Talk given by user experience designer Jennifer Morrow at MozCamp, Buenos Aires Saturday, April 21, 2012

1. MozCamp, Buenos Aires
Saturday, April 21, 2012
Designing Firefox

2. ¡Hola!

3. Correction:
The user experience workshop tomorrow is at
11:30am in Storni - not at 5:15pm!

4. My Name is Boriss
I’m on the Mozilla User Experience Team

5. I’m going to talk about:
• What user experience is
• Design and user experience at Mozilla
(including what we’ve gotten wrong)
• The glorious future

6. Our focus is on how Mozilla’s products and
services are perceived, learned, and used

7. Fixing current
problems
Designing
new products
and features
User experience

8. • Design limited: based on annoyances,
not possibilities
• “Averaging” user needs
If only current UX problems are considered:

9. “What’s your favorite color?”

11. Our goal is designing based on user needs
• What are users trying to accomplish?
• What are their metrics of success?
• Who are they?

12. Many ways of determining user needs
• User testing and interviews
• Data analysis (eg Mozilla Test Pilot & Telemetry)
• Focus groups
• Contextual inquiry
• Eye-Tracking studies/observational studies
• Analyzing feedback

13. User experience design at Mozilla
began after Firefox

14. First “user experience” at Mozilla
=
hackers creating a browser for, well, them
(and this is awesome)

15. “Scratching an itch”is important for Mozilla,
open source, hacking culture

16. But, we used to look like this:

17. ewdwe
Now, we look more like this:
(~30,000 million of us)

18. We can’t design for millions
the same way we did for only ourselves

19. Partially, the UX team’s goal is to make sure
that UX at Mozilla:
1. Is coordinated, cohesive, directed
2. Still happens true to Mozilla’s organic, open,
itch-scratching character

20. Two approaches to UX design:

21. User Centric Design
I need...
I want...
I like A more
than B!
the customer is
always right!

22. Strong Designer
I know what you
want more than
you do!

23. Most design teams land somewhere between
Risks:
EPIC FAILURE
Risks:
Complexity, “grey,” users lie

24. Historically:

25. Users lie!

26. Users lie!

28. So, we’re open source.
We like scratching our itches.
But we also need coherent design for our
millions of users.

29. “I love tabs!”
“Everyone uses tags,
not bookmarks.”
“My mom doesn’t
understand tabs.”
“OpenID is the future!”
“Nobody uses the
‘Go’ button.”
“There should be
a preference setting.” “Add support for
BitTorrent.”
!
“I only use keyboard
shortcuts.”
“Add support for
Ogg Vorbis.”
“That’s great!”
“That’s awful”
“The profile manager
should be redesigned.”
“Closebuttons are better at
the end of the tabstrip.”
“The URL bar should
be removed.”
“This looks too
much like Chrome!”

30. • Have add-on infrastructure to explore new ideas
• Elevate contributors who know what they’re doing
• Focus on design principles
Wat do?

31. Design Principles?

33. discoverability
user control
consistency
minimalism
no interruptions
new
vs
vs
vs

34. Beyond being well-designed,
what should using Firefox feel like?

35. Soft
Powerful
Yours

40. Who are we designing for
(if not just ourselves)?

41. Our users:
People whose lives or work
revolve around the internet

42. Respecting Flow

44. Thursday, October 20, 11

45. Protect, but Don’t Lecture

46. Protect, but don’t lecture
• You can’t “teach people how security works”
• Maintain blacklists for add-ons & plug-ins
• Don’t ask people to do work

47. Be a good fit
- visually and interactively -
across devices
(we don’t do this well right now)

48. Listen to Users!

49. Measure in the Field

50. Do What’s Right for Users No Matter Where
Idea Came From

51. Avoid Boundary-Case Design

52. Questions?