At Normal Modes, we believe good business is a good user experience. We help businesses increase revenues and reduce costs by creating user-centered designs for websites (and other software). We also conduct usability testing on existing websites, using a variety of methods including eye tracking. Our work makes customer interactions with these products and services straightforward and easy-to-use.

Normal Modes is a small start-up, but we’re profitable and growing quickly. Our clients include a couple of Fortune 500 companies, but are primarily mid-sized companies (or VC-backed start-ups) that need to improve their user experience and usability to become more profitable.

We are currently looking for a Business Analyst/Jr. Interactive Project Manager to help us with our crush of projects. We are looking for someone who is comfortable working independently in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment with little supervision. Someone who is mature, articulate, self-motivated and organized; demonstrates a track record of delivered projects; and possesses excellent analytical skills paired with good judgment. Someone who will find new ways around the roadblocks.

The successful candidate will be expected to work hard, produce high quality work on time and on budget, and be a generally likable person with an even temperament who can communicate effectively at all levels.

This position is contract-to-hire.

Responsibilities:

• Manage project profitability; take personal responsibility to complete high quality projects on time and on budget.
• Develop interactive strategy and brand requirements.
• Nurture client relationships.
• Explain business specifications/issues in a way that is easily understood by creative professionals (i.e. non-business majors).
• Explain principles of user experience and design in a way that is easily understood by business stakeholders.
• Develop accurate and detailed project plans for a variety of projects.
• Coordinate and communicate details of meetings including developing agendas, PowerPoint presentations, scheduling, and travel arrangements.
• Support new business development efforts.
• Stay abreast of trends and current events in user experience and usability.
• Communicate progress regularly to clients and the rest of the project team.
• Work closely with the project manager, graphic designers, and programmers to ensure a successful project.
• Contribute to the Normal Modes blog about trends in UX design, usability, and project management.
• All other duties as assigned.  (We’re a small company, so this can run the gamut.)

Qualifications:

• 4+ years experience in interactive projects in a professional environment

• BA/MBA in Business Administration, or similar experience
• Experience leading a client team
• Familiar with commonly used concepts, practices, and procedures in within the web/media industry
• Ability to manage multiple projects simultaneously
• Skilled in using project management applications (e.g. BaseCamp)
• Solid writing and speaking skills
• Candidates with additional core competencies in human-computer interaction, graphic design, programming (of any flavor), copy writing, or video production will be given priority.

Interested candidates may send their resume with a portfolio and salary requirements to jobs [AT] normalmodes [DOT] com.

Please, no phone calls and no recruiters.

On December 23, 2009, Normal Modes officially celebrated our 6 month anniversary. (Still true, but irrelevant.)  On June 23, 2010, Normal Modes officially celebrated our 1 year anniversary.   Whew!  We made it!

We originally intended to mark our 6 month anniversary with a series of posts about lessons we’d learned.  We wanted to mark the important milestone of our six month anniversary by sharing a few lessons we’d learned over the course of the first six months, as well as share a few wonderful resources that helped us out along the way. What we didn’t quite grasp is how busy we were to become beginning in January.  So, unexpectedly, this post was delayed.

The previous post focused on the personal change of becoming an entrepreneur. Today’s post, the second in the series, focuses on getting the company off the ground and finding clients.

Starting a company is like drinking from a fire hose.

Wow. It’s been more than a month six months a year since I wrote the post about how I started Normal Modes and a new work lifestyle.  In that time, I’ve heard from at least one person each week, often by email but sometimes in person, about how the post resonated with their own experiences – in particular the loneliness of working from home.  Thank you all for your kind comments and feedback – they’re most appreciated.

Lest you think all my time in the first 6 months was devoted to personal pursuits and adjusting to my new lifestyle, it was decidedly not. It’s a lot of work getting a startup going and finding clients. I likened it to drinking from a firehose.

Business Formation & Legal

In addition to developing the Normal Modes website – which I’ll talk about in a later post – I spent a lot of time in my early days just getting basic business and administrative matters in place.  Setting up the company and sending the state their money so you can become official is almost inconsequential in terms of time.  It has to be done, and luckily it’s relatively easy.

If you don’t know how to do set up a company, many attorneys will offer a package of documents for around $1000. This is worth the investment if you either a) don’t have a clue about what’s needed and have the money to spend or b) if you plan to register as a historically underutilized business or some other special situation.  In the latter case, you’ll need additional corporate documents that the attorney usually includes in their package.  In the case of Normal Modes, the company is 100% owned by a woman and plans to be certified with the Women’s Business Enterprise Alliance (WBEA) in 2010, which opens some opportunities allocated under corporate vendor diversity programs. (We’ll see how that goes – I promise to write about it.)

The other important service a good attorney provides is in writing contracts.  I’m a pretty methodical and logical person, so I thought I’d be able to cobble together my own contracts based on others I had available to reference.  Be ye ye not so stupid. Or cheap. Seriously. A good attorney has seen it all and will think of scenarios and protections which would not occur to you unless you’ve had a bad experience.  My contracts were decent and sounded good before my attorney reviewed them.  Now the contracts are tight, protect me (and, at times, my clients), and just AWESOME.  I feel confident when I give someone a contract now.  You should too.

My other piece of advice?  Allow yourself like time.  Contracts, like websites, all have an urgency  rating of “immediately!” but take awhile to put together.

Administrative Overhead

There’s a lot to be done the first days of a business, and almost everything you touch is something new.  This means that there’s no template, no standard, no reference for all the tasks we’re accustomed to taking for granted.  As a result each wee little task, if begun from ground zero, is orders of magnitude more difficult to knock out.

Contracts – for both clients and subcontractors – take time to fill in. Proposals take anywhere from 1.5 to 12 hours to complete, depending on the level of complexity of the project. And don’t even get me started on accounting and money. (I’m saving that for the next post.)

In short, administrative overhead at the beginning of a business venture accounts for a considerable amount of time.  Be patient.

Office Supplies – Another Unexpected Administrative Lesson

When my husband and I bought our house, we made multiple trips a day to Home Depot.  There was so much we didn’t have.

When you start a new business, you make multiple trips to Office Depot. And here’s the thing about office supplies you don’t have: they’re expensive. Pens are expensive, especially if you have specialized ones you like to use for your work.  I’m more conscious about using the printer, not because I’m a tree hugger so much as that printer paper and – more importantly – printer ink, are expensive. Those giant tape balls I used to make to blow off stress? No more.  Tape is expensive.

I have newfound empathy for my former employers who, during cutbacks, first attacked the office supply budget.  The waste in most corporate environments is institutionalized and a by-product of lacking awareness.  If I had employees, I’d spend the extra money to put stickers on each office supply, reminding us of the cost.   Waste not, want not.

When it pops, it pops.

After the initial euphoria of starting my own company wore off, I was anxious about prospects of success. Business was slow throughout the summer. (Remember I began the company in June.) None of the proposals I prepared went anywhere. (I’ve since learned that this was just part of the standard lead time.)

And then, literally in one week in the fall everything changed.  It was as if I’d prayed to God for more work than I could handle and the Big Guy called my bluff. This, of course, is a happy problem to have. Under a tight deadline and with more work than I could handle, a former co-worker started contracting with me to help out. I discovered that while there are a lot of website design companies, there are precious few who specialize in the user experience work we do.  Of those who do, 99% are full advertising and/or interactive agencies with project budgets that greatly exceed our minimum requirements. Normal Modes fills a niche that larger companies, by their nature, cannot. It’s the best type of situation – everyone wins.

Final Notes

As I mentioned in the intro, this piece took me more than six months to get online, and I want to make sure I don’t muck it up today by not having a nice little closing.  So I’ll finish real quickly with my advice to anyone looking to start their own company:

Do it!

Prepare to work your ass off.  This is a labor of love.

Have fun – running  your own company is a blast!

The other day I was grabbing a salad and some spring rolls for lunch at an upscale grocery store in Houston. I used my debit card to pay, which is an almost daily exercise for most of us. Entering my PIN and clicking through the screens is such an ingrained habit for me that I probably perform it through pure instinct and muscle memory. Well, I ran into a snag.

Typically, the debit card screens run through the following progression:

1. Swipe card.
2. Enter pin.
3. Do you want cash back? Yes or No. If no…
4. Is this amount OK? Yes or No. If yes…
5. Voila. I’m done.

This particular store’s machines work differently.

1. Swipe card.
2. Enter PIN.
3. Is this amount OK? Yes, No, or Cash Back.
4. Etc.

Whaaaaat? I wasn’t even paying attention, and I clicked “No” in step 3. Which meant that “No, this amount is not OK.” What I intended to say was, “No, I don’t want cash back.” The machine brought me back to the beginning of the process.

Apparently the machine’s GUI designers decided to combine two screens and therefore save their users a click. I didn’t save a click, though. I had to start all over.

Consider, please, the Principle of Least Astonishment (POLA), which states that “when two elements of an interface conflict, or are ambiguous, the behaviour should be that which will least surprise the user.” So for software GUIs, users form expectations based on their experiences with similar software.

The debit payment interface I encountered is a perfect example of why it’s so important for your design to conform to your users’ expectations. Saving a click is good practice — most of the time. But if your GUI’s behavior is counter-intuitive to your typical user, you’re just going to cause frustration and wasted time.

Resources about POLA

Principle of Least Surprise
Steve Smith
stevesmithblog.com

Principle of least astonishment
UXPassion.com

Applying the Rule of Least Surprise
Chapter 11. Interfaces
History of Interface Design on Unix

The cranky user: The Principle of Least Astonishment
Peter Seebach
For IBM.com

Most Astonishing Violation of the Principle of Least Astonishment
stackoverflow.com

When I first dipped my toes into the pool of web design in early 1996, design tools sure were different. Designing in Photoshop 3 and 4 was tedious! Type rasterized immediately. Drop shadows and bevels were miraculous feats of lighting effects. I maintained a thick notebook full of design notes about fonts, effects, filters — all so I could edit existing files and exactly replicate my work. The release of Photoshop 5 changed my life. Editable type! Drop shadows! A history palette!

In those golden days, we wrote all our own HTML. TextEdit and BBEdit for me! I became a tabbing mistress. Curse those non-tabbing coders. Then came the advent of Adobe Pagemill 2.0 in 1997, the first major WYSIWYG HTML editor. Boy, did that code ever make my eyes cross. Soon after, I had to deal with Microsoft Frontpage-generated code. Tables within tables within tables within…well, you get my drift. The first editor I truly embraced was Claris Homepage, which offered both code and WYSIWYG views for editing. Homepage eventually morphed into Macromedia Dreamweaver and is now, of course, an Adobe product.

What’s that? An Adobe product? No way! Adobe seemingly revolutionized web and print design tools. My professional life has basically revolved around Adobe; and my efficiency has basically depended upon Adobe’s advances. On April 12, Adobe released Creative Suite 5. So what have they accomplished this time around? Here’s a very high-level overview of the best new features. These are the tools I use the most. Check out Webdesigner Depot’s comprehensive review to get all the juicy deets.

CS Live (New!)

• BrowserLab: Check your web pages in various browsers and OS’s.
• Acrobat.com: Set up a central, online workspace and collaborate on copy for InDesign layouts.
• SiteCatalyst NetAverages: learn about the latest Internet usage trends, including browser and OS statistics.

Photoshop

• Content-Aware Fill: Sort of like the rubber stamp tool…on steroids! This is amazing.
• Puppet Warp: I don’t know how often I’ll use this, but it’s super cool. Add pivot points, or “pins” as Adobe calls them, to an object and then move it in any direction. So if you wanted to, you could take a tree and bend it to look as if it’s in a gale-force wind.

Dreamweaver

• Support for PHP-based content management systems
• Enhanced CSS starter layouts
• Integration with Adobe’s new BrowserLab

Illustrator

• Now you can work in up to 100 artboards all at once.
• Get better control with your paintbrushes with variable-width strokes.
• The new shapebuilder tool allows you to combine, edit, and fill shapes directly on your artboard.

Well, that’s enough to convince me. Do I have the new CS5 yet? Not yet, but I can’t wait.

A recent TechCrunch article reported that Google is offering $75 in American Express gift checks to participate in a 60-minute usability test of features being developed for Blogger, its blog creation site that competes with WordPress.  Google is looking for participants who are 18 years of age or older, own a Windows PC, are willing to have the session recorded, and of course, will sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Google is actually looking for more specific participants, but the TechCrunch article’s description is enough to pique your interest, yes?  It’s the general description that will have many people saying to themselves, “I’m over 18, use a PC, am willing to comply and could really use $75.”  Enough people will attempt to sign up that Google will then be able to select a representative sample of subjects.

What kinds of subjects might the company be looking for?  Here are some interesting, recent statistics on bloggers from the State of the Blogosphere 2009 report done by Technorati:

• Two-thirds are male.
• 60% are 18-44.
• 75% have college degrees.
• 40% have graduate degrees.
• More than half are married.
• More than half are parents.
• 68% have been blogging for two years or more.
• 86% have been blogging for at least a year.
• 15% of bloggers spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.
• 82% of respondents say that they post photos to their blog.
• 20% of all users have updated their blog or added content from their mobile device.
• 72% of respondents are classified as hobbyists, meaning that they report no income related to blogging.

These statistics already suggest some particular users that should be included.  For instance, naturally the study may target those between 18 and 44 years old, but there should also be participants older than 44.  Perhaps the study should include people who have never blogged before along with those who have been blogging for years.  There could also be both hobbyist and professional bloggers as subjects.  Depending on the features being tested, the study might involve users who update using a cell phone.  The study may even be very targeted and specific, looking at bloggers who spend 10 or more hours each week blogging.

The only way to ensure these populations are represented, though, is by having a preliminary survey.  Sure enough, Google’s includes questions about a volunteer’s gender, age, occupation, location, and how long he or she has been using Blogger, indicating that just because you don’t have to ask your parents’ permission to participate and you use a PC doesn’t mean you’re up $75.

Normal Modes is growing, and I’m yet another new employee. I’m Libby, the new user experience designer, and I’m old-school.

I’ve been working in web design since I graduated in December ‘95. Back then, my university offered only HTML and CGI classes, which I shunned. I was an English major! Why the heck would I need techie stuff like that? Funny thing, though…my first copywriting job out of college also required me to maintain the company intranet. My boss sat me down in front of a page of HTML and told me to figure it out.

After a couple weeks of grumbling under my breath, I discovered something weird — I actually liked it! And I was also good at it. Eventually I was maintaining and designing all of the company’s web sites.

Back then, there typically wasn’t a strong emphasis on usability or user interface design. Or even, at times, any emphasis at all. I actually had a VP who, upon discovering the export to HTML function in Word, asked me what he was paying me for.

As my skills grew, so did my interest in usability. Because my jobs mostly entailed “generalist” duties, I made it my personal mission to become a UX expert. I attended information architecture classes; I soaked up books and blogs about HCI, wireframing and designing for the user. I attended Jakob Nielsen’s Usability Week conference; at his keynote, he bounded onto the stage accompanied by a smoke machine and Rolling Stones music.

Lately, I’ve been developing interfaces for the iPhone. These apps present a whole new challenge: limited real estate, simplicity, user expectations. I learned many lessons — some easy, some hard.

• Remember the goal. What the heck is this app supposed to do for the user? Can they do it? Write a list of tasks. Make darn sure they’re easy to accomplish.

• Remember my mom. Will my mom be able to perform these tasks? If she can, anyone can. She’s my UX nirvana. I always ask my mom to go through the app. If she’s happy, I’ve done my job. Maybe for you, it’s your grandparents, your little brother, the shaggy dude on the street corner. Figure out who your “Libby’s mom” is and utilize them.

• Remember your fingers. The tip of your finger, to be exact. This is the smallest touch point for anything you need to do in your app. Keep your screen clean and clear of clutter. Minimize necessary touches and movement. Focus on your primary functions. If it’s secondary, is it necessary?

• Remember user expectations. The iPhone has an extremely established set of patterns and behaviors. Work with them, not against them. iPhone users are generally entrenched in the Apple experience (guilty as charged). Design your iPhone application to behave like…well…an iPhone!

Let me introduce myself since I’m new to Normal Modes and hence to the blog.  My name is Sara and I’m a User Experience Consultant.  My background is in Computer Science and I specialized in Human-Computer Interaction for my Master’s degree.

What I particularly enjoyed studying while in graduate school was cognition and the physical limitations humans have when interacting with technology.  While browsing the web the other day, I was reminded of two principles by a website on which I was attempting to read a news article.

Principle 1:  Humans are not multi-taskers.  As much as we would like to think we are accomplishing 2 or 3 or 5 things at once, we really only excel at task-switching.  You cannot talk on the phone and drive at the same time.  You are either concentrating on the conversation or concentrating on the road but you are switching back and forth at such a rate that you believe you are multi-tasking.  This is why hands-free devices are not the solution; but that’s another discussion.

Principle 2:  The human eye has developed so that only a small part of the retina can see objects sharply and clearly.  Therefore, human beings must constantly move their eyes and heads to be able to view objects in the 2 degrees of their field of vision that exposes the image to that part of the retina.

As I am reading a news article on the topic of education and my eyes are focused on the upper-left area of the screen, a pop-up appears at the lower, right-hand corner alerting me to another education article I might find interesting with a link to view it.  I am now frustrated and upset.  The site has forced my gaze to be diverted to the pop-up and forced me to switch tasks.  I am no longer attuning to and engaged in the article.  Instead, I am looking at a pop-up that has interrupted me.  Worse still, once I return my attention to the article, I have lost my place.  Why would I have wanted to click on the link anyway to start reading another article when I have not finished reading the one I am currently viewing?

This is why UX designers talk about funnels, especially in an e-commerce checkout process.  You want to allow the user to focus, finish and not get distracted.  An element on your site should not be the proverbial call or text that causes the user to drive off the road.

However, there are other UX designers who disagree with me.  You can read Jason F.’s commentary here.

Senior User Experience (UX) Designer

At Normal Modes, we believe good business is a good user experience. We help businesses increase revenues and reduce costs by creating user-centered websites that are straightforward and easy-to use for customers. We specialize in high-profile, data-driven websites.

Normal Modes is a small startup, but we’re profitable and growing quickly. Our clients include a couple of Fortune 500 companies, but are primarily mid-sized companies (or VC-backed startups) that need to improve their user experience to become more profitable.

We are currently looking for a Senior User Experience (UX) Designer to help us with our crush of projects. We are looking for someone who is comfortable working independently in a fast-paced, deadline-driven environment. The ideal candidate will be self-motivated and organized, and require minimal supervision. This position is contract-to-hire and you can work from anywhere you want, whenever you want, as long as you can attend client conference calls (U.S.-based) and the work gets done.

Responsibilities:

• Design and prototype exceptional user experiences, including detailed wireframes and visual designs, for client websites.
• Conduct usability reviews (eye-tracking, heuristic evaluations, etc.) of client websites and present findings to clients.
• Communicate progress regularly to clients and the rest of the project team.
• Work closely with the project manager, graphic designers, and programmers to ensure a successful project.
• Contribute to the Normal Modes blog about trends in usability and UX design.

Qualifications:

• 5-7 years experience designing large, transactional and process-oriented, user-centered websites.
• A portfolio that demonstrates creativity, an eye for detail, aesthetic taste, logical processes, and user-centered design.
• Expert in Photoshop, at least one wireframing tool, and other design-related software.
• Superior communication skills and professional demeanor.
• Solid experience with HTML/CSS, AJAX, Javascript, XML, PHP, and ASP.NET is a plus.
• Candidates with additional core competencies in project management, graphic design, computer programming, copy writing, or video production will be given priority.

Interested candidates may send their resume with a portfolio and salary requirements to jobs [AT] normalmodes [DOT] com.

Please, no recruiters.

(Also, posted over at the 37Signals Job Board.)

Playboy Magazine’s “What Sort Of Man Reads Playboy” advertisements from the 1960s and 1970s illustrate continuities and discontinuities between pre-internet and contemporary copywriting and design.

Before the Internet, as now, images accomplished most of the work. Playboy’s advertisements relied on a striking photograph to attract and keep the attention of the reader. On the other hand, the image is much larger than is usual today, which also causes the copy to be less prominent than usually would be the case on today’s web pages.

Before the Internet, as now, copy was written carefully to appeal to target readers. Playboy’s advertisements were calculated to accomplish three objectives:

1. Increase readership
2. Create a “Playboy” demographic
3. Overcome stigmatization for consumers of such “pornographic” reading material

However, the copy is much wordier than today’s internet practices. Most web designers would doubt that readers might actually read the 78-85 words contained in the 5-6 lines of the Playboy ads. Moreover, the copy’s unctuous tone reveals as much about the history of cultural assumptions as it does about contemporary copywriting, which gravitates toward telegraphic irony rather than middlebrow turgidity.

Last week I had the honor to be a speaker at the Mom 2.0 Summit. The conference was fabulous – great ladies who were kind and supportive of each other, nice panels where everyone shared experiences, and the hotel – Wow! Four Seasons all the way!

Here’s the slideshow we used to get the discussion rolling. We tried to keep everything pretty positive and not bag on anyone. Thanks to my co-presenter Sania for putting it together. (She’s great, isn’t she?)

I didn’t anticipate having more than 50 people in our presentation, so I was surprised to run out of the handouts we shared with everyone. If you missed the handout, you can download it here:

Consider the User Experience & Usability of Your Website: 20 Do’s and 14 Automatic Fails.

Thanks to Marla, Carrie, & Laura for all their hard work putting together the conference! See you next year in New Orleans!