DIY UX
Give Your Users
an Upgrade
(Without Calling In a Pro)
Whitney Hess
whitney@whitneyhess.com
@whitneyhess
http://whitneyhess.com

Hi, I’m Whitney Hess
User Experience Designer
Consultant
New Yorker
@whitneyhess

You
are a
user experience
designer

Bumbling idiot Journalism major

You

ﬔisIsIndexed.com

Shawn Liu & Danny Wen
Founders
Iridesco
New York, NY

http://getharvest.com

Serving users in over 100 countries worldwide
About 60% of users are from the United States
Teams within: Some notable agencies:
• Burton Snowboards • Big Spaceship
• Nike • Blue Flavor
• Volkswagen • Adaptive Path
• Kiva.org • Cuban Council
• QuikSilver Apparel
• Harvard Business School

Design
research
What do our users actually need?

Footer

Iridesco’s Gmail labels

Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

“We don’t just want to
patch; we want to
address the core
problem.”
– Iridesco

http://iridesco.wufoo.com/forms/harvest-survey/

“Customers love to tell
you their workflow.”
– Iridesco

For more on design research...
Observing the
User Experience
Mike Kuniavsky

Web
analytics
What are our users actually doing?

“We don’t believe in
data-driven design,
but data doesn’t lie .”
*
– Iridesco
* Sometimes it does

One month of visits
Mon Mon Mon Mon
Highest usage at
beginning of week
Dropoffs on weekends
Somewhat lower
usage mid-month

Crazyegg.com

Crazyegg.com

Google Website Optimizer
Same exact page with three
different Free Trial buttons
Found green and blue buttons
performed much better than
muted gray button
10% improvement in trial
acquisition over two buttons
(Learn More and Free Trial)

Matthew Marco
Visual Designer
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.

Chief Administrative Officer ->
House Information Resources ->
CAO Advanced Business Solutions ->
Web Solutions Branch

House.gov

97 most frequent queries on House.gov
and top 10 results of each

97 most frequent queries on House.gov
and top 10 results of each

Queries are, in fact, case-sensitive.
“Nancy Pelosi” and “nancy pelosi” produce
different quantities of results
ﬔe Pell Grant Underfunding PDF by the
Oversight Committee appears in the top-ten
results of most state searches; more relevant
than any member-generated page in Colorado,
Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas
ﬔere is no apparent weight given to the title of a
document. Untitled documents are not subdued
in the results
http://www.matthewtmarco.com/studies/2007/pathetic-to-absurd-to-disheartening-in-97-queries/

Sunday, September 28, 2008
1347 bailout
419 bailout bill
282 bail out
208 bailout plan
184 financial services
132 Search Other Sites
130 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
103 bail out bill
95 financial bailout
80 Bailout
78 tarp
68 email
68 700 billion
66 rescue plan
66 rescue bill
66 old AND eye AND 6
64 financial
62 rescue
62 financial markets bill
58 contact

“Stats let me refute the
client’s notion of how
their constituents were
behaving.”
– Matthew Marco, House.gov

For more on web analytics...
Web Analytics:
An Hour a Day
Avinash Kaushik

Usability
testing
How well does our stuff actually work?

NOT Shawn & wife

Usability Testing Light
Shows a build, a prototype, a comp, a
sketch, whatever
Doesn’t tell her what she’s supposed to
be doing
Asks “What are your general feelings
about this?” and then lets her talk

“‘It looks good’
is the worst feedback
we can get.”
– Iridesco

“You need to have
humility and listen.
Users aren’t always right,
but you need to
hear them.”
– Iridesco

For more on usability testing...
Handbook of
Usability Testing
Jeffrey Rubin and
Dana Chisnell

Experimentation
& iteration
How are we always getting better?

Sketch
Photoshop
Test
Static HTML prototype
Test again
Working prototype
Test again
Tweak
Launch quietly
Get feedback
Tweak

Evolution of the Manage Project screen

1 2

3 4

Final design

Roz Duffy
Web Developer
Comcast Interactive Media
Philadelphia, PA

Comcast
Center

Refresh Philly - June 2009

“We aren’t always
working on the most
interesting stuff, but we
always want to work
smarter.”
– Roz Duffy, Comcast Interactive Media

For more on experimentation and iteration...
Sketching User
Experiences
Bill Buxton

Design research
Web analytics
Usability testing
Experimentation
& iteration

Takeaways
Always be listening
Ask questions to get to underlying problems
Use data and anecdotes to inform the design
Test your designs and have the humility to
admit you’re wrong
Complete the feedback loop
Never stop trying to make things better

Make your users happy
and they will thank you

“Having customers feel like
they’re being heard
translates to word of mouth
and more business.”
– Iridesco

ﬔank you!
Special thanks to:
Danny Wen and Shawn Liu of Iridesco,
Matthew Marco, and Roz Duffy
Whitney Hess
whitney@whitneyhess.com
@whitneyhess
http://whitneyhess.com