The Original Study of UX

Alexis Jensen (@alexismjensen) is not your typical developer. She studied her Master’s in Art History at Christie’s; the famous auction house in London. Now Alexis studies and works in computer science and UX, and we interviewed her about ancient art and the original study of user experiences.

Steadfast: Hey Alexis, thanks for chatting with us!

Alexis: Good to be here!

Steadfast: Would you say you’re a techie who loves art or an art person who is interested in tech?

Alexis: I’m an art person fascinated by tech. I’m naturally good at interpreting what the makers of a piece of art were thinking and what they were trying to communicate when they made something. Similarly, today I’m focused on deconstructing how technology is made and what we can do with it.

Steadfast: Can you tell me a bit about your background in art, and how did you get into computer science?

Alexis: I did my Masters in Art History at Christie’s, the auction house in London. It is an unusual Art History degree because I was given the opportunity to work with the physicalness of art rather just looking at slides of art. Most universities only deal with the theory behind art but at Christie’s I got to study art as physical objects — what they’re made of, and the techniques that are used to make them.

After school, I decided to move to Whitehorse, and started working at a museum that focused on the gold rush. I was involved in a lot of archiving, and that introduced me to databases. After that I worked at the Nikkei National Museum, this time in Vancouver, where I ended up building the museum’s database. I found the database work really interesting, so I decided to go to UBC to study Computer Science.

Steadfast: What’s been different about how you look at art compared to many of your peers?

Alexis: I’m not interested in the ‘smoke and mirrors’ around art, I just want to know how things are made. I’m curious about the materials and techniques used to make an object, the time period from which it came and how and why it was used.

Steadfast: By focusing on how things were used and made, it sounds like you were studying UX of ancient artifacts.

Alexis: Yeah I guess that’s true! Its an interesting way of putting it.

Steadfast: When did you start getting involved in UX in the tech realm?

Alexis: When I started working as an iOS Developer, I started to do my own research into UX and its community. For example, I started reading books like Dan Saffer’s Microinteractions and realizing there were these huge ecosystems of how-to-guides in mobile design out there, like like Apple’s Human Interface Guidelines and Google’s Material Design.

Steadfast: Can you give an example of how your background in art that you mentioned earlier has been useful for thinking about UX?

Alexis: Let’s look at the this piece (above). Most people focus on the carving in the front. It shows Consul Anastasia dropping the cloth to signify the start of the games. Consuls held the highest political office in the Roman/Byzantine Empire but it was all figurative and held no power. Their terms lasted a year. It was traditional that each year when a new consul was elected, he would commission a handful of these diptychs to be sent out to his friends announcing his big win.

It is made of elephant ivory, there are no elephants in Constantinople (Istanbul) so in order to have acquired it there must have been elaborate trade routes set up. The front of this piece allows you to explore tons of directions:, trade routes, games, consuls, customs, etc.

But the funnest part of all is usually brushed over in descriptions and not even displayed properly in a museum.

The back shows ingenuity, and a deep thinking about user experience.. It is a sustainable, compact way for people to write temporary things. The back is recessed and that recess once held wax. The wax was the material you would write on with a stylus (a pen without ink). This is where the consul would have announced, in writing, his success on winning the post and even give the details of where the party was at.

Steadfast: That’s a fascinating story. Since you have the context of UX from thousands of years ago, can you make any guesses as to where do you think the field of UX is going to be in the next few years?

Alexis: I am not sure if I can predict anything, but I think we’ll see more microinteractions in more products. These are the polished thoughtful interactions that provide a personal experience, or demonstrate a fuller understanding of the user’s needs. Unexpected microinteractions are great ways to delight users, and there’s a great blog called Littlebigdetails that posts good examples of microinteractions in technologies.

One of the reasons I love microinteractions is because it makes computers more human, it is a form of socializing them. Even though it is simply humans tellingcomputers what to do, it makes computers feel more personal. Lots of the technology used to create microinteractions has been around for quite awhile, it is only now that the humans are catching onto how we can better use that technology.

An example of this is the app Downcast, which I use to listen to podcasts. One thing I absolutely love about Downcast is that when you pause a podcast on it, and press play again, it jumps back 4 seconds to remind you of where you were at in the podcast so you don’t miss anything. There are a ton of podcast apps, but the fact that Downcast is the only one that has that feature means I’ll use and recommend it over any other app.

Steadfast: So developing a deep understanding of every nuance of what users want will push the bar forward in UX?

Alexis: Yes, exactly! And that’s something to be really excited about.

p.s. if you’re looking to do UX Research or user testing, let’s talk. We love helping product teams build great UX :)