EXPERIENCIAS DE USUARIOS CON SISTEMAS INTERACTIVOS 1

EXPERIENCIAS DE USUARIOS CON SISTEMAS INTERACTIVOS

1

MULTI-DEVICE USER EXPERIENCES José Manuel Incera Rosas - 000125360

Abstract Nowadays, content must be developed to be viewed and interacted with across a range of screen sizes, from smartphones to the widest flat-screens. With devices becoming increasingly abundant in our daily lives, people are shifting from device to device, and they expect their products and services to shift with them. A multi-device approach to design involves many important measures. Before anything else, it’s necessary to have a good understanding of user's goals and the context in which they'll be trying to achieve them. It’s also important to create content that can be delivered across multiple platforms and have a plan on how to publish it. Index Terms—Multi-device, User Experience, Consistent, Continuous, Complimentary, Design, Use-Case, Framework, Inevio, Dropbox, Google Drive.

II. MICHAL LEVIN´S FRAMEWORK: THE 3C´S. I.

INTRODUCTION1 A. CONSISTENT

W

E live in a world in which every person owns more than one device for communicating, working or doing almost any regular task. People interact with their phones, tablets or computers even more often than they do with other people. And we often interact with more than one device at a time. The number of connected devices has officially exceeded the 7 billion mark, outnumbering people on the planet. By 2020, this number is expected to pass 24 billion! [1] So, due to this new era of interconnected devices, interactive systems design had to evolve accordingly. Designers have now to consider many platform and devices in order to create a system that works as expected (especially by us, users). Then, how can designers handle such complexity in design? In her book, Michal Levin adopted a framework, or set of building blocks, that has proven to be durable and immensely relevant for approaching ecosystem design. She calls it 3Cs: consistent, continuous, and complementary. In this project we will be analyzing 3 different systems in order to match their design to Levin´s framework. The 3 systems we will be analyzing are 3 different kinds of cloud storage software: Dropbox, Google Drive and Inevio. Each of these systems offers very analogous value propositions, so there design should be quite similar. Yet, their differences are crucial to understand how they are designed.

Consistent design refers to when the same experience, with the same content, is applied to different devices similarly. Some adjustments are made to adjust specific properties. For example a responsive website is a website that is able to display the same content differently depending on the screen size (see Fig 1).

Figure 1: A responsive website design. A responsive website is used to provide an optimal viewing experience—easy reading and navigation with a minimum of resizing, panning, and scrolling [2]. There are many tools that allow programmers to design responsive websites, for example Bootstrap, a grid-based framework that controls CSS and JavaScript in order to make objects in a web page to automatically adjust to the screen size. The idea behind consistent design is to be able to provide the same material or content regardless of the device we use. Consistent

design does not take into account the best device, multidevice relationship or scalability. The idea is to preserve the core tasks of a system to be used in many different devices. B. CONTINUOUS With the continuous approach the experience is shifted between different devices. We can continue the same experience across different devices or progress along devices to a certain goal experience. The complexity in continuous design implies getting to know the users and which tasks they are trying to accomplish, so that experience can be personalized and improved. Continuous design, supported by multiple connected devices, enables us to rethink user flows we might have taken for granted, break them down into smaller steps, and then reconstruct them to create better, richer, more tailored user experiences [3]. C. COMPLIMENTARY The last approach is complimentary design. Complimentary design involves collaboration among multiple devices operating together as a group. Multiple devices as a connected group, which can together create a complete experience. There are two main forms of relationship: Collaboration and control. Collaboration, as its name states, implies that interconnected devices work together to create a full experience. Take for example a video game in which every player can play on a main board using their own phones. Control refers to a primary experience that takes place with a particular device, while other devices control different aspects of that experience.

III. THE 3 SYSTEMS What these 3 systems are mainly trying to solve is to allow Internet users to be able to save and store their personal files in the cloud. By providing large amounts of cloud storage space, their users are no longer required to carry any physical device like usbs or cds that might get lost or are hard to replace. A. INEVIO (www.inveio.com) I chose this particular System because I had the chance to work with its co-founders at the MIT accelerator (MIT´s Global Founders Skills Accelerator at the Martin Trust Center for Entrepreneurship) and I believe that it is not only an outstanding idea but also a very well designed and implemented tool. Another very interesting thing is that it is still in construction, and we can particularly explore how their founders are working on the expected experiences.

What is Inevio?

Inevio, as they say in their web page (www.inevio.com), is an HTML5 virtual desktop that moves your company to cloud. With Inevio you can literally access your whole computer from anywhere and from any device. This system allows you to, not only access files that you may have previously stored, but also all your programs, contacts or anything you can imagine. Inevio allows you also to work or collaborate with other users, using your own files or programs (Tool that hasn´t yet been completely implemented). It is a very big project that will even allow you to collaborate on the API, or as a developer for their programs. What Inevio offers to their users is cloud storage taken a little further. So, the user experience they are looking for is to create a whole system that can be stored in the cloud. Users are able to store, create and share their files or programs. When they stared, they decided to focus their end user profile in large companies workers who need to not only share files and projects but also collaborate with other coworkers, using the same programs (a text editor or a spread sheet for example) and files. B. GOOGLE DRIVE (www.drive.google.com) Google Drive is the direct competitor for Inevio. Google Drive is a file storage and synchronization service created and managed by Google. It allows users to store documents in the cloud, share files, and edit documents with collaborators. Its main features are sharing, allowing third-party apps, file viewing and storing.

EXPERIENCIAS DE USUARIOS CON SISTEMAS INTERACTIVOS

3

the same folder (with the same contents) regardless of which computer is used to view it. Files placed in this folder are also accessible via the Dropbox website and mobile apps. A very interesting thing about Dropbox is its story. This software was created based on real existing problems. Dropbox founder Houston developed the Dropbox concept after repeatedly forgetting his USB flash drive while he was a student at MIT. He began making something for his personal use, but then realized that it could benefit others with the same problems [4]. So we could say that Dropbox is completely user-oriented, since it was created based on Houston´s problems. What is interesting about google drive is that they have implanted different versions based on their users, take for example Google Drive for work or Google Drive for Education. Google Drive´s main core is that you are able to interact with your files and programs from any device that you are using. Unlike Inevio, Google Drive has already released a mobile app for smartphones that helps you access your files, without browsing the web. C. DROPBOX (www.dropbox.com) The last system we will be analyzing is Dropbox. Dropbox is a cloud based file storage service used by more than 100 million users.

As well as Google Drive, Dropbox also offers a specific software for companies called Dropbox for Business. Dropbox for Business is a paid service targeted for use by organizations, providing administrative controls and auditing to IT departments while allowing users the option to create separate cloud containers for their work and personal documents [5].

IV. THE USER EXPERIENCE As mentioned in the introduction, these 3 interactive systems work almost in the same way, and they are both designed in a similar manner. They all use the 3 approaches, but can be differentiated by specific characteristics directly reflected into their design. For each system I will try to focus on the approach that represents them the most. A. CONSISTENT (INEVIO) Let´s analyze how Inevio has managed to deliver a consistent user experience. Since they haven´t yet released a mobile app for their system, both the CTO and a hired designer, spent a while creating a fully responsive website that keeps the same content when accessed on different devices (See fig 2.1).

As well as the two previous systems, Dropbox allows its users to store their files in the cloud and to access them from anywhere and from any device. The only difference is that it doesn´t support program storage, so, users are not able to collaborate between them on similar projects. A particular multi-device property in Dropbox is that it allows users to create a special folder on their computers, which Dropbox then synchronizes so that it appears to be

Fig 2.1: Inevio website tested on web, Samsung s4 and ipad. They even made the inside desktop responsive! So let’s say you login to Inevio, the first thing you get access to is your desktop (like in a regular operating system), in your desktop you could open a browser, in that browser, you could login to Inevio…again! Their internal browser is still responsive! (See fig 2.2). The way they managed this is by simply executing Google Chrome browser when selecting a browser. Also, when browsing your files, content offering is preserved, the entire set of property listings, with all their photos and actions, is available on all devices. (See fig 2.3). Since Inevio´s value proposition is to be able to access all your programs and files from anywhere and from any device, this a great example where the consistent approach seems to be a natural choice. . To do that, users need to have the entire product experience available on all devices. B. CONTINUOUS (DRIVE) Google Drive is a good example for the continuous approach. Since it offers users the possibility to edit and work on their files. There might be cases where users may want to use the app on their phones to quickly take notes on something they are listening to in class or at a certain meeting. Then probably edit those notes into a more rigorous document based on those notes. And then, when at home, they can download the document and finish properly on their computers. (See fig 3)

Fig 3: Drive tested on Web, Samsung and ipad. Cloud computing and real-time synchronization between devices, like Google Drive are the key enablers of continuous flow of content creation [6]. Actually, Google Drive, is a combination of consistent and continuous approaches. It provides access to all the content anywhere, and at the same time supports a continuous flow of reading and editing across devices. C. COMPLIMENTARY (DROPBOX) Finally let’s analyze Dropbox´s complimentary approach. The best example for this is Dropbox file system synchronizing directly to your computer. Since the goal is to store your files and be able to access them, the Dropbox´s web page acts as the place where the user´s primary experience takes place. Then, the other devicestablets or phones- control aspects of that experience, remotely. Take for example my experience with Dropbox: I own a Samsung S4 with Android 4.4 and Macbook pro. Since Android and Apple aren’t able to synchronize music through the USB cable, this is what I do export music files to my phone. First I upload the mp3 file I want to a carpet in my computer. This carpet then syncs to Dropbox. Later, on my phone with the Dropbox app I can download this file to my phone system and listen to it on Android. Dropbox helps me to complete a simple task, such as uploading and downloading a file, while using different kinds of devices. (See fig 4.1)

EXPERIENCIAS DE USUARIOS CON SISTEMAS INTERACTIVOS

5

Fig 4.2: Dropbox sharing option. êê

êê

The next paragraph is taken from Dropbox’s tech blog : Users opened the app with no idea about what it did, and all they saw was an account creation screen. We wanted to fix that. We landed on adding an introductory flow for new users before they create an account. Our ideas ranged from elaborate (an animated story showing a user taking a photo on her mobile device, the photo syncing automatically to her Dropbox, a bird swooping in and grabbing the device away, and then the user realizing that her photo was safe forever in Dropbox) to simple (a one-page list of how Dropbox was useful). The design that won was a simple, interactive flow with fun animations that succinctly conveyed the value proposition of Dropbox without too much distraction. [...] The onboarding flow described above goes a long way in helping new users set up Dropbox on their computers, but there are some more interesting challenges left to solve that would help more users get started. [7] Dropbox designers managed to work on a design that makes even the login to all the synchronized devices simpler and easier! V. CONCLUSION

Fig 4.1: Dropbox synchronizing example. This can be considered as a complimentary design. And it is also possible to share this folder with any other user. (See fig 4.2)

Throughout the use of 3 different systems we have seen how their designers have managed to achieve their expected user experience. By analyzing Michal Levin´s framework, which divides design techniques into three categories, we were able to understand in a deeper manner how systems can satisfy people’s needs or requirements and create a whole better experience. By analyzing first, users requirements, the systems value propositions or its use cases and comparing it to their design, we can identify how well is an interactive system designed. By understanding the variety of contexts across an experience, and the roles each device plays in the whole multi-device ecosystem, we can better understand how an app or software programm is designed. In doing so, designers can simply the increasing complexity involved in having more and more devices, guiding them toward a more effective and productive multi-device usage.

REFERENCES

[1]

“GSMA Announces That the Proliferation of Connected Devices Will Create a US$1.2 Trillion Revenue Opportunity for Mobile Operators by 2020”, PR Newswire, October 10, 2011, http://prn.to/19cuKWx

[2]

Wikipedia: Responsive Web Design, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Responsive_web_design

[3]

Designing Multi-Device Experiences An Ecosystem Approach to User Experiences across Devices By Michal Levin, p 72.

[4]

Ying, Jon (February 5, 2009). "Meet the Team! (Part 1)". The Dropbox Blog. Dropbox, Inc. Retrieved April 24, 2010.]. J. Wang, “Fundamentals of erbium-doped fiber amplifiers arrays (Periodical style—Submitted for publication),” IEEE J. Quantum Electron., submitted for publication.

[5]

Dropbox For Business, https://www.dropbox.com/business

[6]

Designing Multi-Device Experiences An Ecosystem Approach to User Experiences across Devices By Michal Levin, p 61.

[7]

Dropbox Tech Blog, https://blogs.dropbox.com/tech/2014/08/techbehind-dropboxs-new-user-experience-for-mobile/