Beyond Usability

Beyond Usability: User-Centered Design Strategies - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Christina Wodtke :: christina@carboniq.com Carbon IQ User Experience Group http://www.carboniq.com tel: 415 824 7090

Introduction to user-centered design

What is it?

NO! It’s more than usability testing

What is it?

A method for understanding and considering the person who will experience your design while you design

What is it?

A way to get user reactions and feedback to design

Performed throughout the entire product development cycle

Used to ensure a usable product

Iterative

Introduction to user-centered design Test while you build Test before you build Test after you think you’re done

Introduction: How does it work?

Learn who the user is.

Design for that user

Create a rough prototype to test with the people who will use it.

Revise based on what you learned.

Build a prototype that is close to the finished thing.

Test again.

Make fixes based on what you learned.

Ship the product. Include a feedback device so you can make the next version even better.

Introduction: Who does it?

Internal User Research Specialist

Outside Consultant

Outside Consultant

You

Introduction: Why do it?

Know if the product meets user needs before you build it

Cheap to change a sketch

Affordable to change a Photoshop comp

Expensive to change fully coded product

Customer service expensive as well

Introduction: Why do it?

Enable you to develop easy-to-use products

Satisfy customers

Decrease expenditures on technical support and training

Advertise ease-of-use successes

Improve brand perception

Ultimately increase market share

Next: who are the users?

Who are the users of the system?

Start by collecting pre-existing information

Hunt down previous data (marketing demographics, surveys, past usability tests)

Hold stakeholder interviews

Conduct customer service interviews

Next: Talk to the user: recruiting

Finding the end user

Recruiting

Develop a portrait of the user (a la the persona)

Develop a screener based on this

Recruit typical end users

Professional recruiter

Do it yourself

Offer a consideration: cash or a gift

Watch for ringers

Professional testers

Inarticulate users

Not the end user

Employees

Designers

Programmers

Market researchers

You

Next: Contextual Inquiry

Talk to the end user: Questionnaires

What is it?

Series of questions to be answered by users

Mail,or on website

Quantitative, rather than qualitative

Good for gathering large amounts of facts

Less reliable when dealing with opinions

People lie, and with very little reason

Two types:

Factual

Gender: male or female

Do you drink coffee daily?

Opinion

From a scale from 1 to 5 where 1 is easy and 5 is difficult, how hard was it to use this system?

Would you buy this product?

Tips:

Keep it short

Do multiple surveys, rather than one long

Phrase questions cautiously

Use Likert scales

Keep it anonymous, and state that in the beginning

Allow single vote per IP

Next: Contextual Inquiry

Talk to the end user: Contextual Inquiry

Onsite observation.

What is it?

Observe users in the environment they use your product

Watch them use the product

Understand their behavior by encouraging them to “think out loud”

Remember to compare what they say and what they do.

Technique: Thinking-out-loud

Also used in usability testing, participatory design

Users encouraged to voice their thoughts as they use the product

Try an exercise to illustrate

Running a contextual inquiry

Recruit a number of typical end-users

Visit the location where they would use your product

Ask them to show you how currently do their tasks

Ask them to accomplish those tasks with your product

Analyze your results

Next: personas

Personas

Persona development

Personas are:

A key to user-centered design

Not “The User” but “one particular user”

Inform the entire design process

Who are we designing for?

What are we designing?

How will we design it?

Does this design work?

Persona development/user profiling

Personas are:

Archetypal users

Conglomerates based on user data

Built collaboratively by team

Useful for keeping users front-of-mind

Grace

(62/ female/ widowed/ Little Rock, AR.)

“ I like playing my favorite games online, but if I can play with friends, well that’s even better!”

Personal Background : Her husband has passed on. She has two grown kids, both of whom live far away. She misses the kids, but has a fairly large circle of friends that she spends time with.

Technical Proficiency Profile : Limited. Can use her browser and her email. MS Word confuses her, and she doesn’t like using it. Doesn’t know what an OS is. Tends to click yes if the browser prompts her to do anything, and will click wildly until things work.

History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms : Plays crossword puzzles daily and saves them. Plays card games, PhotoJam, but is offended by South Park cartoons

Shockwave’s opportunity : If Grace can be convinced to participate in community activities, she will become a loyal user of the site. She needs to be sheltered from the sick and twisted content, however.

Sarah

(22/ female/ single/ Washington, DC.)

“ I like AtomFilms because it’s just about the films”

Personal Background : Liberal arts education at college in the Midwest Just graduated and moved to DC. Has a dog Likes music and art. Went to Lilith Fair. Sends out mass emails about causes she cares about, or jokes.

Profession : Editor for non-profit organization ($35K/yr)

History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms : First came to AtomFilms because she did a search on Sundance content. She’s heard about the merger with AtomFilms, and is very worried about AtomFilms losing its edge, or begin buried in the Shockwave.com site. She thinks some controversial material might be hidden if AtomFilm gets merged with Shockwave.

Shockwave’s opportunity : If Shockwave can prove they are trustworthy enough to coax her into signing up, she will become a loyal visitor and shortlist subscriber. If she feels clicking through ads will help Shockwave support independent film, she will.

Scott

(17/ male/ single/ Shaumburg, IL.)

“ I want something cool and really on the edge. Something you can’t get on TV”

#2 most common user

Profession : Full time student (studies exercise and sport science)

Personal Background : Youngest kid in family of five. Likes to be seen as a little rebellious. Excited to be in college, but not really brave enough yet to actually do anything rebellious, so uses Internet to express his self-image.

History with Shockwave and/or AtomFilms : he’s been to Shockwave a few times, and usually clicks games as soon as the navigation bar loads. He likes playing arcade games, and “shoot ‘em up’s.” Spend two hours playing “King of the Hill paintball” recently.

Shockwave’s opportunity : he is already hanging out in the games section regularly. If shockwave can introduce him to it’s sick and twisted material, it can keep him on the website longer, and use his tendency to send out links to spread the word.

Persona development/user profiling

How to create:

Summarize findings, distribute to stakeholders.

Hold a work session with stakeholders & development team to brainstorm personas.

Prioritize and cull lesser personas to develop primary and supporting personas.

Prioritize personas

Prioritize personas primary secondary special

Use personas

Keep them near

Hang them on your wall

Make poster, placemats, puppets

Role-play personas

Evaluate with them

Next: mental models

Analyzing what you’ve learned.

Mental Models - diagram of the end user’s perception of product

Study the user

Map the mental model

Design from the mental model

Designing with what you’ve learned. plan task info execution info evaluate

A simple mental model

A complex model

Map the mental model

Pencil and paper

Write down how the user thinks

Sketch it– don’t worry about being pretty

Adjust by adding business restraints

Design from this model

Share with development team

Designing with what you’ve learned

Persona Scenarios – the power of story telling

Get your personas out

Tell ideal user experience for one persona

Adjust for business constraints

Build for this scenario

Example Persona Scenario

Designing what you’ve learned.

Task analysis

Step by step breakdown of scenarios

Helps define interface/interaction needs

Flushes out potential opportunities for errors

Designing what you’ve learned

Task analysis

Start with scenario

Break it up into discreet tasks

Subdivide into smaller steps

Task analysis Purchasing a purse at nordstroms.com might include the tasks: 1. locate purse 2. add purse to shopping cart 3. check out f. Review order “ CHECK OUT” BECOMES g. Finalize checkout e. Input payment d. Input billing address c. Input shipping address b. Sign in/sign up a. Select checkout

Task analysis And so on…

v. Input state (dropdown of standard abbreviations)

f. Review order “ INPUT BILLING ADDRESS” BECOMES “ CHECK OUT” BECOMES

vi. Input country

g. Finalize checkout

iv. Input street address

e. Input payment

iii. Input street address

d. Input billing address

ii. Input family name

c. Input shipping address

i. Input first name

b. Sign in/sign up d. Input billing address (prepopulate all fields from c.) a. Select checkout

Example Task analysis

Designing for the end user - and with them!

Prototyping

Simple low-fi mockup

Often paper or simple html

Early or not designed

Quick, easy to revise

Designing with the user

How to: Designing and Preparing a paper prototype test

Required: paper, pens, tape, scissors and 3 people

Use paper and hand draw prototype

One person acts as the computer, one as moderator, one takes notes

Ask users to accomplish tasks

Make small changes as needed

Paper prototyping kit available at http://www.infodesign.com.au/usability

Rapid prototyping

Paper or html

Very early stage design, or half complete design

Allow time between tests to make changes

Note where design gets better or worse

You should be making fewer changes as the test continues

The report is partly the final prototype

Next: card sorting

Participatory Card Sort

Way to understand user’s mental models and language

Useful on sites with large amount of content

How to: Running a successful card sort

50-75 pieces of content (not categories!)

Provide as much information as possible while not overwhelming

Lay all content out on a large table, shuffled thoroughly

Provide blanks for category labels

Encourage thinking-out-loud

Be helpful, but do not suggest or advise. Play psychiatrist.

Collate results and look for patterns.

Usability testing—at last– or at first?

Do testing while you still have time to fix problems

Do testing before a redesign

Fighting for it.

You will have to fight. Prepare your arguments in advance. “ User-centered techniques help define target market.” “ Everybody is our market.; that’s too many people to test” ARGUMENT EXCUSE “ Market research is not the same.” “ We’ve done market research.” “ Observe, don’t ask.” “ Users don’t know what they want.” “ Test prototypes.” “ It’s never been done before; so there’s nothing to test.” “ Use discount methods.” “ We don’t have time.” “ Use discount methods.” “ We don’t have the budget.” “ Designers are not users.” “ We have great designers.”