StirTrek 2012
May 4, 2012
BRING THE USERS:
S E L L I N G U X I N Y O U R O R G A N I Z AT I O N
PRESENTED BY CAROL SMITH
@CAROLOGIC

Reasons not to do UX?

ARGUMENTS AGAINST UX
•Time
•Money
•Can’t talk to our Customers
•Liability
•Not needed
•Invisible ROI
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START NOW!

BRING UX INTO PROJECTS - NOW
•Add wireframing effort
•Group process session (JAD)
•Guerilla study with the uninvolved
•Survey
•Talk to users at lunch
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O B S E R VAT I O N S & I N T E R V I E W S
Learn about the User’s:
• Goals
• Environment
• Real process
• Interruptions
• Attitudes and opinions
• Problems
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Artifacts!
Collect, Copy, Photograph
Page 7 http://www.flickr.com/photos/heygabe/ via http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/
Actual Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/heygabe/47206241/

CARD SORTING
Use to determine:
• Order of information
• Relationships
• Labels for navigation
• Verify correct audience
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/rosenfeldmedia/ via http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

USABILITY TESTING
•Real users doing real tasks
•Using prototypes or live
products
•Not guided, but observed
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/raphaelquinet/513351385/sizes/l/in/photostream/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/raphaelquinet/

YOU DID IT!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13010608@N02/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/13010608@N02/2441933336/sizes/z/in/photostream
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/

Show Off & Sell UX

SHARE WHAT YOU LEARN
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/garryknight/5542172347/sizes/l/in/photostream/

GOALS OF SHARING
•You learned something!
•Help the team:
• understand user’s point of view
• identify new opportunities
• prioritize content and solutions
• design for user’s needs and behaviors
• create new solutions
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Sam Peterson
Editor, Math Specialist, 5 Years Experience
Technology Goal
• Does personal banking, shopping • Improve the educational system by
and email online making great courses for teachers and
students
Concerns Responsibilities
• Needs a good tool for tracking all of the • Manages many different projects at once
assets for each of his projects • Manages a great group of freelancers
• Too much time is spent fixing previous allowing him to focus on other things
projects instead of working on current ones • Keeps track of many separate assets for
• Resigned to having to go back and forth each project
with the publisher a few times to get • Checks work before passing it on to the
everything just right publisher
Sam is 29 years old and lives in New Albany, OH. “I need help
He has a BS in Mathematics from Ohio State University where he also took keeping track of
organizational psychology courses and found that he enjoyed management all of the assets
challenges. for each of my
He has never been interested in teaching, but wants to improve the educational projects.”
system. When he saw a job opening at an educational company he felt that it would
be a great opportunity to do just that.
Sam says despite the frustrations, his company is great to work for and the benefits
can’t be beat.
He isn’t sure what is next for his career - he has taken some training that has been
offered but is not currently interested in taking on new responsibilities.

I N F O R M AT I O N R A D I AT O R S
Represent Your Research
•Facilitate Communication
•Decision Making:
• Navigation
• Features
• Design
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SKEPTICS WILL ASK
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuppini/3211910657/sizes/o/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/cuppini/
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/2.0/

ROI
RETURN ON INVESTMENT

“If you dedicate at least 10
percent of your project budget to
usability activities, you will see an
average of 135 percent
improvement in usability"
- Jakob Nielsen, principal, Nielsen
Norman Group, 2003
http://www.allbusiness.com/company-activities-management/financial/5670570-1.html All Business. Dated:Jan. 8, 2003

Once a system is in development,
correcting a problem
costs 10 times as much
as fixing the same problem in design.
If the system had been released,
it costs 100 times as much
relative to fixing in design.
-Gilb, 1988
-Bias, Randolph, G. and Deborah J. Mayhew. Cost-Justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age. 2005.

I N H O U S E A D VA N TA G E
•Access to users
•Access to data
•Before and after
Small # of Potentially huge
increments of X employees = savings in time
time and effort over time and money
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ROI (CONTINUED)
Small things can make a big difference
• $300,000,000 Button
• Can’t provide right recommendations without observing
and talking with the customers
Spool, Jared. The $300 Million Button. January 14, 2009.
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http://www.uie.com/articles/three_hund_million_button/ Button: BD Create

We have that survey set up
and are getting data from it.
Why would we need anything
more?

SURVEYS
•Questions are an art-form
•Words can have multiple meanings and un-intended
meanings.
•Self reporting cannot be trusted
•People “save face”
• Not that bad, my fault
• I’m sure that’s great too
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OUR EMPLOYEES
•Easy access
•Know the users
•Really invested in this project
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WHY NOT EMPLOYEES?
•Know things others wouldn’t
•Concerns about ego, job, co-workers, etc.
•Not the intended user!
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We’ve won awards!
Why would we want to change the design?
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WHY CHANGE?
•Visual appearance is important
•Must also be usable
•Even the best visual design won’t succeed if:
• Users can’t use it
• Doesn’t help them complete their tasks
(timely and efficiently)
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Too many clicks on the new
design?
More than 83% of Internet users are likely to
leave a Web site if…too many clicks to find
w h a t t h e y ’ r e l o o k i n g f o r.
-Arthur Andersen, 2001
Bias, Randolph, G. and Deborah J. Mayhew. Cost-Justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age. 2005.

Give them a
“Scent”
of information
and they will
happily keep
clicking
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FOCUS GROUP VS. USER RESEARCH
http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarycommission/2840794254/sizes/m/in/photostream/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/librarycommission/
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http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/

W H AT I S T H E D I F F E R E N C E ?
Focus Group User Research
• Recall what they did • Observe actual process,
(may leave out steps step by step, including
or miss-remember) successes and difficulties
• One participant can skew • Equity among participants
conversation • Finds patterns of behavior
• Finds preferences of
users, likes and dislikes
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We Know it’s Difficult,
We Have a Training Program!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/5181464194/sizes/o/in/photostream/
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http://www.flickr.com/photos/kaptainkobold/

TRAINING
•Costs additional time and money
•Less costly to find and correct issues
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TRAINING (CONTINUED)
•How much is their time worth?
• 1 Hour of training?
• 1 Day of training?
• 1 Week of training?
•Company was able to eliminate training and save $140,000
•AT&T saved $2,500,000 in training expenses
Bias & Mayhew, 1994
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http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/usability_in_the_real_world/roi_of_usability.html

Test 100s of users
to get real
results?

N U M B E R O F PA R T I C I PA N T S
Studies have shown
that testing 5-6
representative users
of each user type
will reveal 80% of
usability issues.
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html
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Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users. March 19, 2000.

LET GO OF THE NUMBERS!
Statistical significance is not feasible
ROI would diminish entirely

L O O K F O R PAT T E R N S
•Identify repetition
•After pattern is found,
continuation of study:
• Adds cost
• Delays reporting
• Low probability of
many new findings
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PURPOSE DETERMINES NUMBER
Main Purpose # of Participants
Convincing skeptics 3
(demonstration)
Find serious problems 9-12
Find all serious problems Unknown
Find all problems Unknown
Measure key parameters >20
Molich, Rolf. A Critique of “How to Specify the Participant Group Size for Usability Studies: A Practitioner’s Guide”
Page 39
by Macefield. Journal of Usability Studies. Vol. 5, Issue 3, May 2010. pg. 124-128.

W H AT T H I S M E A N S
•Know your primary user(s) and recruit carefully
• Very specific user group - 5 works
• Less well defined - more (8-15 or more)
•There is controversy
•Study in 2001 was inconclusive due to study design (Spool
and Schroeder)
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DISCLAIMERS
•Testing five users is not always enough
•Must be well recruited – not just anyone
•Smaller groups do not equate better findings
•Low test quality - size doesn’t matter
"Results of usability tests depend considerably
on the evaluator"
- Jacobsen and Hertzum, 2001
Molich, Rolf. A Critique of “How to Specify the Participant Group Size for Usability Studies: A Practitioner’s Guide”
Page 41
by Macefield. Journal of Usability Studies. Vol. 5, Issue 3, May 2010. pg. 124-128.

CREATE ADVOCATES

WHO IS ALREADY THERE?
•Pay attention to who approaches you
•Look for your comrades
•May not be in your area of the organization
•Make time to chat with them
• Share recent articles about UX
• Invite to a UX event locally
• Invite to join LinkedIn or other groups online
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F I N D & C R E AT E N E W A D V O C AT E S
•Use promotions
•Remind everyone of successes
•Provide templates for planning - include UX
•Provide highlights and/or reports that will help them sell UX
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B U I L D U X I N T H E O R G A N I Z AT I O N
•Identify C-level person
• Get their support for a small study
• Invite them to sessions
• Make sure they see benefits gained
• Remind them of success next time
• Help them become a promoter
•Consider building department from within
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SEE SHARED GOALS
•Increase sales
•Save time and money
•Create happy customers
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T H E O R G A N I Z AT I O N B E N E F I T S F R O M U X
•Sell more product
•Discover unmet needs
•Reduce:
• Costs (support, training)
• Need for updates and maintenance releases
Page 47
From A Practical Guide to Usability Testing by Joseph Dumas and Janice Redish, 1999. Page 18.

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE
“Customers are the only stakeholders who are not
represented in design meetings.
If it hurts users and will cause customers to leave? Silence.
Unless you speak up. So do it.”
-Jakob Nielsen
Usability Evangelism: Beneficial or Land Grab? By Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D
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http://www.developer.nokia.com/Design/Usability_evangelism.xhtml

1 0 WAY S T O P R O M O T E U X
1. Invite everyone to observe via remote observation
2. Schedule testing at a regular time
3. Promote availability of testing internally
4. Network within organization and share what you do
5. Hold Brownbag sessions
6. Invite staff to local UX events
7. Share recommendations and successes widely
8. Post information radiators in shared locations
9. Hold a World Usability Day Event
10. Invite everyone to observe UX sessions in-person
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REPRESENT YOUR USERS
They are depending on you!

RECOMMENDED READINGS
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5

C O N TA C T C A R O L
@carologic
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/caroljsmith
slideshare.net/carologic
speakerrate.com/speakers/15585-caroljsmith
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REFERENCES
•Cost-Justifying Usability: An Update for the Internet Age, Randolph G. Bias and
Deborah J. Mayhew
•The $300 Million Button by Jared Spool
•Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox. Why You Only Need to Test with 5 Users. March 19,
2000.
•Measuring the User Experience by Bill Albert and Tom Tullis
•Usability Evangelism: Beneficial or Land Grab? by Jakob Nielsen, Ph.D
•http://www.upassoc.org/usability_resources/usability_in_the_real_world/roi_of_
usability.html
•Molich, Rolf. A Critique of “How to Specify the Participant Group Size for
Usability Studies: A Practitioner’s Guide” by Macefield. Journal of Usability
Studies. Vol. 5, Issue 3, May 2010. pg. 124-128.
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