Last week I went for the first time to the Silicon Valley Product Management Association (SVPMA) monthly meeting. The topic for this first meeting of the year was about User eXperience and presented by Glen Lipka from Marketo. I guess slides will be available soon in the SVPMA archive (they are still not available at this time) and beyond the networking opportunity, here are the key points I retained.

• There is decision in any design process, actually design is just decisions and who is making these decisions really matters, it might be engineering people, an end-user, a manager or a researcher, etc. but at the end of the day the designer is the one who wrote the PRD (Product Document Requirement).
• UX designer and PM roles might overlap, it's fine, as long as PM stay focus; there are already many tasks under his responsability, he should be dedicated and works actively with marketing to get comprehensive MRDs (Marketing Requirement Document) including competive landscape, packaging, go to market strategy and research.
• Get a direct interaction with users, learn from them (e.g. make up-front call), understand their problems, what they are trying to achieve, why they didn't choose your product, etc. but don't let them define the actual requirements, people are terrible about their own perception... 
• "A picture is worth a thousand words" - we all knew that visual PRD helps to explain complex ideas or UI concepts but it also helps to convoy ergonomic features, hardly describalble with words but often critical for the user experience (e.g. moving / manipulate objects on a page)
• Don't put too much instructions in your product (users don't read) but pay attention to remove frictions that would require to read these instructions. 
• Address the overall user experience, from product design to support and observe well things when they go wrong - i.e. The way to handle things go wrong is way more important than the way to handle things go right.
• Because user don't have the same perspection as you, as the designer, more small improvements is often percieved as better than one big one, they usually don't know what was the work required 
• And last but not least, give yourself permission to put fun stuff in your product, messaging, etc. people wants to be treated has human being and if it's authentic they will adhere to it.

A bad UX design is a bug (picture from Flickr)

Los Altos Hills bike ride at EveryTrail

Fantastic weather today, it was like summer, perfect for working out, I did the launch of Body Pump #80 at the Palo Alto YMCA then jumped on a bike for a pretty nice ride with friends. I discovered the Rancho San Antonio County Park, it seems a great place to workout with a lots of trails, I'm looking forward to run there. 

Still discovering new places in the Bay Area, today was the Crystal Springs Reservoirs created by the San Andrea fault. Mostly flat, perfect to start a new year. 

2012 first bike ride at EveryTrail
EveryTrail - Find the best Hiking in the Bay Area, California

Happy new year everybody, once again make this new year full of fulfillment. 2011 was a great year for us and we look forward to 2012. Last year we didn't took any good resolutions or built any to-do list and we actually achieved more than we would have expected... We will do the same think this year, we'll just follow our passion :-)

We took this picture today in the Bay Front Park in Menlo Park, there are a lot of salt ponds and the purplish color is water that's just about ready to be evaporated for its salt content.

In France for a few days... will be in Belgium next week and then back to California just in time for Christmas.

(download)

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Thanks to everybody, especially to my parents Daniel and Patrica, for your help for the last 4 weeks, to build a gym room in the garage and do some insulation in the house. Work is now completed, more pictures to come :-)