August 2016 - Adobe IDUG Conference Phoenix Introducing the value of user experience, conversion rate optimization, and some simple tools and resources to an audience of print designers. Talk focuses on methods for learning more about users, where they are in the conversion funnel, and how to meet them in their moment of need.

3. 1. Introduction
2. What is UX?
3. UI/UX/Usability
4. Metrics & Myths
5. What is the User Thinking?
6. Tools of the Trade
9. Expectations
10. UXArtifacts & Deliverables
11. Evolving the Experience
12. Measuring Effectiveness
13. Refinement Strategy
14. Talking Time
OURJOURNEYTODAY,TOGETHER

5. Working with the user in mind allows us to create products that solve
needs, deliver superior results to the client, and follow processes that
lead to successful, repeatable solutions.
WHYDOESUXMATTER?

6. Conversion rate optimization is a marketing term for the processes by
which we increase the performance of marketing collateral (typically
digital) through testing, hypotheses, and research.
WHATISCONVERSIONRATEOPTIMIZATION(CRO)?

10. But how do we know which is which and when? Great question!
You’ll hear about time on page and pages per visit a lot as metrics of
success. Armed with our cookie knowledge, what are some issues
with these metrics?
THISISALLWELLANDGOOD…

16. Hopefully we’re all aware of how our assumptions, presuppositions,
WHATEVER YOU CALL IT, can adversely affect the user
experience. Finding out where the user is emotionally, mentally, and
along the process of making a purchase is key to designing an
experience that works to remove friction rather than adding
frustration. But how…
FINDINGTHESEANSWERSAFFORDABLY

18. Currently free while in beta, loopback.io allows you to watch a user
interact with a product across devices, while also recording their facial
expressions and voice. Fantastic for not only having a user walk you
through their state of mind, but also for capturing the honesty a face
reveals that a speaker may not.
LOOKBACK.IO

20. Mechanical Turk- An Amazon entity, allows for high volume
responses across demographics for very affordable prices. (Most
recent test was $42 for 300 qualified responses.)
Google Consumer Surveys- Allows for targeting respondents in a
certain area, age, and gender. Slightly more expensive than MTurk,
but also very affordable for attitudinal research. (250 representative
respondents for <$100 last use.)
SURVEYS

21. ethnio- Represents the priciest option, but allows you to recruit
users directly from the product, have them complete a screener, and
then schedule a time all through a single interface. It will also allow
you to send an honorarium directly through the application.
SURVEYS,ctd.

23. Sometimes we require having conversations in person with local users
that are also representative. Craig’s List can help in a lot of these
situations, though take some time to schedule. Similarly, using local
networks, connections, or taking advantage of friends or family can
help net representative users without having to wait as long or cast as
wide a net.
CRAIG’SLIST

24. There are a number of tools out there for online testing, and
UserTesting.com is probably the most well known. Their full service is
a paid option and can be reasonable or expensive, depending on your
goals. However, they offer ‘Peek’ as a free service which will have one
of their testers run through a site for a few minutes and just narrate
their experience. It’s a very useful tool for getting baseline feedback
and impression.
UserTesting.com

26. Five second tests are a time-tested method for determining the
efficacy of on page hierarchy. Useful for all sorts of design collateral,
you frame a challenge or task for the participant, reveal the design to
them for five seconds, and the collect their response. It’s very useful
for determining the efficacy of small design decisions, determining gut
preferences, and gauging whether imagery is compelling or not.
FIVESECONDTESTS

27. You can do these tests in person, throughout an office or somewhere
public, or you can perform them online. UsabilityHub.com offers this
service in the form of FiveSecondTest.com (among others!) which
offer a free model based on quid pro quo. There’s a paid subscription
for multiple users and enterprises, but the bread and butter, I’ve
found, is coming up with simple tests and offering feedback yourself.
It helps refine test design chops and helps other designers.
FIVESECONDTESTS,ctd.

29. Sometimes the best, most honest, and easiest to acquire research or
user information is guerrilla testing. Grabbing someone on the street,
in a store, etc. and asking for some time in exchange for an
honorarium (or good vibes) can net authentic reactions from real
users, overcoming some bias difficulty implicit in using testing
services. Grab a phone, a friend, and some questions and hit the
streets. (An example: needed parents of active kids to interact with a
chore app, went to Big Surf, gave out free entry in exchange for time.
Had amazing results and insight in no time.)
GUERILLATESTING

32. I’m a proponent of using Nielsen Norman Group’s usability scoring. It
measures, in no particular order:
• success rate
• time to completion
• error rate
• subjective satisfaction
Full scoring explanation at: https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-metrics/
AWORDONMETRICS

34. Navigate to BBB.org on a mobile device or laptop. Person 1, have
Person 2 search for a car repair shop in Scottsdale with an A+ rating
and business accreditation. Please measure the time it takes to
complete the task, the number of times the user has to go backwards,
and how they feel about the experience.
GRABANEIGHBOR

35. Let’s hear how it went, what did we find? How did the user feel
throughout? How did they feel at the end? How would you gauge the
quality of this experience, just off the cuff? What would you want to
capture to make sure a redesign would be successful?
WHATHAPPENED?

36. This time, Person 2 take Person 1 to yelp.com and try to find the same
thing, save for accreditation. Find a 4 star or higher auto repair place
in Scottsdale with at least 20 reviews. Measure the time it takes to
complete, any errors, and the user’s level of satisfaction after the fact.
GRABTHEMAGAIN

37. Let’s hear how it went, what did we find? How did the user feel
throughout? How did they feel at the end? How would you gauge the
quality of this experience, just off the cuff? What are some differences
between the two experiences? Can we learn something from each?
WHATHAPPENED?

39. UX deliverables vary from project to project, question to question,
sometimes day to day. It can be a difficult field to get comfortable in,
but that discomfort helps propel us to continually find better answers
and methods for determining them. However, there are a very
common deliverables worth looking at: personas, empathy maps,
user journeys, and user tasks & priorities.
UXDELIVERABLES

40. My experience has shown that personas built on real people can be
among the best tools in a UX designers arsenal. They help ground the
project, reorient thinking about actual users instead of preference,
and they help build consensus within the organization. Here’s an
example.
PERSONAS

42. My persona template includes:
• a quote (super important element for humanizing)
• background/demo information
• motivations
• goals
• pain points
• triggers
• technology
PERSONAS,ctd.

43. Empty maps help us understand what a user is thinking, feeling,
seeing, and doing while using our products or websites. Empathy
maps help to remove us from our personal and subjective viewpoints
and allow us to take the user’s perspective when creating, testing, or
modifying designs. Here’s an example.
EMPATHYMAPS

45. Often clients mistake their website as a proxy for their sales process
or a one-stop shop for all customers, prospects, or clients. In some
cases this may be true (research and testing will reveal this), but often
it makes more sense for the website to represent a spot along a
spectrum. Creating user journeys allows us to see where the website
enters a user’s process and design the site to meet those needs and
shepherd the user to the next valuable action. Here’s an example.
USERJOURNEYS

47. For larger websites or sites with multiple content types, we need to
capture which tasks a user wants to complete, order them based on
priority, and evaluate how effectively a current product serves those
needs before moving forward. Typically accomplished with internal
brainstorming, user surveys, and a lot of tears and awkward meeting
moments.
USERTASKS

49. All of this is well and good, J-man, but we have clients with thoughts
and feelings and wallets that we need to consider. Too true,
disembodied narrator, too true. That’s why we take our information
and apply it to business goals and end up with priorities on page and
for flows. There’s a huge wide world here, though, so let’s talk about
the easiest way to put this stuff to work: core model.
COMBININGUSERANDBUSINESSGOALS

50. The point of user testing, in smaller projects particularly, is making
sure the user has a prominent seat at the table when we design
products. It’s a voice that still gets ignored too often. Core model
seeks to rectify that by having an interactive process with the client,
making intentional decisions. You take all of those user tasks we
generated, with all the knowledge about the user we have, and we
match them up with business goals. Where the two overlaps, that is
when a user task and business goal are the same, we have a core
page.
COREMODEL

52. If they let me, I would do hours on core model and it’s effectiveness.
But they won’t. I encourage you to read about it on alistpart.com
along with Gerry McGovern’s very, very good top tasks article on the
same site. It’ll change the way you and your client view their site.
COREMODEL,ctd.

54. There is so, so much stuff out there for us right now. We’ve never had
a better opportunity to see how our designs work, how people
respond to them, and to show the value of good design to our clients.
That said, it can be super overwhelming. Superrrr overwhelming.
There’s heatmapping, click tracking, eye-tracking, all this
optimization stuff still, not to mention different types of small tests,
validation, etc. Try them! There’s so many free trials (check out
fullstory for example!) and so few concrete rules that it’s ok to
experiment and be wrong and get lost.
THEREISSOMUCH

55. Feel free to reach out to me. I can’t promise to have good answers or
lies, but I will try and I’ll likely respond pretty quickly. Try me here:
jeremy@jeremyhamman.com
@fatandhandsome
BUTIFYOUWANT