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

ﬔisIsIndexed.com

You
are a
user experience
designer

Shawn Liu & Danny Wen
Founders
Iridesco
New York, NY

http://getharvest.com

Design research
Web analytics
Usability testing
Experimentation
& iteration

Design
research
What do our users actually need?

Footer

Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

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

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

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

Design Research
Make it easy for customers to
reach you
Log their requests & use them to
prioritize new features
Dig deeper to discover the
underlying problems
Keep in touch

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

Web Analytics
Understand your traffic cycles
Use analytics tools to uncover
usage patterns
Test design variations
Explore your search logs to see
what people are looking for

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 participant what she’s
supposed to be doing
Asks “What are your general feelings
about this?” and then lets participant 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

Where to Find Participants
Friends and family
Folks in your office who don’t work on
the project: receptionist, HR, sales
Twitter followers
Starbucks
Craigslist

Tools to Capture Feedback

#1 Most Common Question:
What about testing
online?

Online Testing Tools

Drawbacks of Online Tools
Don’t see the participants’
expressions and body language
Can’t ask probing, follow-up questions
A lot harder to internalize the findings
It’s cowardly – you need to feel the
embarrassment of a sucky design

Usability Testing
Test your designs early and oen
Informal tests are just as valuable
Use people in your environment who
aren’t involved in the project
Choose participants of different
backgrounds & capabilities
Do it yourself & acknowledge your
poor design choices

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

Roz Duffy
Web Developer
Comcast Interactive Media
Philadelphia, PA

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

An amazing thing
happened because of
this presentation

A relationship formed

An Experiment:
Engineering Lab Week

Experimentation & Iteration
Never stop improving your product
Make your working environment
a creative one
Encourage everyone on the team
to solve problems together
Soak up inspiration from
everywhere

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

Design research
Web analytics
Usability testing
Experimentation
& iteration

IMPORTANT STUFF
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

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