Themes are the stories we would like our application experiences to tell to our users. Our mechanism to tell stories in an application are features, or what the application enables the user to do and accomplish. Features are the means to the users ends. They are also our attempt to create applications that resonate with our prospective users.
Themes should be derived and targeted at the personas we have created. We use persons to postulate what the key motivators or appealing elements will be for our users.
At the first tier, we should look for a general application experience category that we feel will address our chosen persona in a relevant way. Next, we should look to refine the category to determine what exact type of experience within that broad set we would like to pursue for that particular user.
Theme categories are the general bucket we would like our experience to fall into. A parallel would be categories in literature. For example, a literary work could be :
In user experience design for applications, the idea is the same but the categories are different. Some example application categories are :
Categories are broad by nature and tend to be relatively direct determination based upon a persona. In some cases, the determination is not directly derived but is rather influenced by a persona.
For example, a user might be clearly in need of a reference piece of material, but is in a young enough age group that a learning game experience may be more appropriate.
After arriving at a broad category, the next step it to determine what "style" of experience would be most appropriate based upon the persona at hand.
Think about a broad category for a moment; for example, the game category. Within this single category there are numerous styles, or subcategories. These subcategories also have similar parallels in literature; is the piece doing to be a historical biography in the style of Isaacson or Bukowski? Similarly, will a game category experience be a puzzle game, or first-person shooter?
The overall goal is to determine what we need to write this story, or more precisely what tools and features we need to provide to our users. These features are important in that they are necessary to tell our tale, or provide something to the user that is valuable. They also allow us to create and experience that is above and beyond just being purely functional, and is in addition pleasing or satisfying for the user.
The answers to what features (or style) we need to provide lie in 4 places, and it is important to ask the following questions in this order:
Arriving valuable answers to the third question may require some research. For example, after you determine the category, a competitive analysis may be in order to see what applications in your category are available and successful.
The next method that can be used is to engage in some quick, or ad hoc surveys to determine what style may be best. This does not need to be a formal process. If you are working or in class with individuals that meet the characteristics for the demographic you are trying to target, ask these individuals a few impromptu questions to survey what applications they use in the category you are designing within. Ask what they like and dislike about the applications they use. Lastly, after the impromptu surveys are complete, look to determine what style and features these applications have adopted.
After determining features, sometimes there needs to be subtle nuance to what or how these capabilities and information are provided to the user. These are commonly accomplished by brining in elements of game play mechanics or social interaction.
How can we incorporate "game mechanics" into our experience. For example, are there :
Social aspects tend to bring in methods to extend the user's personal experience in the application to an outside group.
Social interactions must always be thoroughly under the user's control, and abide by their wishes for privacy.
Some examples of social elements to enhance experience are :
* Sharing progress with other in someone's social group.
* Sharing discovered information.
* Participating in buying and selling of capabilities within social group.
* Sharing content generated or created in the application with an outside group.
Most of the aforementioned categories and types are derived from the principles of behavioral economics. Developed by psychologist Daniel Kahneman, Behavioral Economics accepts that humans are irrational by nature, and therefore models of future outcomes used by more traditional branches of economics do not adequately predict outcome, because they do not attempt to acknowledge and understand these irrational behaviors.
Anchoring
Availability Bias
Decision Paralysis
Default Bias
Ego Depletion
Endowment Effect
Gamification
Goal Gradient Theory
Herding
Hyperbolic Discounting
Overconfidence
Payment for Effort
Relativity
Reward Substitution
Scarcity
Limited Attention
Action Goals
Disposition Effect
Lack of Self-Control
Loss Aversion
Mental Accounting
Money Illusion
Opportunity Cost Neglect
Pain of Paying
Planning Fallacy
Power of Free
Pre-commitment
Procrastination
Reciprocity
Regret and Counterfactuals
Self-signaling
Status Quo Bias
Sunk Cost Effect
Tunneling
What-The-Hell-Effect
You Are What You Measure
The answer is simple; developing themes provides a mechanism to gather prospective user feedback. Themes allow you to go to users or clients with multiple options that you anticipate will work, and actually gather feedback to see if these ideas will in fact work for both users and a client.
Both clients and users tend to be able to understand concepts better if they are presented as visual information, therefore it is important to be able to provide some sort of visual input for what a concept might look like when realized as a functioning application.
Commonly, themes are developed at a rapid pace in a brainstorming style sessions. Interface ideas which convey the theme are literally sketched on dry erase boards to allow for quick changes and adaptations to new lines of thinking. In addition, sketches can be created with just regular pen and paper.
The term "napkin sketch" is derived from this and is meant to connote a quick recording of an idea for a theme; so quick that the only thing that was available to draw on was a napkin.
Once these ideas are created, regardless of the vehicle used to make them, they must be captured in some type of digital format in order to include them in a digital document to provide to stakeholders in the project. In the case of sketches on a dry erase board, take a picture with a cell phone. If the sketches are in paper, scan them into a digital format.