I've been reading a lot about how to enhance user experience in daily tasks performed by users. And reading is almost 20 books on different topics ranging from sociology, psychology, usability and design. Most of you already know my point of view regarding user experience (UX) and usability, and that's the reason why I've thinking a bit on how people interact with the environment and, recently, urban architecture. This post starts a new category to host thoughts on what I've labeled "Analog Experiences" to represent user experience facts in the "real analog world" that we interact with through our senses :)

Most of the last two weeks has been spend in Bilbao working in an Windows Presentation Foundation project for the health industry, trying to improve the way Basque Health Agency manages medical information and how doctors interact with patients. Bilbao city itself is amazing, it has completely re-invented itself from a dark-gray industrial suburb to an avant-garde, modern and design-focused city. Running into modernity for a city sometimes implies the creation of urban transportation networks, usually in the form of trams or underground metropolitans, and Bilbao presented their brand-new metro system almost ten years ago.

In this modern metro network I've seen some of the most useful and interesting enhancements of user experiences for travelers. As an urban guy I travel quite often through multiple underground stations, both in Madrid or anywhere in my intensive traveling around the world. The most outrageous feeling of impotence arises when I'm unable to determine my way in the suburban by myself. Although most cities have "modern" transportation system I run into this feeling more often than I would like. So analyzing what I, as a metro user, need to qualify a traveling experience as positive I came out with the following list of acknowledgments:

• Easy acquisition of my traveling title and validation into the metro network
• Easy positioning of myself through the traveling experience
  • Where am I right now?
  • Where is the place I'm willing to go?
  • When should I get out of the train?
  • How much time do I need to stay here?

Over the multiple trips I've taken in Bilbao I can actually say that it's the most satisfactory user experience I had in my life. Why? Because it fulfill all my requisites for a good experience.

• The city provides an automatic vending machine to buy tickets, and although the design (and I mean graphic design) is quite old and fuzzy, the experience itself was good
• The mapping system clearly states where do you need to go, but this is quite easy when you only have 2 underground lines instead of 20 lines like Madrid
• The lighting system inside trains and stations is a bit dimmed so you don't have this hurting experience of snow-white fluorescent burning your eyes

But the relevant improvements, over the rest of transportation systems I've seen, were experienced while, inside the train, I was trying to locate my destination, actual position and estimated arrival time. The Bilbao metro system has an interactive map of stations with embedded LEDs that locates your position you on the map, the upcoming station and the train's direction through an easy light code:

• Previous stations are represented in red, with LEDs on
• Next station is blinking in red
• Future stations are represented with LEDs off
• And direction is inferred with ease through the state of lights

To me, this is what I really call Improve User Experience. Period. I don't care about better trains, better lights or more stations (although all those are really important) but a better way to find myself by my own and reach to my final destination, at least to me.

We should start applying exactly the same principles to how we design and plan software, think on what users need and how they will need it to do it... and with this I don't mean to create better and more standard-nielsen-based-usable applications. I mean we need to observe users, observe their needs, their problems, their frustrations and try to find ways to solve them, maybe alternative ways. It's hard, I know, but I think it's funny to foresee and create this applications; designing software from scratch, and designing interfaces and architectures.

Next week I promise some technical content about WPF and Silverlight and less thoughts about interactions... sure!!