The most successful Web sites are those that put the user's needs, rather than the organization's, at the center of its design. But without User Research and Usability Testing, how can you have a user-centered design?
In this presentation to the Potomac Forum, Director of User Research, Toral Contractor, and Information Architect, Kirsten Miller, outline the following major methods of user research and usability testing, providing case studies for each method with tips and important discoveries. And help you understand how each method fits in to the project lifecycle.
Information Architecture - Tasks & Tools for Web DesignersDennis Deacon
We may not realize we're doing it, but Information Architecture is being performed transparently as part of our web projects.This presentation highlights the key aspects of this trade and provides some best practices.
In the online world, user engagement refers to the quality of the user experience that emphasizes the phenomena associated with wanting to use a web application longer and frequently. User engagement is a multifaceted, complex phenomenon, giving rise to a number of approaches for its measurement: self-reporting (e.g., questionnaires); observational methods (e.g., facial expression analysis, desktop actions); and web analytics using online behavior metrics. These methods represent various trade-offs between the scale of the data analyzed and the depth of understanding. For instance, surveys are hardly scalable but offer rich, qualitative insights, whereas click data can be collected on a large-scale but are more difficult to analyze. Still, the core research questions each type of measurement is able to answer are unclear. This talk will present various efforts aiming at combining approaches to measure engagement and seeking to provide insights into what questions to ask when measuring engagement.
Keynote at 18th International Conference on Application of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB2013), University of Salford, MediaCityUK
Blog: http://labtomarket.wordpress.com
Contextual Inquiry: How Ethnographic Research can Impact the UX of Your WebsiteRachel Vacek
A contextual inquiry is a research study that involves in-depth interviews where users walk through common tasks in the physical environment in which they typically perform them. It can be used to better understand the intents and motivations behind user behavior. In this session, learn what’s needed to conduct a contextual inquiry and how to analyze the ethnographic data once collected. We’ll cover how to synthesize and visualize your findings as sequence models and affinity diagrams that directly inform the development of personas and common task flows. Finally, learn how this process can help guide your design and content strategy efforts while constructing a rich picture of the user experience.
"Creating user-centered websites that drive results" by Savage at the HiMA IS...Robin Tooms
We all know that designing successful websites requires an understanding of how users consume and interact with information online, but taking the first steps toward a user-centric approach requires a process that will uncover the user’s needs and balance them against the site’s goals.
This presentation covers the methods and tools of observation and creation that help:
- Improve usability to generate the right actions
- Increase user engagement with your content and layouts
- Make sense of user data to find solutions
Information Architecture - Tasks & Tools for Web DesignersDennis Deacon
We may not realize we're doing it, but Information Architecture is being performed transparently as part of our web projects.This presentation highlights the key aspects of this trade and provides some best practices.
In the online world, user engagement refers to the quality of the user experience that emphasizes the phenomena associated with wanting to use a web application longer and frequently. User engagement is a multifaceted, complex phenomenon, giving rise to a number of approaches for its measurement: self-reporting (e.g., questionnaires); observational methods (e.g., facial expression analysis, desktop actions); and web analytics using online behavior metrics. These methods represent various trade-offs between the scale of the data analyzed and the depth of understanding. For instance, surveys are hardly scalable but offer rich, qualitative insights, whereas click data can be collected on a large-scale but are more difficult to analyze. Still, the core research questions each type of measurement is able to answer are unclear. This talk will present various efforts aiming at combining approaches to measure engagement and seeking to provide insights into what questions to ask when measuring engagement.
Keynote at 18th International Conference on Application of Natural Language to Information Systems (NLDB2013), University of Salford, MediaCityUK
Blog: http://labtomarket.wordpress.com
Contextual Inquiry: How Ethnographic Research can Impact the UX of Your WebsiteRachel Vacek
A contextual inquiry is a research study that involves in-depth interviews where users walk through common tasks in the physical environment in which they typically perform them. It can be used to better understand the intents and motivations behind user behavior. In this session, learn what’s needed to conduct a contextual inquiry and how to analyze the ethnographic data once collected. We’ll cover how to synthesize and visualize your findings as sequence models and affinity diagrams that directly inform the development of personas and common task flows. Finally, learn how this process can help guide your design and content strategy efforts while constructing a rich picture of the user experience.
"Creating user-centered websites that drive results" by Savage at the HiMA IS...Robin Tooms
We all know that designing successful websites requires an understanding of how users consume and interact with information online, but taking the first steps toward a user-centric approach requires a process that will uncover the user’s needs and balance them against the site’s goals.
This presentation covers the methods and tools of observation and creation that help:
- Improve usability to generate the right actions
- Increase user engagement with your content and layouts
- Make sense of user data to find solutions
Global Redirective Practices: an online workshop for a clientSean Connolly
This slidedeck is an exhaustive report consisting of research in sociological literature, user research in focus groups, competitive analysis of similar tools, and, designing for a client with no money and no technical ability.
[Because this was a presentation, much of the information is supplied by the presenter. Critical information of the presentation has been added to the slide deck as 'Notes:']
A Rubric for Assessing the UX of Online Museum Collections: Preliminary Findi...craigmmacdonald
The increasing popularity of the Web and the proliferation of mobile technologies have had a tremendous impact on museums. The deployment of new technology into physical museum spaces has greatly enhanced the in-person museum experience, but efforts to improve the virtual museum experience have been less successful. This lightning talk describes our preliminary efforts to develop and validate a user experience (UX) assessment rubric for online museum collections. Drawing from existing research and current interface design and usability best practices, this rubric provides a set of criteria for assessing the extent to which an online museum collection provides a positive user experience for online visitors. Future research directions will be presented alongside the results from an initial pilot study.
Presented at the 2014 Museums and the Web conference in Baltimore, MD.
UX Librarians: User Advocates, User Researchers, Usability Evaluators, or All...craigmmacdonald
User Experience (UX) is gaining momentum as a critical success factor across all industries and sectors, including libraries. While usability studies of library websites and related digital interfaces are commonplace, UX is becoming an increasingly popular topic of discussion in the community and is emerging as a new specialization for library professionals. To better understand this phenomenon, this paper reports the results of a qualitative study involving interviews with 16 librarians who have “User Experience” in their official job titles. The results show that UX Librarians share a user-centered mindset and many common responsibilities, including user research, usability testing, and space/service assessments, but each individual UX Librarian is also somewhat unique in how they approach and describe their work. As a whole, the research sheds light on an emerging library specialization and provides a valuable snapshot of the current state of UX Librarianship.
Full paper available at http://www.craigmacdonald.com/research-2/
Lecture 4: Social Web Personalization (2012)Lora Aroyo
This is the fourth lecture in the Social Web course at the VU University Amsterdam
Visit the website for more information: http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/socialweb2012/
Thanks to Fabian Abel for letting me adopt slides from his lectures
"Friendsters @ Work" - a presentation on the Context, Content & Community Collage proactive display application at the Emerging Tech SIG of the SDForum, 12 December 2007
Online social media services enable people to share many aspects of their personal interests and passions with friends, acquaintances and strangers. We are investigating how the display of social media in a workplace context can improve relationships among collocated colleagues. We have designed, developed and deployed the Context, Content and Community Collage, which runs on large LCD touchscreen computers installed in eight locations throughout a research laboratory. This proactive display application senses nearby people via Bluetooth phones, and responds by incrementally adding photos associated with those people to an ambient collage shown on the screen. This paper describes the motivations, goals, design and impact of the system, highlighting the ways the system has increased interactions and improved personal relationships among coworkers at the deployment site. We also look at how the creation of a shared physical window into online media has affected the use of that media
Proactive Displays: Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic Conference (CS...Joe McCarthy
Academic conferences provide a social space for people to present their work, learn about others’ work, and interact informally with one another. However, opportunities for interaction are unevenly distributed among the attendees. We seek to extend these opportunities by allowing attendees to easily reveal something about their background and interests in different settings through the use of proactive displays: computer displays coupled with sensors that can sense and respond to the people nearby. We designed, implemented and deployed a suite of proactive display applications at a recent academic conference: AutoSpeakerID augmented formal conference paper sessions; Ticket2Talk augmented informal coffee breaks. A mixture of qualitative observation and survey response data are used to frame the impacts of these applications from both individual and group perspectives, highlighting the creation of new opportunities for both interaction and distraction. We end with a discussion of how these social space augmentations relate to the concepts of focus and nimbus as well as the problem of shared interaction models.
More information on this work, including the paper associated with this presentation, can be found here: http://interrelativity.com/proactivedisplays/
User Experience (UX) design discussion notes 1 - EATL mobile app dev contest ...Masrur Hannan
Quick discussion on User Experience (UX) design principles, processes associated with UX design work etc. This document is based on the first UX discussion at EATL mobile app development contents' grooming session; notes from 2 more sessions will be added.
Fast, Cheap, and Actionable: Creating an Affordable User Research Program (Th...Michael Powers
Done a usability study? Ready for the next step? Today we have an abundance of fast, affordable user research methods, many of which can be done remotely with real users. Learn about available user research options and how one university runs successful research projects that lead to actionable insights.
Global Redirective Practices: an online workshop for a clientSean Connolly
This slidedeck is an exhaustive report consisting of research in sociological literature, user research in focus groups, competitive analysis of similar tools, and, designing for a client with no money and no technical ability.
[Because this was a presentation, much of the information is supplied by the presenter. Critical information of the presentation has been added to the slide deck as 'Notes:']
A Rubric for Assessing the UX of Online Museum Collections: Preliminary Findi...craigmmacdonald
The increasing popularity of the Web and the proliferation of mobile technologies have had a tremendous impact on museums. The deployment of new technology into physical museum spaces has greatly enhanced the in-person museum experience, but efforts to improve the virtual museum experience have been less successful. This lightning talk describes our preliminary efforts to develop and validate a user experience (UX) assessment rubric for online museum collections. Drawing from existing research and current interface design and usability best practices, this rubric provides a set of criteria for assessing the extent to which an online museum collection provides a positive user experience for online visitors. Future research directions will be presented alongside the results from an initial pilot study.
Presented at the 2014 Museums and the Web conference in Baltimore, MD.
UX Librarians: User Advocates, User Researchers, Usability Evaluators, or All...craigmmacdonald
User Experience (UX) is gaining momentum as a critical success factor across all industries and sectors, including libraries. While usability studies of library websites and related digital interfaces are commonplace, UX is becoming an increasingly popular topic of discussion in the community and is emerging as a new specialization for library professionals. To better understand this phenomenon, this paper reports the results of a qualitative study involving interviews with 16 librarians who have “User Experience” in their official job titles. The results show that UX Librarians share a user-centered mindset and many common responsibilities, including user research, usability testing, and space/service assessments, but each individual UX Librarian is also somewhat unique in how they approach and describe their work. As a whole, the research sheds light on an emerging library specialization and provides a valuable snapshot of the current state of UX Librarianship.
Full paper available at http://www.craigmacdonald.com/research-2/
Lecture 4: Social Web Personalization (2012)Lora Aroyo
This is the fourth lecture in the Social Web course at the VU University Amsterdam
Visit the website for more information: http://semanticweb.cs.vu.nl/socialweb2012/
Thanks to Fabian Abel for letting me adopt slides from his lectures
"Friendsters @ Work" - a presentation on the Context, Content & Community Collage proactive display application at the Emerging Tech SIG of the SDForum, 12 December 2007
Online social media services enable people to share many aspects of their personal interests and passions with friends, acquaintances and strangers. We are investigating how the display of social media in a workplace context can improve relationships among collocated colleagues. We have designed, developed and deployed the Context, Content and Community Collage, which runs on large LCD touchscreen computers installed in eight locations throughout a research laboratory. This proactive display application senses nearby people via Bluetooth phones, and responds by incrementally adding photos associated with those people to an ambient collage shown on the screen. This paper describes the motivations, goals, design and impact of the system, highlighting the ways the system has increased interactions and improved personal relationships among coworkers at the deployment site. We also look at how the creation of a shared physical window into online media has affected the use of that media
Proactive Displays: Augmenting the Social Space of an Academic Conference (CS...Joe McCarthy
Academic conferences provide a social space for people to present their work, learn about others’ work, and interact informally with one another. However, opportunities for interaction are unevenly distributed among the attendees. We seek to extend these opportunities by allowing attendees to easily reveal something about their background and interests in different settings through the use of proactive displays: computer displays coupled with sensors that can sense and respond to the people nearby. We designed, implemented and deployed a suite of proactive display applications at a recent academic conference: AutoSpeakerID augmented formal conference paper sessions; Ticket2Talk augmented informal coffee breaks. A mixture of qualitative observation and survey response data are used to frame the impacts of these applications from both individual and group perspectives, highlighting the creation of new opportunities for both interaction and distraction. We end with a discussion of how these social space augmentations relate to the concepts of focus and nimbus as well as the problem of shared interaction models.
More information on this work, including the paper associated with this presentation, can be found here: http://interrelativity.com/proactivedisplays/
User Experience (UX) design discussion notes 1 - EATL mobile app dev contest ...Masrur Hannan
Quick discussion on User Experience (UX) design principles, processes associated with UX design work etc. This document is based on the first UX discussion at EATL mobile app development contents' grooming session; notes from 2 more sessions will be added.
Fast, Cheap, and Actionable: Creating an Affordable User Research Program (Th...Michael Powers
Done a usability study? Ready for the next step? Today we have an abundance of fast, affordable user research methods, many of which can be done remotely with real users. Learn about available user research options and how one university runs successful research projects that lead to actionable insights.
Fast, Cheap, and Actionable: Creating an Affordable User Research ProgramMichael Powers
Done a usability study? Ready for the next step? Today we have an abundance of fast, affordable website user research methods, many of which can be done remotely with real users. Learn about available user research options and how IUP runs successful research projects that lead to actionable insights.
Conducting focus groups for a website redesignJ. Todd Bennett
Focus groups are a valuable tool for gaining qualitative insight and feedback from your website audiences. They can be conducted throughout a redesign project as needed, whether at the beginning to identify major issues and gain a better understanding of user needs or later in the process to refine language and gauge reaction to visual designs, imagery and messages.
Usability Testing for Survey Research:How to and Best Practicesegeisen
This presentation describes how usability testing of surveys can be used to improve data quality and reduce respondent burden. We describe what kind of surveys can be tested and when. We also provide practice advice for planning, conducting, and analyzing usability tests of surveys.
Website Usability & Eye-tracking by Marco Pretorious (Certified Usability Ana...DrupalCape
Things to consider when designing a website to make your site visitor's life easier!!
Note: There were some videos which were show to illustrate a point, however the presentation provides sufficient information and suggestion so you will not miss them.
This presentation was made at Web Essentials 05. It provides a general overview of user testing and then follows on to show how Eye Tracking can be used in conjunction with traditional Usability techniques, providing more detailed results. A number of case studies are included to support the discussion.
Remote usability testing and remote user research for usabilityUser Vision
From User Vision's presentation on remote usability testing describing some of the main methods, challenges, tools and tips for successful remote usability testing for user experience
UXPA 2023: UX Fracking: Using Mixed Methods to Extract Hidden InsightsUXPA International
Users do not always accurately describe what they mean or feel. There are many reasons for this, ranging from politeness to poor introspection, to lack of sufficient technical vocabulary. Fortunately, UX researchers have tools in their trade to deduce what was really meant. We call this UX Fracking, a mixed methods approach that is optimized for extracting hidden user insights. We will illustrate the dangers of inadequate, superficial research, and how this may lead to outcomes incapable of addressing the users’ core issues. We will explore ways to avoid these pitfalls by leveraging mixed research methods to test hypotheses about the users’ intent and needs. This starts with a thorough understanding of who the user is, their goals, and how they work today, to an approach that combines surveys, interviews, and comment analysis with behavioral observation, and finally, validating the newly discovered user insights with the users themselves.
User Interface Design: Definitions, Processes and PrinciplesMoodLabs
An introduction to User Interface Design, often called UX / UI. Presented by David Little, User Interface Designer, DDH from King's College London Digital Humanities program.
Lean Startup Circle talk in Austin, Texas - August 20, 2013. Presented by Jon-Eric Steinbomer, Progress UX Principal and Research Director. Topics included: personas, remote research techniques, hardware and mobile research methods, card sorting and diary studies.
Intention of the talk was to provide a general framework of UX research methods and guidance to entrepreneurs and startups so that they could feel empowered to either try their own customer research or better understand how it fits in with the UX ecosystem.
User Experience Design Fundamentals - Part 2: Talking with UsersLaura B
#2 in a 3-part series on UX Fundamentals: Talking with Users
Understand why you should talk to users to uncover, validate and/or understand their goals.
Learn how and when to talk with your users:
User research methods
Planning
Best practices for interviews
Know Thy User: The Missing Element in SharePoint Solutions (User Centered Des...Marcy Kellar
You want the most out of your investment in SharePoint – a highly adopted, effective and easy-to-use solution. Achieving these objectives requires more than technical skills and knowledge of the inner-workings of SharePoint features – it requires an understanding of user problems and goals as well as a process that keeps the user at the center of the lifecycle. If you are like many organizations implementing SharePoint, you are using “surrogates” to represent user requirements, collecting inadequate user information and not engaging users later in the design and development process. If this sounds familiar, you may be headed toward a costly redesign.
This session defines both User Centered Design (UCD) and User Experience (UX) concepts and provides tangible methods that incorporate users into your process without compromising business goals.
101 Startups UX. Every aspect of the user's interaction with a product, service or company that make up the user's perceptions of the whole. User experience design as a discipline is concerned with all the elements that together make up that interface, including layout, visual design, text, brand, sound, and interaction. UX works to coordinate these elements to allow for the best possible interaction by users.
Why Does A Start-Up Need A UX Designer?
How Does A UX Designer Work?
Incorporating UX Design At Your Startup
Similar to User Research & Usability Testing, The Key To User-Centered Web Site Design (20)
Global Content Strategy and Enterprise Architecture for Real ROI, Sitecore Sy...NavigationArts
Based on the 2014 Sitecore Symposium presentation, we explore the 8 principles of Global Content Strategy & Enterprise Architecture.
Through enterprise content strategy and engagement practices, Sitecore can help organizations realize tangible value, enable rapid deployment and lead qualification, all within a simple to use interface for non-technical users.
NavigationArts will show how to reduce redundancies around content creation, improve brand consistency across platforms, and establish Key Performance Indicators for measuring and improving eCommerce sales and customer satisfaction.
Whether you are building a new corporate intranet or revising an existing one, achieving success isn’t easy. Change doesn’t happen when we adopt new technologies, it happens when we adopt new behavior.
This presentation unpacks our learnings from designing and delivering many large-scale corporate intranets. Meghan Glasgow covers tips and best practices from understanding and serving your users to working with disparate databases to create a single system.
How can you increase enrollment? Nurture your staff, students and alumni? And how do you reduce the cost of doing so?
This presentation by Chad Van Lier explains how responsive design is an effective and efficient manner in which to engage your empowered and hyperconnected students. If done correctly, it’s impact is far reaching.
5 Critical Keys to Success with Sitecore DMSNavigationArts
Are you putting your analytics to work with your data management system? Collecting data is the easy part, but using it to create real value takes skills, planning, and the proper tools. Sitecore’s integrated analytics platform provides the tools, but what else do you need to reap the benefits?
This webinar is presented by Sitecore and Navigationarts. We highlight what you need to get started and what you need to get the most out of DMS. Case study examples ranging from B to B, B to C, and somewhere in between highlight best practices in custom reporting, audience segmentation, real time personalization, and more.
The webinar covers:
How to plan for DMS including audience analysis and content tagging strategies
The ideal project approach
Best practices in B to B and B to C marketing tactics
Using real time personalization
Understanding engagement tiers; out-of-the-box vs customized
Requirements and Drupal: Planning for Successful ProjectsNavigationArts
When embarking on a development project of any scale, communication and documented requirements are vital to success. The goal of requirements documentation is to clearly communicate what will be delivered and to ensure there is mutual consensus around in-scope functionality, and how the system will look and behave.
In this on demand webinar presented with Acquia, we explore best practices in project communication and associated requirements to support successful Drupal projects.
Intended Audience
This is not a technical presentation, but it does cross the boundary between technical and business owners. It is intended for the following audience groups:
Project Managers
Small business owners
Developers
Technical decision makers interested in Drupal
Web Managers
Topics Covered
R.J. Townsend, the NavigationArts Drupal Practice Lead presents along with Jon Riekse, the NavigationArts Director of Business Analysis. The two discuss:
Lessons learned from past Drupal projects
How a Business Analyst role can complement a project team
How to think about functionality and requirement reuse when applicable
How can requirements help the business (non-technical) community understand how Drupal can help their organization succeed?
Attracting, Engaging and Converting in the Buyer 2.0 WorldNavigationArts
NavigationArts’ Senior Consultant Mark Davenport shows you how to optimize your website for an effective online marketing and sales funnel. Learn how to attract, engage, and convert prospects.
Using Ethnographic User Research to Drive Knowledge Management and Intranet S...NavigationArts
Is your organization leveraging its intranet for the bottom line?
Nearly 97% of all pharmacological research experiments fail to make it to human trials. If lessons learned from these failed experiments are not shared effectively, researchers continually recreate failed experiments resulting in great costs to organizations and their customers.
Topics covered:
* Types of user research
* Persona development
* Intranet adoption strategies
* Knowledge management strategies
* Best practices
Bruns and his team shadowed research scientists to learn how and why they shared - and didn't share - their knowledge with their peers. He will discuss findings of how researchers used (and did not use) their existing knowledge management systems, personas of the different types of pharmaceutical researchers (The Conductor, The Expert, The Advice Seeker, The Hermit, The Human Robot, and The Collaborator), strategies for enlisting the participation of the various personas within the organization, recommendations for how to create the next generation of the client's knowledge management intranet, lessons learned from this study, and best practices on conducting ethnographic user research to guide the success of your organization's intranet.
Leveraging the Web to Extend Global Reach: SHRM India Case StudyNavigationArts
If your organization has audiences or objectives that extend beyond U.S. borders, have you created a Web strategy that supports them? Have you considered users’ needs and expectations through different cultural lenses? Does your site have the content, functionality, and visual cues that will drive success in international markets? Join NavigationArts and the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM) for answers to these questions and more – as these experts discuss the strategy, design, and development behind SHRM’s global expansion online.
To accomplish their objective of becoming the leading HR member association in India, SHRM realized that the most powerful platform they could leverage was the Web. While their existing Web site was optimized for their core membership base in the United States, they realized they needed to tailor the Web site so that the content and design would be engaging for an Indian audience. Learn how NavigationArts designed and developed an India-focused extension of their global Web presence, and the user research that supported their effort.
This presentation will supply key insights on how to create a user-centric Web site for international audiences – how to align with cultural expectations and present an experience that an international community can identify as theirs.
Building a Better Web Enterprise for Colleges and UniversitiesNavigationArts
This presentation from NavigationArts discusses how to leverage the Web to promote your academic reputation; attract new students, donors, and research partners; engage alumni; and develop useful and usable portals for students, faculty, alumni and staff.
To learn more about the user experience design process, and how to evaluate a web design, you'll want to watch Matt Schleyer's presentation. During the session you'll learn: 1) Best practices in web design
2) Common mistakes in web design
3) The right questions to ask about an existing design, or a proposed design
4) The role evolving technology can --and should-- play on your site
Government 2.0: Whats Your Strategy For Public Engagement?NavigationArts
How can you make Web 2.0 work for your government agency? Is standing up individual tools (blogs, wikis, social media site pages, etc.) enough? In this session, we talked about how to transform the successes of individual tools into a cohesive Web 2.0 strategy that reflects the needs of citizens and the goals of stakeholders. We provided actionable tips about how to get started, and how to frame the issues for agency leadership.
Share Point, The Right CMS For Your Website?NavigationArts
Learn about how to evaluate content management systems (CMS) and select the right tool for your business. If you're considering either Microsoft SharePoint or Sitecore for your CMS, you'll want to see how these tools stack up in the evaluation process.
Creating Hospital Websites that Drive Value: M. D. Anderson Case StudyNavigationArts
M. D. Anderson launched a new website in May, 2009 that aligns with key audiences, drives toward organizational goals, and presents a strong brand signal to the marketplace. Join M. D. Anderson's Web Director Alan Powell, along with NavigationArts and Tower Strategies, as they discuss the challenges faced in the redesign and the techniques they used to overcome them, creating a strong site that drives ROI.
Visual Style and Aesthetics: Basics of Visual Design
Visual Design for Enterprise Applications
Range of Visual Styles.
Mobile Interfaces:
Challenges and Opportunities of Mobile Design
Approach to Mobile Design
Patterns
Technoblade The Legacy of a Minecraft Legend.Techno Merch
Technoblade, born Alex on June 1, 1999, was a legendary Minecraft YouTuber known for his sharp wit and exceptional PvP skills. Starting his channel in 2013, he gained nearly 11 million subscribers. His private battle with metastatic sarcoma ended in June 2022, but his enduring legacy continues to inspire millions.
Maximize Your Content with Beautiful Assets : Content & Asset for Landing Page pmgdscunsri
Figma is a cloud-based design tool widely used by designers for prototyping, UI/UX design, and real-time collaboration. With features such as precision pen tools, grid system, and reusable components, Figma makes it easy for teams to work together on design projects. Its flexibility and accessibility make Figma a top choice in the digital age.
Fonts play a crucial role in both User Interface (UI) and User Experience (UX) design. They affect readability, accessibility, aesthetics, and overall user perception.
User Research & Usability Testing, The Key To User-Centered Web Site Design
1. User Researchofand Experience
Architects the User
Usability Testing:
Techniques and Tips for Optimizing Government Web Sites
Toral Contractor, Director of User Research
Kirsten Miller, Information Architect
Presented to Potomac Forum Symposium
Building Better Government Web Sites: From Strategy to Fulfillment
March 30, 2010
2. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Agenda
User Experience Design
User Research
• Methods
• Case Studies & Tips
Usability Testing
• Methods
• Case Studies & Tips
Project Lifecycle
Wrap-Up
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3. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
User Experience Design
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4. User Experience Design Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
User Experience (UX) Design
User-centered design, which puts users rather than organizational or system-related
considerations at the center of the design process, is the foundation of our UX
practice.
Information Architecture
• Structure information and functionality for easy access
• Design effective navigational systems and taxonomies
Interaction Design
• Design complex online operations so they are intuitive for users
• Establish clear priorities for user action
Creative Interface Design
• Create an engaging, attractive and brand-building visual interface
• Create a visual hierarchy to facilitate browsing and scannability
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5. User Experience Design Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
UX Design Inputs
Usability Expertise
• Expert heuristic assessment
Business Goals
• Stakeholder interviews
Our focus today: User Research
• Direct vs. indirect
Usability Testing
• Live site vs. prototype
• Moderated vs. unmoderated
• In-person vs. remote
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6. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
User Research
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7. User Research Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Direct Methods
Contextual inquiry In a nutshell:
• Interview and observe users in their own environment as
they use the site and perform relevant tasks What do
Intercept interviews YOU think?
• “Hi. Would you like to help us improve your web site by
answering a few questions?”
Focus groups
• Structured group interviews used to collect opinions and
insights into user needs and perceptions
User surveys
• Collect a range of qualitative and quantitative data on user
demographics, behavior and opinions
Card sorts
• Users sort, group and label site topics
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8. User Research: Direct Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Contextual Inquiry
Department of State – Bureau of Consular Affairs
Intranet redesign
• Shadowed employees at work
• Inventoried common user tasks both on and off web site
• Asked about browser bookmarks and paper documents
kept close at hand
• Observed ways of browsing and using information
• Inventoried likes and dislikes about current site, wishlist
for redesign
Benefits:
• Understand the environment they work in. Are they
under a lot of stress while working? Do they have a
short amount of time to search for something?
• Opportunity to observe documents they have printed out
at their desks for easy access and reference for
common tasks.
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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9. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Contextual Inquiry Tip:
Pay Attention to the Sticky Notes!
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10. User Research: Direct Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Studies: Intercept Interviews
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center
• Interviewed patients and family members in
the Learning Center who were seeking
information or passing through on their way to
New Patient Orientation.
• Discovered two modes: Research mode (e.g.,
seeking information about a disease, the
organization, or a doctor) and Task mode (e.g.,
quickly print a map or schedule).
George Washington University
• Asked students about their primary reasons for
applying, attending or leaving GW
• Gained understanding of current student
perspectives and expectations of GW
Benefits
• Quick and economical way to sample a target
population
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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12. User Research: Direct Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Focus Group
Nemours
• Interviewed parents of child patients
• Learned of two main types of needs with patient
families: Long-term (when a child has cancer),
and Short-term (when a child has a minor
condition).
• Learned that families weren’t expecting the
hospital to provide information about diseases,
but did want hospital-recommended or approved
sources of information.
Benefits
• Able to interview a large group at once for their
opinions, evaluation or formulation of a concept.
• Group discussion triggers conversations and
topics that may not occur in one-on-one
interviews.
• Pick up on common user language, terminology
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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13. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Focus Group Tip:
Get written feedback from
participants before starting
group discussion.
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14. User Research: Direct Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: User Survey
Department of State – Bureau of Consular Affairs
• ForeSee Survey implemented
• Questions about user roles, goals, satisfaction,
problems encountered, and suggestions for
improvement
• ACSI model questions allow customer satisfaction
benchmarking against other ForeSee clients
Benefits
• Large sample of quantitative data and qualitative
feedback to guide and support design decisions
• Customer segmentation helps refine and prioritize user
profiles
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15. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
User Survey Tips:
• Form questions around user tasks
• Use survey logic to ask targeted
questions to various audiences
• Include some open-ended
questions
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16. User Research: Direct Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Card Sort
The George Washington University
• Open sort: High school students and
prospective undergraduate students grouped
and labeled undergraduate majors
• Closed sort: Freshman evaluated main
navigation of the website
Nemours
• Open sort: Groups of patient families
categorized Nemours content to build the main
navigation.
• Learned that all the participants wanted a “My
Account” area for easy access to payment
options, history of patient activity, appointment
information, and an easy way to communicate
with the doctor.
Benefits
• Formulate and evaluate navigation that aligns to
users’ mental model of the information
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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17. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Card Sort Tips:
• Conduct open card sort first
• Then conduct closed sort to
validate design
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18. User Research Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Indirect Methods
Web Analytics In a nutshell:
• Analyze site traffic and user behavior
Call center interviews and log analysis
What are
• Interview call center agents and review call THEY doing?
logs, if available
Social media sites
• Explore groups that form around common user
interests; review user behavior on your own
social media sites/pages
• Can also use for direct user research
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19. User Research: Indirect Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Web Analytics
Department of State – Bureau of Consular Affairs
intranet redesign
• Number of visitors
• Most popular pages and directories
• Most popular entry and exit pages
• Top referrers/inlinks
• Most popular search terms
• Time on site
• Pages per visit
Benefits
• Understand user behaviors and priorities
• Set success metrics/benchmarks to evaluate post-
launch
• Identify areas for future qualitative research
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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20. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Web Analytics Tip:
Look at exit pages for areas to focus on for
further qualitative research
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21. User Research: Indirect Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Call Center Analytics
NHTSA
• Interviewed call center personnel about
common questions and emails from the public
• Gained insight into customer needs not
currently being met by the web site
Benefits
• Call center agents are the front line for direct
interaction with the public
• Agents often walk customers through the web
site and know where the pain points are
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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22. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Call Center Analytics Tip:
Ask agents about browser
bookmarks and FAQ lists.
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23. User Research: Direct & Indirect Methods Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Studies: Social Media Sites
Indirect: Council of Residential Specialists
• Networking is very important to realtors and
therefore, social networking sites was a key source
for information
• Researched social networking sites to see what
users are discussing, gain insight into their needs
and interests
Direct: Smithsonian
• Help imagine a completely new and more engaging
way for people from around the world to interact with
the Smithsonian Institute online
• Used YouTube to solicit feedback in forms of videos
to understand what users wanted to see from
Smithsonian
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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24. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Social Media Tip:
Sign up for Google alerts so
you know what people are
saying online about your
organization.
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25. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Usability Testing
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26. Usability Testing Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Usability Testing Techniques
Live site vs. Prototype testing
• Live site: Test participants interact with currently existing site
• Prototype: Test participants interact with proposed design; can be
low or high fidelity, paper or electronic
Moderated vs. Unmoderated
• Moderated: Test participants interact with system/prototype and
with researcher/facilitator
• Unmoderated: Test participants interact only with Mix and match!
system/prototype; researcher may observe behavior and/or
analyze data collected by system
Remote vs. In-person
• Remote: Test participant and researcher/facilitator in separate
physical locations
• In-person: Test participant and researcher/facilitator in same
physical location
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27. Usability Testing Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Unmoderated, Remote, Prototype Test
Department of State – travel.state.gov
• Testing navigation menu prototypes using an
online heatmap generator
Benefits
• Participants complete test in their own
environment and whenever they have time
• No need for travel or appointments
• Inexpensive
• Many tools available now for creating remote,
unmoderated usability tests and analyzing
data generated
PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT
DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
DISCOVERY INTEGRATION
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28. Usability Testing Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Studies: Moderated, Live Site Test
Remote: World Bank
• Tested search feature on live public site with
domestic and international users within the
international development community and media
• Conducted free exploration test in which users
formulated their own scenarios true to the way they
use the site
In-person: Department of State - travel.state.gov
• Set specific tasks with correct and incorrect
outcomes; scored and analyzed results
Benefits
• Directly observe user behavior on the site; identify
trouble spots
• Draw out user opinions and insights about
performing tasks while they are doing it
DEVELOPMENT
UX DESIGN DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
INTEGRATION
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29. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Moderated Live Site Test Tip:
International users?
Plan to work odd hours!
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30. Usability Testing Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Case Study: Moderated, Remote, Prototype Test
KidsHealth.org
• Tested a low-fidelity, clickable prototype with
children, teens, parents and teachers to
evaluate design at wireframe stage
Benefits
• Users test in their environment or the context
in which they would use the site
• No need to travel
• Lower participant incentives
• Many tools on the market now to facilitate
remote user testing
PLANNING & DEVELOPMENT
DEPLOYMENT SUPPORT
DISCOVERY INTEGRATION
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31. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Moderated
Remote Test Tip:
Be prepared for
distractions
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32. Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
Project Lifecycle
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33. Project Lifecycle Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
When?
User Research
Contextual inquiry
Intercept interviews
Focus groups
User surveys
Card sorts
Web analytics
Call center interviews, log analysis
Social media sites
Usability Testing
Live site testing
Prototype testing
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34. Project Lifecycle Potomac Forum | March 30, 2010
When?
User Research
Contextual inquiry
Intercept interviews
Focus groups
User surveys
Card sorts
Web analytics
Call center interviews, log analysis
Social media sites
Usability Testing
Live site testing
Prototype testing
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35. User Researchofand Experience
Architects the User
Usability Testing:
Questions?
Toral Contractor, Director of User Research
Kirsten Miller, Information Architect
Presented to Potomac Forum Symposium
Building Better Government Web Sites: From Strategy to Fulfillment
March 30, 2010