adaptive path » newsletter for june 17, 2008

Ryan’s Welcome

If you’re a reader of the AP blog, you may have noticed a couple posts about our recently completed engagement with MySpace. For the last six months, my team and I have been collaborating extensively with the MySpace product team to completely overhaul the MySpace user experience. The first piece of that work launches today, with additional upgrades rolling out over the next few months.

Redesigning the world’s largest social network has been one of the most ambitious projects of my career, and I’m excited to share some details of what we’ve accomplished. Below, you’ll find some details about the work we did, and some links to some recent coverage.

I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and any comments you might have about the work. Thanks for reading!

Adaptive Path Provides Design Strategy for the MySpace Relaunch

How do you approach the challenge of MySpace?

I’m sure you’ve got an opinion. People in the design and UX community usually do. But the fun starts when you ask the key question: “What kind of problem is MySpace?”

Is it one of design? Usability? Advertiser-friendliness? Scalability? Performance?

When MySpace contacted Adaptive Path back in September of last year, I had the feeling that MySpace was one of the largest problems left unsolved on the web: potentially at its nadir but still massively popular, sneered at by the tech press, but a fundamental part of social interaction online and off for millions of users every day.

So, how do you solve a problem like MySpace? With research, I’d say. Teamwork and heuristics, too. More than anything, by making a commitment to retain that which is true to the democratic spirit of the network, and removing obstacles that prevent MySpace users from accessing what they value most.

Research

Tom’s my friend. He’s yours, too, if you’ve ever signed up for MySpace. He’s a friend to everyone who uses MySpace to connect, share, and express themselves — which means he gets a lot of mail. A product team changes a feature on the photo application — boom! — Tom just got a couple thousand messages. He gets feedback like we encourage every major stakeholder, in every organization we consult with, to get feedback. The scary thing is, he not only reads it, he responds to it. He even feeds it back into his design process, iterating the experience to reflect the needs that are expressed to him.

MySpace had traditionally felt that this link between Tom and the users provided a deep internal understanding of users and their needs. But MySpace recognized that the need to evolve the network to a competitive position would require more than just a closed feedback loop on interface iterations; what was required was some in depth research into users and their needs. MySpace’s first request of Adaptive Path was to gain insight into its users, their preferences, and the how and why behind their migrating between MySpace and its competitors.

With a charge to gain a fresh perspective on the user base, my colleagues Todd Wilkens and Jason Li engaged in an eight week cross-country anthropological study of MySpace users. Escaping the tech- and networking-centric communities of San Francisco and Los Angeles, they traveled from Sacramento to Philadelphia, conducting one-on-one interviews with dozens of existing MySpace users about their lives online and off, how they used the network, what it meant to them. The results were anonymized and transformed into a set of personas. It was not entirely surprising that these personas communicated a more deeply nuanced set of behaviors and priorities than the self-selecting users who voiced their opinions to Tom. The personas would serve the redesign efforts to come by introducing the MySpace team to a different perspective on their users, and shedding new light on how best to meet their needs.

Collaboration

With the research completed and socialized within the MySpace product team, Adaptive Path found its role expanding. My team and I were asked to assist in the redesign of the product, from navigation to page structure, as part of an effort to improve the overall user experience. I found the sheer size of the problem nearly overwhelming; when every design decision must be weighed by its potential impact on millions of users, attempting to advocate even moderate change is difficult.

Thankfully, neither I nor my colleagues Alexa Andrejewski or Teresa Brazen had to advocate by ourselves — we had plenty of help from an enthusiastic client team. MySpace is an organization of very talented people, doing their best to stay ahead of the needs of their users in a very competitive market. My team and I were consistently impressed by the MySpace team’s deep level of commitment to improving the social network’s user experience. We collaborated heavily over a number of months, and gained a deep respect for the democratic philosophy that drives MySpace. While other tools attempt to put the same off-white boxes around their users’ on-site activity, MySpace is dedicated to providing an experience that does not limit the user’s power to present themselves in whatever way they choose to do so.

Our collaboration with the MySpace team was essential to the home page and global navigation that launched today, June 18. A series of prioritization exercises with MySpace stakeholders, concerning feature set and user behavior, allowed us to trim down the global navigation from an undifferentiated mass to a succinct tool for way-finding and discovery. When discussions about the non-logged in home page revealed a need for better opportunities to share space between advertising and feature promotion, the “wide-screen” element was created; a multi-use advertising and editorial programming space that can change based on user preference. Neither of these elements would be what they are without the active participation of the MySpace team in the redesign process.

Heuristics

Sometimes, you have to design from the gut. The funny thing about the gut is that, rather than experience, the best UX designers I know operate from a perspective of determining what’s good, what’s bad, and what’s ugly.

Providing people with a straightforward means to connect and share with one another? Good. Presenting frustrating tools for user search when I’m looking for someone I know in real life? Bad. Repeatedly telling users they’ve got to “log in before you do that!”? Ugly.

In the midst of a difficult redesign, you can often end up putting much of your capital into large-scale changes to how a site works. The fact of the matter is, sometimes the little changes make all the difference. Alexa and I did our best to understand which details in the experience tended to distract casual and heavy users from the utility or enjoyment of MySpace. They resolved around a few key areas, a few of which we attempted to solve with new designs, others that ended up as suggestions to the MySpace team.

What necessary tweaks get realized and what remains unchanged is ultimately in the hands of the client — such is the lot of the all designers. Those engaged in redesigning established products on the web should commit themselves to removing the kruft and distractions that accrete over time, and provide whatever guidance can be given to simplify, refocus and enhance the product’s core experience.

Today’s release of the new navigation and non-logged in home page for MySpace marks a milestone in its development. In collaboration with Adaptive Path, MySpace has worked diligently to demonstrate its commitment to its users. I would like to take the opportunity to also thank Sequence, the San Francisco based firm that provided visual design support for this project. Lastly, I want to thank the MySpace team, as well as my own, on the successful launch of the first of many improvements to the site.

Adaptive Path News

Wired Interviews Ryan: MySpace�s New Look Helps Quell the Clutter
TechCrunch: Redesign A First Step In Bringing Order To The MySpace Chaos
NPR: Marketplace: MySpace looks for an older crowd

Subject To Change SlideShare

If you were unable to attend one of our Subject to Change presentations at Google and Nokia, you can now watch the slide presentation with audio through SlideShare here!

Brandon Schauer: @ IxDA What is Design Worth?

Adaptive Path’s very own Brandon Schauer will be a panelist at the upcoming IxDA talk on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 @ 6:30 PM. For those in the Bay Area you can register to attend the event here!

UX Intensive is Coming to Copenhagen

In case you missed the announcement, we are taking our four-day, hands-on workshop series abroad this October. If you, or someone you know, needs to brush up on your Design Strategy, Design Research, Information Architecture or Interaction Design, then get to UX Intensive! Register for all four days or just the days that most interest you. Register by June 30 and save $800 off the full price. Register.