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.”

More reading
Contextual Design
Don’t Make Me Think
Designing Web Usability
Inmates are Running the Asylum
Software For Use
All can be found at
http://www.eleganthack.com/reading/
(and more!)

More reading
Usable Web http://www.usableweb.com
Usability Toolbox http://www.best.com/~jthom/usability/
Ask Tog http://www.asktog.com/
Useit.com – Jakob! http://www.useit.com
UIE.com – Jared
http://www.uie.com

Conclusion
User-centered design works
It makes good business sense
It’s affordable
It’s satisfying

Questions? - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Christina Wodtke :: christina@carboniq.com Carbon IQ User Experience Group http://www.carboniq.com tel: 415 824 7090

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Beyond Usability

by cwodtke on Jun 11, 2007

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Beyond Usability — Presentation Transcript