VMware prides itself on how it listens to its users. Here’s another entry into the long list of ways that we listen: a survey about vCenter plug-in usage. It’s six questions, so you can quickly fill it out and help us understand you better!
All posts by nadyne
tell us about your vCenter database needs
One of my VMware colleagues is gathering data about the vCenter database. Please fill out this short survey (10 questions, so it’s super-quick!) and tell us about this important part of vCenter.
beta participants needed for My VMware
Some of my VMware colleagues are working on improving the process of managing your VMware product licenses and support. If you’d like to participate in the beta program for this new site, called My VMware, check out this blog post and sign up here.
summer internship opportunities for user experience researchers and designers
I mentioned earlier that summer intern season is coming, and that my team has intern openings. The job openings are listed on our website:
- user experience research intern — This position reports to me, and is on a project where I really want to see some awesome research. Read the job description carefully, because there’s some discussion in there of what the project is about, and a great candidate will be able to tell me how they’d go about executing on this project.
- user experience designer intern — We’ve got several openings, so there are several different summer projects where we’d like an awesome intern to come in. Here, a great candidate will have a good portfolio and will be able to tell us how they think that they would apply their design skills to the types of problems that we see at VMware.
Interested? Email me with your cover letter, resume, and portfolio (required for design candidates, not required but still useful for research candidates).
We’ve got other jobs available as well, not just summer interns. We’re especially interested in hearing from senior interaction designers, such as for this opening.
my conspiracy theory about password expiration
I’m completely and utterly convinced that corporate password reset policies are somehow tied to vacations. There’s just no other explanation for the fact that, every freakin’ time I go on vacation, my password expires just before, during, or just after my vacation.
So my theory is this. The system scans my calendar and looks for all-day events that are marked either “busy” or “out of office”. If it finds one of those, and if that all-day event spans 4 or more days, then it sets my password expiration date to happen somewhere during that time. I think it might be a random number in the range vacation±3 days.
Which is to say: I leave for vacation on Saturday, and my password expires on Thursday.
the difference between good user research and great user research
This morning, my team discussed the benefits and drawbacks of large-scale A/B testing. Websites like Google and Amazon often use A/B testing where they randomly show some of their users a new version of a webpage, and measure whether the outcomes are different: a better click-through rate, for example. There’s a lot be learned in this kind of testing. It’s a powerful method for websites to learn about how design changes, both major and minor, can impact how users complete their task.
However, it doesn’t give you a complete picture. It tells you what happened, but it doesn’t tell you why it happened. One of the differences between good user research and great user research is in what you learn and how you can apply that information in the future.
In good user research, you learn that something happened. Maybe you’ve learned that a user is completely blocked from finishing a task. Maybe you’ve learned that users can complete their task 20% faster. Maybe you’ve learned that, while they’re not doing anything faster, their satisfaction ratings are higher than usual. Each and every one of these findings is important.
Each and every one of those findings can be made better if you know the reason behind it. Sometimes it’s reasonably obvious, but oftentimes it’s not1. When you know the reason why a change has improved or degraded the user’s experience, you have a better opportunity to innovate in the future. You only have data. You don’t have insight.
Good user research allows you to react. It allows you to evolve your designs. With good user research, you will make improvements. Your application will be better.
Great user research allows you to learn more about your users. It gives you insight into how they think and what they’re trying to accomplish. It allows you to make intuitive leaps and to truly innovate. With great user research, your greater understanding of your users will allow you to make improvements to your whole business, not just your application. Your business will be better.
- And sometimes you think that the answer is obvious, but it turns out that the obvious answer isn’t the correct answer. ↩
how to configure the new vCloud Client for iPad app
Dave Hill over at virtual-blog has a screen-by-screen walkthrough of how to configure the new vCloud Client for iPad. The post is long, but it’s got every screen covered! Check it out if you want to see the new app in action.
vCloud Client for iPad available now!
In our continuing effort to VMware-ify your iPad, we have a new application available today: vCloud Client for iPad. You can do quite a lot with it:
- connect to your VM via RDP, SSH, or VNC
- create and deploy vApps
- power apps on and off
- monitor tasks that are currently running or have recently completed
- … and more! Check out this blog post for more details.
vCloud Client for iPad joins our other two iPad apps, vSphere Client for iPad and View for iPad.
want to check out the next generation of the vSphere client?
Do you want to check out the next generation of the vSphere client? If you’re going to the VMware Partner Exchange next week and are available on Monday night (2/13), we’d like to hear from you. Check out this blog post for the requirements and how to sign up.
Q&A: what are the best courses to take in a user experience curriculum?
Last week, I spoke at a networking breakfast at the University of Michigan’s School of Information. One of the questions that I was asked there was from someone who is in her first year of the program. She wanted to know what UX courses were the most useful.
Your user experience coursework is the table stakes. They’re necessary, but not sufficient, to be a good UX professional. I won’t point to any of those courses as more or less useful. Instead, it’s about what you get out of those courses: clear and concise communication, the ability to give constructive design criticism, the ability to take feedback (which won’t always be constructive criticism, but you still have to take it), the ability to juggle a changing schedule, the ability to handle multiple projects and deadlines. An individual course isn’t make or break — and curricula change all the time, so a course that was useful to me when I got my degrees might not even be offered any longer. Rather, the gestalt of what you learn during the process of getting your degrees is what will make you a great UX professional.
In many respects, the course that I use the most out of my three degrees is public speaking. A lot of what I spend my time on isn’t really user experience work. Instead, it’s communicating about user experience. I communicate with my UX peers, program management, and application teams to understand what their research questions are. I formulate a research plan, and then have to communicate that research plan to the stakeholders: why I’ve elected to do this kind of research, what results we can expect to get from this research. Then there’s actually conducting the research, which isn’t so much about the tools that are used to collect the data (Morae, Excel, Camtasia, etc), but rather how my communication with the research participants as I collect that data. A good user researcher guides, but does not bias, the participant as the researcher collects data to answer their questions. After I’ve conducted the research, analyzed the results, and formulated my recommendations, my job is next to communicate the results and recommendations. And throughout the software development lifecycle, aside from specific research that I have conducted, it’s my job to continue to communicate about previous user research that might be applicable to a given question, as well as general principles of good user experience.
Another unexpectedly useful course, this one from my undergrad, was a course called “statistics and society”. It was about consuming data. That course taught me a lot about how to think about data. How does the method for collection impact the results? How does the presentation of the data impact its analysis? Neither this course nor my public speaking courses were required for my degrees, but I think that the skills that I learned in those courses are ones that help me be a great researcher. I’m able to apply those skills very broadly, and they help me every single day.
Your UX coursework is the beginning. If you don’t have good UX skills, you’re not going to get very far. But your UX skills are not enough. To grow in UX, you need to be great at more than just user experience.