Android DevCon 2013 Usability

Easy Mobile
Making your app easier to use
Thursday, May 23, 13

I’ll Cover
‣ The cost of bad usability
‣ Data on successful apps
‣ Examples of good and bad usability
‣ How to easily improve usability
‣ Your apps & problems

My Goal
‣ Help you understand usability
‣ Make it simple to improve
‣ Everyone leave here with 3 practical
things they can do to improve their
app THIS WEEK.

After the Break
‣ How visuals support brand
‣ Applying this to mobile
‣ Making your apps better
‣ The importance of icons

A Little About Me

I like chaos

She does the hard work

We make cool stuff with
cool people.

I also like
‣ Change
‣ Technology
‣ Simple solutions to complex problems

We’re agile

Agile Can Be Scary
Here’s what it means to
Gravity Switch

WORKING SOFTWARE
OVER COMPREHENSIVE DOCUMENTATION
CUSTOMER COLLABORATION
OVER CONTRACT NEGOTIATION
RESPONDING TO CHANGE
OVER FOLLOWING A PLAN
INDIVIDUALS & INTERACTIONS
OVER PROCESSES & TOOLS

Remove Waste
1. Measure
2. Identify waste
3. Remove waste
4. Repeat

Spare the Good
Setup
Visual Design &
Written Voice
Communication
Signoff
Setup
Programming
Communication
Go Live
Monitor &
Improve
Value Ad Non-Value Ad
Design
Revisions

One Tasks & Tickets

Timely Reminders

Zero Inbox

Five-Minute Rule

Rule of 3

Ask for Help

Don’t Multitask
It doesn’t work.

Do The Little Things

2 Weeks. 10 Hours.
Top 10 Reasons
I Procrastinate:
1.

Usability Example
1 Week

Drop-off in the first 2
minutes is HUGE!

Getting Started Screens

We have to do better

Why 1 Week?
Perfect is the enemy of good
Winners ship
We don’t need longer

A Little About You

Why’d ya come?
Existing App
New App

Whacha building?
Game
Utility
Productivity
Music/Photo/Video
Other

$0.00
$.99 - $2.99
$3.99 - $9.99
$9.99+
Other (internal app)
Pricing
$
$
$
?
Free!
$
$$

Company size
Lone Gunslinger
2-10 Employees/Partners
11-100 Employees
100+ Employees

Android only
iDevices & Android
Anything else? HTML5?

Your superpower?
Programming
Design
Usability
Other

Want to learn more
Some experience
Conducted software testing
Measured results
Usability experience

Overview
User
Needs
Business
Needs
Brand
Easy to use.

⇥ Technology ⇤ Design ⌅ Usability ⇧ Business
Geeks start it.
(Programmers, NASA
engineers, etc.)
You won't hit the majority until you
have a commercially viable product!
The building blocks
of technology

The mobile difference
Small
Portable
Personal
Bandwidth matters
Interrupted
Typing sucks

Apps that “get it”
Interrupted (2 mins)
No Internet Needed
Uses Touch

In 2008, Pandora built an iPhone
app that let people stream music.
Almost immediately, 35,000 new
users a day joined Pandora from
their cellphones, doubling the
number of daily signups.

Personal
On the Road
Avoids Typing
No Internet Needed

Successful Apps
Traits

Top iPhone apps

Top iPhone apps
94% Are useful because they’re mobile

Top iPhone apps
94% Are useful because they’re mobile
56% Use touch meaningfully

Top iPhone apps
3% Use video
3% Use the camera meaningfully
4% Use tilt meaningfully
11% Use GPS
15% Are multiplayer
4% Use two of these features
0% Use three or more

What don’t you do?
The most successful
companies have a list of
things they DON’T do.

More Features =
Hard to Use

Whatever
... What about Android Apps?

Why buy Android?
4. Need reading glasses
3. Geek / Tinkerer
2. It’s not Apple
1. International availability

9 Utilities (+0)
5 Geeks (+4)
5 Games (-3)
3 Music (+0)
1 Camera (-1)
1 Office docs (+0)

28 Games (+6)
4 Angry Birds
3 Word games
1 Music (+0)
1 Utility (+1)

Top 20 are ALL games
Games (+10)
Music (-3)
Social media (-2)
News (-2)

21 Games (+9)
4 Photo (+2)
2 Social networking(+2)
1 Education (+1)
1 Entertainment (+1)
1 Weather (+1)
0 News (-2)
0 Music (-3)
Apple “Hall of Fame”

Are You Focused?
‣ Useful BECAUSE it’s mobile?
‣ Uses touch to *enhance* experience
‣ How many of the following does it use?
- Camera
- Video
- Tilt
- GPS
- Multiplayer

Goals Before Usability
What are you trying to do?

Why?
Fame?
Fortune?
Your boss?
Ask why 5 times

Trinity of Usability
Storytelling, wireframing, testing

1. Storytelling
Use case vs. user scenario

Storytelling
Use case = How features work
User scenarios = How people work

2. Wireframing
To wireframe or not to wireframe

Wireframing
‣ “Paper prototyping”
‣ Easy to test
‣ Easy to change
‣ Hand-drawn
‣ No colors/fonts/pictures

Wireframes
spec => wireframe => prototype => experience

3. Usability Testing
What’s useful and what’s not

Tap-Tap
First mobile app
developer to make
$1m profit every
month.
Started with 4 apps,
and built out the one
that tested the best.

When to test

When to test
KnownUnknown

When to test
KnownUnknown
Test

When to test
KnownUnknown
Test
Steal ideas first!

Usability testing
1. Focus Groups
2. Surveys
3. A/B Testing
4. Usability Testing

Focus groups are not
useful for testing.

focus groups
‣ set goals
‣ get buy-in (stakeholders)

Surveys are only useful
for specific questions.

surveys
‣ do we call it refresh or reload?
‣ does this make us look like hacks?
‣ which tagline works best?
‣ which icon gets the most traffic?

surveys
‣ do we call it refresh or reload?
‣ does this make us look like hacks?
‣ which tagline works best?
‣ which icon gets the most traffic?
you can A/B test
these too

A/B testing rocks.

A/B testing
‣ Sanity check big changes
‣ Fine-tune details
‣ Find problems for usability testing
‣ Get buying early from stakeholders

A/B testing
David Hyman (CEO) of
MOG’s #1 tip for mobile
usability is to “reduce
barriers”
How can he increase the
number of PAID members?

A/B testing
‣ Expensive (time consuming)
‣ Requires good statistic tracking
‣ Requires large(ish) sample size

Usability testing

Usability testing
‣ Cheapest and most useful testing
‣ Find out where users get lost
‣ Sanity check yourself

This all sounds good, but what
does real testing look like?
who has an app to test?

Do it now
‣ Test early
‣ Test often
‣ Find biggest problem
‣ Find simplest solution
‣ Repeat

Best Practices
Tips from the masters

Accessibility
Laws and business

The Laws
Under Section 508 (29 U.S.C. ‘794 d),
[government] agencies must give disabled
employees and members of the public
access to information that is comparable to
access available to others.

The Laws
ADA Title III governing public
accommodations for private entities
prohibits discrimination, requires access to
services and facilities, and requires effective
communication.

The Laws
Twenty-First Century Communications and
Video Accessibility Act of 2010

Title I - Communication
‣ Advanced Communication Services
(VOIP, text, email, IM, Video
communication, etc.)
‣ Web browsers on mobile devices
‣ (Hearing aid happens at system level)

Title II - Video
‣ Mostly about TV
‣ TV => Internet must maintain captions
‣ Emergency Information (i.e. 911)

The Numbers
‣ 0.3% of the US is blind
‣ 0.3% of the US are functionally deaf
‣ 2.3% of the US are hard of hearing
‣ Many Android Users on Gingerbread

How important is it?
Lots of wiggle room
Small audience
(Potentially) significant work
HIPPOs

My Rule of Thumb
Would you use your app hands-free
while driving?

Analytics
What is measured improves

Your drop-off by time?

Your weak points?

Write it down
If you don’t have analytics, get them!
If you have them, look at them!
If you look at them, change your behavior!

Screen Sizes
The “F” word again

breakpoints

always rethink tablets

responsive

Users = Bloodhounds
The scent of information

What’s the 3-Click Rule?

What’s the 3-Click Rule?
it’s a myth

The 3 usability sins

1. dead-ends

1. dead-ends
2. backtracks

1. dead-ends
2. backtracks
3. thinking

Navigation & Menus
Giving them the scent of information

Main Menu = Good

Consistent Navigation
labels Android

Fitt’s Law
The first rule of computer usability

Fitt’s law
distance
button size
corners = infinitely large

touch changes it
no abstraction (mouse)
same distance to everything
corners are HARDER to hit

Tiff’s law
poke position
thumbs

poke position
Distance and location don’t matter!

thumbs
arch of thumbs = easy
all others = hard

horizontal vs. vertical
82% of top
Apple apps
lock the
orientation

horizontal vs. vertical
if lots of typing - responsive
if one-handed - vertical (or responsive)
otherwise just pick one and ship it

The first 2 minutes
Don’t loose people before you hook them

people are lazy and you
don’t want unhappy
users.

Key TakeAway
If you do one thing, do usability testing

usability testing
test early
test often
find your biggest problem
do the least work possible
do it again

18 mobile sites
1,000 #Fails
147 recommendations
m-commerce
gravityswith.com/andevcon

There will be a Quiz

scannable home page

Declutter

Give Context

Avoid Dropdowns

Long Pages

Clear Buttons

Careful w/AutoCorrect

Big Data Entry Fields

Show a damn calendar

What did you learn?

Does everyone have 3
ideas?

Ask me questions
http://gravityswitch.com/andevcon
jason@gravityswitch.com
@jasonNmark
Visual Design - up next!
eBooks (Thursday 8:30)

Android DevCon 2013 Usability

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