners article on ‘User experience problems with responsive photos’.
• ‘Photos as web content’ by Jakob Nielsen
• ‘Deciding when graphics will help (and when they won’t)’ by Jared Spool.

Presentations:

• My slides on ‘Usability of web photos’ from FOWD & UXCambridge 2012.

Examples of usable photos:

• www.thefoodiemethod.com - great example of useful photos that really help you to follow a recipe.
• www.made.com - beautiful product photography shot in a consistent style, very aspirational.
• www.buffalosystems.co.uk - great use of photos to convey quality, heritage, tradition and credibility.
• www.foxtons.co.uk - large & detailed property photos help you to select the wheat from the chaff.
• www.thebostonglobe.com - some great examples of using photos to tell stories.

Books:

• ‘100 things every designer needs to know about people’ by Susan Weinschenk.
• Chapter 26 of our ‘Smashing UX Design’ book on “Photo UX deconstructed’.
• ‘How to use images’ by Lindsey Marshall and Lester Meachem.
• ‘Perception and Imaging, A way of seeing’ by Richard Zakia.
• ‘Content strategy for the web’ by Kristina Halvorson and Melissa Rach.

On a recent persona project I thought I should practice what I preached and get some decent photos.

The whole point of personas is to bring real users to life so that project teams find it easier to understand and empathise with their customers.

I often see personas that use stock photos of models to represent customers of a product or service. The problem with stock is that the models often look fake. This clearly causes problems when using it for personas which must be believable to be successful.

We had recruited actual customers of my clients service to take part in some research at our offices. This presented an ideal opportunity to get easy access to real people to take photos of.

I thought that we could take a quick full length portrait of them after they had finished, we we could then crop as we needed to suit the final format of the personas.

I set up a simple studio (as above) in the office but you don’t need to use lights or a back drop to do this (although it made doing the work in post production easier).

We asked all of the customers for permission to do this and they all signed model release forms.

We created booklets of the final persona profiles for everyone at my clients business, as well as 4 life-size cut outs of the final personas to ‘live’ in our clients office.

Ideally I’d have liked to have shot them in their own environments but given the logistical challenges this presents, dropping backgrounds in using photoshop might be the next step.

‘Usability of Web Photos’ from UXCambridge & FOWA from cxpartners

One of the great things about getting out and about talking about photo UX is that people share their stories with you.

After my UXCambridge talk on ‘Usability of web photos’ @happygeneralist came over and said hi and shared a great example.

Scarva are an online supplier of clay and pottery. You can buy it in various quantities from a 12.5kg bag right up to a tonne.

Because it’s hard to imagine what a quantity of something like clay will look like when you receive it they use photography to show you.

This photo above shows you what 25kg of clay looks like so you can clear a suitable space in your studio for it when it arrives.

A nice example of a clever use of photos that improves the user experience, thanks @happygeneralist!

I’m delighted to announce that I’m writing ‘Usability of web photos’ which will be out in the new year.

The book is one of the new 5 Simple Steps ‘Pocket Guide’ series.

“Coming from Five Simple Steps in January 2013, Pocket Guides are concise ebooks, focusing on specific and timely aspects of web design and development, each written by experts in the industry – and all for the price of your favourite coffee.”

This concise eBook talks about photos in terms of usability for what I believe is the first time.

I discuss what the qualities of a usable photo are, share case studies of where I have seen photos have a significant impact upon the user experience and propose a new framework to use to evaluate the usability of web photos.