Re: [IxDA Discuss] What is a subset of the other?
User experience is a fairly recent concept that seems to be used most frequently to describe the presentation layer of a digital media product. Many roles, some of which are overlapping depending on the team setting, contribute work products that impact the user experience: business strategy, marketing, merchandising, user experience strategy, user research, interaction design, information architecture, visual design, content strategy, site development, etc. A director or manager of user experience needs to have authority and budget to ensure quality of all these work stream and products, including interaction design. Interaction design can include work products, e.g. functional specifications, which in some team settings have implications outside of user experience. Lagniappe: Customer experience is broader than user experience. I would like to see user experience have dotted line reporting to customer experience, which covers customer touchpoints across all channels. Paul Bryan Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=49125 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The "magic place" between user research and design - tips & stories
When the reward justifies the effort, another aspect of connecting the wires between research and design involves an attempt at quantification. How prevalent is that persona attribute or behavior in our audience? How did that design component we came up with in the concepting session for the last release fare in terms of conversion? Do we have any evidence to support the notion that an augmented reality tennis shoe viewer will move the needle? Perhaps not during the magic moments, so that creativity can tap out, but shortly afterward. The qualitative data that many design research projects generate is very helpful for understanding patterns and sequences, but not at all useful for understanding prevalence, and therefore relative priority, except to define the key concepts that need to be operationalized and then measured. Paul Bryan Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) Blog: Virtual Floorspace ( http://www.virtualfloorspace.com ) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The "magic place" between user research and design - tips & stories
Great topic. Success depends on "connecting the wires" between research results and subsequent action. Our approach for connecting the wires can be summed up in 3 points. 1) Begin with the end in mind At the start of every research project, we identify the people who are expected to take the results and turn them into a reality, and we ask to meet with them so we can identify the design parameters we can realistically impact. Ignoring them until it's time to socialize the results is a big mistake, because at that point they may actively deep six the results. The format of the results needs to be something they are prepared to own and carry forward. For our projects, this often involves conceptual wireframes with medium fidelity design components. 2) Provide specific, unambiguous recommendations Findings are great, but many clients don't know what to do with findings. They need specific recommendations, whether text or conceptual diagrams. One client actually forwarded me an internal thread that said, "We're concerned that the experts are going to leave us something that is brilliant but then we don't know what to do with it. Can they sit down with us and discuss specific design changes?" The answer was, of course, yes. If recommendations are brilliant but non-directional, people not intimately acquainted with the details will question the value of the exercise. 3) Give stakeholders a vivid picture of the issues Whenever possible, we include a small video reel that highlights the core issues. We often conduct in-depth interviews or ethnographic research in homes, workplaces, retail outlets, etc., so it's relatively easy to pull together video scenes that drive home the findings and support the recommendations. I've found that the busiest executive sponsor or design director will pay rapt attention to 3 minutes of video, but may get glassy eyes or start texting with the the same volume of presentation data. The details are only for the people who want and need them. In one presentation for a media company, the sponsors literally clapped after the personas presentation. Paul Bryan Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) %u2028 Blog: Virtual Floorspace ( http://www.virtualfloorspace.com ) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48929 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Category Best Practice for eCommerce site
Hi Paul, I have reviewed web analytics and interviewed customers for a number of top e-commerce sites. Their data is proprietary, but I can relate some high level findings that may help your design decision-making. The use of product sub-categories to navigate is highly category dependent. For example, a high percentage of customers click through categories for products that are primarily evaluated through their features, like appliances and electronics. On the other hand, customers prefer images for products where style issues are the chief decision criteria, like clothes and patio furniture. For clothes, customers typically first look for a visual that represents the general category of clothing they are interested in, which is a semantic approach to wayfinding even though it involves images, because the images are merely representatives of the taxonomy category. Beyond that level they are usually scanning visuals rather than using sub-category navigation. For patio furniture, customers often ignore text altogether and start clicking on pictures that they think will give them an idea of the available assortment that matches their style filter. I've seen reports that over 50% of users will use search instead of clicking through categories. This may be true in qualitative studies, but I don't see anywhere near that percentage in the e-commerce analytics I've reviewed, for sites receiving upwards of a million visitors per month. It's usually under 20% at the category level. So what's the point? The number of categories that customers are willing to scan through to find what they're looking for depends on the category of merchandise your site carries. For products that are evaluated on the basis of features and that have unambiguous taxonomies, like electronics and appliances, I've seen very high click through rates even at the bottom of a 25-category list, and category navigation is used deep into the catalog. For products that are scanned primarily by appearance, a top level cut of 6 - 12 general product types, followed by pages that guide primarily through visuals or in-context scenes that can be rapidly scanned. For products where customers call the same thing by different names, a dozen or so sub-categories, with intensive search term mapping effort behind the scenes. I hope that helps. Paul Bryan %u2028 Usography ( http://www.usography.com ) %u2028 Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts %u2028 Blog: bryania ( http://www.bryania.com ) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=48303 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need for Portal Design Guidelines?
Paul, You are right, there are patterns. Those patterns would be very interesting and useful to portal managers. They should also understand that simply copying portal best practices will lead to the perfect portal, but for some other company. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47479 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Question on brainstorming personas
Understanding what real people will do when presented with your design requires data. If you don't have budget for research, I suggest taking a weekend to go to a place where people do whatever activity you are designing for, observe them for a few hours, and jot down attributes and behaviors that you feel are germane to the overall context and experience. How do charcteristics like age, affluence, preparedness, experience in the topic, flexibility, hurry, etc. impact what they do? The list you create from this activity is a starter set of attributes and behaviors that you can bring into your exercise that might carry more weight than making it all up. It doesn't cost you anything other than a weekend. Our approach to persona creation involves the step I described above, but a few more as well. It's described in some high level bullet points in this article: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/09/user-archetypes-vs-personas/ If you want a ready-made persona to participate in your design activities, feel free to use this one: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/09/using-personas-to-guide-web-design/ Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47562 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Survey design
Depends on the degree of confidence you want to have that your results are representative of the larger population. If you want to have a high confidence level and a small margin of error, then I agree the comments about statistical rigor above. If, on the other hand you are trying to discover concepts, variables, motivations, etc. for further processing, and the survey is the only means you have to reach the people you're interested in, then treat the survey like a mini-interview and gather semi-structured data to bring into other exercises to develop more fully. These results are not representative in terms of percentages of the larger population. Many would say that is an improper use of the survey technique, but people do non-statistical surveys all the time to suit their purposes. You just need to know what you're getting out of it so that you don't misrepresent the results. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47480 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need for Portal Design Guidelines?
I question the usefulness of UX guidelines for Portals. I've worked on the user experience strategy for several Portals that serve up to hundreds of thousands of employees each, and in each case the optimal user experience was so tightly coupled to the culture, lines of business, data warehouse, and idiosyncracies of that particular business, that we had to start fresh with discovery research activities that gave us a clear understanding of executive and stakeholder perspectives, user archetypes, existing content, business drivers for communication, manager's toolkit structure, project approach, etc. etc. The portal user experience design rationale was based on the data specific to each company. The story of one such project for Delta is here: http://www.usography.com/docs/Usography_Information_Needs_Flight_Attendants.pdf The story of a design strategy project for Cox's portal is here: http://www.intranetjournal.com/articles/200705/ij_05_24_07a.html The resulting user experience of these two portals couldn't have been more dissimilar, because the business and cultural DNA of the companies are dissimilar. Many different kinds of people could ride in my car and feel comfortable, but far fewer could wear my shoes and feel comfortable. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47479 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Representing visually the reasoning behind the sitemap.
Hi George, This request might be more straightforward than you think. Since you mentioned that you have a UX study that supports your decisions, there is presumably a rationale that has lead you to organize the site the way that you did in the site map. You didn't say what kind of system you are designing. I'm guessing it is either a consumer-facing site, an employee-facing site, or a b2b site. In any of these cases, you can create a concept model or interaction model that reflects the entities involved, the priorities your users have expressed, and the pattern or sequence or media that you intend to use to engage users first at an introductory level, an on-going usage level, and at a loyalty level. If you start sketching these entities, relationships, and priorities, using size, position, sequence etc. to indicate relative importance or ordering, you will end up with a visual representation of the organizational structure, and this should correspond to the site map. If not, you should consider modifying the site map. I posted some simple concept model/interaction model diagram types that I've used to give project sponsors a quick visual representation of the rationale for how a site or interactive piece is structured. They are on my personal site: http://www.bryania.com/?p=91 Hope that helps, /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47409 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Good books or resources for interview techniques
Hi Liou, My blog discusses interview techniques for design research. It is called Virtual Floorspace, reflecting its focus on e-commerce design strategy, so I'm not sure it applies to your domain of practice. To give you an idea about the contents, here are some sample topics: Selecting Participants http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/08/depth-interviews-selecting-participants/ Interview Questions To Understand Motivations http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/?s=In-Depth Interviews: User Motivations Interview Data Matters For UX Design http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/08/what-customer-data-matters-for-ux-design/ Interview Data to Capture for Personas http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/09/using-personas-to-guide-web-design/ Interview Techniques For Obtaining A Case History http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/?s=case history Depth Interviews vs. Surveys in Design Research http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/09/depth-interviews-vs-surveys-in-design-research/ Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47332 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Should an e-commerce design agency test the usability of its own designs?
Recently I was on an e-commerce strategy project. I received a usability test report that the previous agency had produced after testing their own design work. I went back to the source tapes and there seemed to be a dramatic difference between the level of problems users were having in the sessions, and the resulting report. I know it's convenient for e-commerce site owners to get an integrated package, esp. when large MSA's are in place. And trying to keep ahead of Agile cycles puts strain on the schedule and number of partners. But I'm just wondering if readers of this list feel like there is an inherent conflict of interest, or if testing is viewed as a normal component of a design partner relationship. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] E-Commerce Terminology Survey (Correction)
I don't think e-commerce sites should avoid words that IxDA members don't understand, as long as those words are not required to find and evaluate the product. They add precision for the people who do understand them. I agree with Jared visual cues are more relevant than product names and descriptions in women's apparel, although catalog taxonomy and search seem to play more of a role in the lingerie sub-category. In his list of apparel navigation priorities (images, price, etc.), I would add brand (http://www.brandkeys.com/news/press/042209 WWD Women Seeking Value.pdf), as well as size category or department (misses, petite, etc.), particularly if it is a store that women shop at retail locations in addition to online. Just in case any women's apparel e-retailers happen upon this thread, I have a suggestion for you. Consider offering a rear view of products in the image options where relevant. Quite a few women that I've interviewed said they would not proceed to purchase in an online shopping session because they wanted to see what an article of clothing looked like from behind. Oprah thinks it's important too, at least with jeans. Her audience (http://www.quantcast.com/oprah.com) represents a significant portion of online apparel shoppers, since by some estimates 65% of online apparel sales are made by women over age 35 (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124286245782441235.html#mod=rss_Weekend_Journal). Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47247 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Distinguishing between UCD, UX, and usability
Sorry about the lost blog posting. The URL is: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/2009/11/ucd-ux-usability/ @Jerome: I don't think it's splitting hairs. I've read some recent holy wars on this discussion board that involved these concepts, and I think a clear representation of UCD, UX, and Usability, and their often different application to web sites, software design, and product design would help us get beyond blindfolded nerf bat battles to a transfer of knowledge best practices. Instead of passionately arguing that a particular approach is universally right or wrong, discuss why it is right or wrong to your specific organizational or design context. @Dan: Perhaps it isn't a question of role (although large companies often separate the usability testing group from UX strategists and designers), but it is more than terminology. It is a question of focus and application of resources. For example, since many clients are familiar with the term usability, they view it as the medicine that will cure all their conversion woes. It won't. Some situations require a step back to look at the overall online experience, or perhaps even the multichannel experience, in order to solve the real issues behind their woes. Understanding the distinction between these concepts, rather than just the definitions of the terms, will help them make better decisions. @Davin: I agree that when we get a chance to reflect on our work, clear terminology leads to clear thinking, which helps unify and free-up the creative work we do. I would like to see this type of thinking result in a discussion framework in which specific research, strategy and design decisions can be presented in a non-proprietary way. @Dave: I think the distinction does matter. Look at all the job ads on LinkedIn, Indeed, IxDA etc. that your students and mentees may want to apply for. They variously require UX, UCD, usability, SEO, SEM, IA, web optimization, design strategy, interaction design, etc. Depending on the job, they may need to articulate the different components of a user experience they are familiar with, and how they would optimize those components through various project roles, tools, methods, etc. In a different interview they may need to be able to articulate how they would go about executing a UCD strategy for a given program or design project. How can UX and UCD be considered "dead" if I get asked to explain my understanding and approach to these concepts all the time in client meetings, with increasing frequency, and these terms appear all over the job boards? /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=47132 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Distinguishing between UCD, UX, and usability
A friend and sometimes client told me over lunch this week, "I think of you as the usability guy." I didn't much care for this, because I think of usability in terms of activities rather than an identity to aspire to. It got me thinking about related terms, like "user experience" (UX), and its cousin, user-centered design (UCD). As a result of those thoughts, I took some time to differentiate these terms, because even though they are often used interchangeably, I think they are different in ways that are important to interaction design work in related but distinct fields. The details of the term distinctions are on my blog: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com . I'll just post the conclusion here: Usability: Important for all digital experiences, however, for software design and development it is a critical measuring stick. Software should be continually shaped by on-going, small rounds of usability testing. UCD: Web sites should speak the language of the people who use them, not the organizations that sponsor them or the people who design and develop them. UCD best practices should be adopted at the beginning of every web site project, scaled appropriately to the budget and the anticipated revenue or other gain. UX: Products, services, public spaces, and web sites that need to span multiple channels and areas of life will fall or rise based on their user experience design. Customer experience is gaining momentum as an entity in its own right. Please take a look at the blog, and let me what you think about the distinctions I draw between these terms. Thanks! Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] The Perpetual Scrolling Web Pages
The perpetual scroll example above reminds me of the sequential access paradigm of an audio cassette. You can't get to the middle until you've scrolled through each section. I think the dynamically built long pages would be easier to use if they loaded with a visual representation of the whole information set, and a means to drop yourself down into any part of it, preferably with pagination so you can return to the house you liked on screen 23, instead of reading through descriptions one by one to find it. I suspect people would view more products per search if they could quickly scan an "endless aisle" with one interaction (click and drag) instead of accessing catalog list pages as currently (click, scroll, find next button, click, scroll, find next button, click, etc). Particularly if pages were sortable by category-specific parameters and had virtual page number display during scrolling (like MS Word) for pseudo-random access. Would need to test it, but I like the potential for familiar rapid-scanning cognitive processes. Paul Bryan Usography (http//www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46939 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] New from Mozilla Labs - Raindrop - Web-based communication aggregator
As interesting to me as the tool is the design process that Mozilla has adopted during early UI iterations. Bryan Clark from the Mozilla team posted a message about the process on his blog (http://clarkbw.net/blog/2009/10/22/raindrop/). A few days ago Mozilla started posting design comps of Raindrop on Flickr for review and commentary (http://www.flickr.com/groups/raindropdesign/). Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) LInked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46968 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] To spec or not to spec?
I read some of the Scott Ambler entries Ambrose listed above. This confirmed rather than contradicted my assertion that the need for specifications is inversely proportional to the degree to which the people writing the code are separated from decisions about design, in a physical distance, process, or organizational sense. Scott says that when you are "specifying work for another group..." that this is a situation "...where AM likely isn't appropriate." I can't think of a web project that I've worked on since my first web design job in 1995 in Barcelona that there haven't been multiple parties focused on design. There can easily be 3 or 4 large companies involved, perhaps a half dozen smaller companies each with some role in the design. The complete team can be over 100 people, perhaps on multiple continents. I'm not trying to say this scenario is superior or more valuable than the one Scott describes. I'm just saying that this list includes people from different worlds, but the arguments are passionately pretending that there is one right answer and the other people are idiots. No, it's simply that the conditions in which interaction designers find themselves are extremely different and there are multiple right answers. Elsewhere Scott says: "I ask the individual(s) requesting the documents if they also want to be seen as responsible for the project's failure because the development team was too busy focusing on needless documentation and not on building software." This clearly describes a situation where a small team of 10 or 20 people are sitting in a room "doin' software." It doesn't remotely describe the situations I typically find myself in, where developers rarely have any channel of communication back to people who make decisions on the client side. The communications with the client are handled by people who have that as their sole job responsibility. These people, typically client partners or program managers, would certainly throw Scott's backside into the street the next day if he talked that way to a client. But since they are "people people," they would probably be aware that Scott is very talented at what he does, and simply keep him many layers removed from the "design decision dance" that large agencies do with clients. In large web projects, that dance is done primarily on one platform: design documentation. Often long before there is a prototype, depending on the complexity of the architecture and the skills of the team. There will be changes during development, but those changes will be extremely expensive and will have to escalate up through multiple chains of command. Recently I was in a meeting where the whole internal web team was assembled to discuss the progress of an e-commerce project. There were about 60 people in the room from the client side alone. This didn't include business strategy consultants or offshore development resources. We went through the design documentation page by page to be sure everyone knew what they had to produce. That was the first and only "all hands" meeting to my knowledge. It probably cost in the neighborhood of $50,000 to conduct that one set of meetings. The team members didn't later decide on the fly how they were going to shape the product as they went along. They followed the blueprint. Inefficient? Perhaps. But the reason for this separation of labor is that each interactive element in the final product has a direct impact on what millions of people will do when they get to that page. The people informing the decision on that element have a lot of data, quantitative and qualitative, that tells them which element will have the most positive impact, or they know what they need to do to get that data. It's their full-time job. Again, I'm not saying this is in any way superior to small teams doing great things using Agile methodology or creating breakthrough product designs. Being a developer or engineer and having that kind of control over a product is probably very satisfying and efficient. But that is only one of many work contexts populated by interaction designers. About all the Agile references that eschew documentation: I don't have any doubt that top-tier agencies like Sapient, Razorfish, Critical Mass, LBi, Macquarium, or Resource Interactive can make Agile work for the user experience design of large web sites. I'm all for the focus on efficiency, particularly where data gathering and design rationale can occur a cycle or two ahead. But I also think the wholesale adoption of Agile in 2008 and 2009 simply for cost considerations without thinking through the details of user experience impact will lead to many, many exploding cigars in 2010 and 2011, after a few quarters of analytics have a chance to tell the full story. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46833
Re: [IxDA Discuss] To spec or not to spec?
I%u2019m trying to imagine the work scenes that are the context for the widely disparate views expressed in replies above. I think the dimension that segments the responders is the degree to which the people writing the code are separated from decisions about design, in a physical distance, process, or organizational sense. Where there is no separation, then specs are viewed as unnecessary palabra that require time and energy to produce, and more time to be maintained. Where there is a significant separation, perhaps even different companies doing design and development, or on-shore design and off-shore development, then specs are part of the on-going contract of what needs to be done. Our team always produces functional spec docs for e-commerce sites we design because another company uses them as a starting point for their work, and it%u2019s not at all obvious to them what will happen, from a data modeling and product affiliate logic table perspective, when a given button is clicked. They would have to discover that all over again for themselves, and we prefer to spare them that waste of resources. I think your answer, Siegy, should be based on how much guidance you will be able to give once the ink is dry on your specs. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: Virtual Floorspace (http://www.virtualfloorspace.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46833 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Participant Discussion Guide
The URL in my post above has a comma that's making it not work. I don't see a way to edit the post, It should be: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46810 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Participant Discussion Guide
Hi Erik, I%u2019m writing a design strategy book that has a detailed section about writing discussion guides. The blog for the book, http://www.virtualfloorspace.com, Is currently focusing on how to write a discussion guide for in-depth interviews. I used the approach described in the blog when I interviewed cancer patients about social networking habits and preferences, although some of the entries are more specific to e-commerce. Take a look and let me know if you find it helpful for your purposes. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46810 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Single-Page Checkout
In a meeting today, a client said they wanted a single-page checkout process. The checkout tunnel is an area that I prefer to have as vanilla as possible so that customers have no surprises, but I am open to change. I've never done any testing on one-page vs. staged checkout, and I haven't been able to find any data, only opinions. Does anyone have any non-proprietary data they'd care to share about one-page checkout vs. multi-stage checkout in terms of abandonment analytics, A/B or usability testing? Thanks, /pb Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Blog: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Wheels as user interface mechanisms
Apple is introducing a Macbook that makes use of the wheel interface. Video description here: http://www.theonion.com/content/video/apple_introduces_revolutionary They decided to buypass unnecessary UCD processes or user testing, relying on the %u201Cgot to have it%u201D power of the brand. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46499 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Article on Number of Usability Test Participants
The state of UCD and the overall usefulness of design testing are fascinating topics, but I%u2019d like to return to the original topic of usability testing, sample size and statistical significance, because I think it is relevant in these times of tight research budgets. Research methods like usability testing are not quantitative or qualitative in and of themselves. It%u2019s the manner in which the data is collected and analyzed that makes the results either quantitative or qualitative. You can have quantitative usability testing or user interviews, and you can have qualitative surveys. (More on this at: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/?p=22) The companies I work with would find it financially impractical to undertake a statistically valid usability test, because of the resources required to operationalize the concept of usability into quantifiable variables that can be consistently and reliably measured, and to engage a sample large enough to reach a satisfactory confidence interval. A company like Microsoft, on the other hand, with products that last for many years in a consistent form, and millions of users performing repetitive operations, could get value from quantitative usability testing. The web sites I conduct usability testing for are large scale e-commerce sites. They are trying to do something different and new with every major release, and the usability of the site design will have a dramatic impact on the bottom line. So they agree to user testing at reasonable intervals to discover challenges that people who know nothing about web site design may have, people who are in their underwear at 2 a.m. buying a pair of shoes online or a new appliance to replace one that broke down. It%u2019s possible that genius designers are so in tune with their customers that they don%u2019t need to run their designs at successive stages of fidelity by a sample of customers to gain a better understanding of how they will interpret and respond to new interactive features, the kinds of supporting content they need, the points in the process when they are likely to stop and consult discussion boards or chat, etc. etc., but I haven%u2019t met these designers yet. In qualitative research, regardless of data collection method, sample selection and size are always part science and part art. The science part uses an understanding of different types of samples for qualitative research and how to ensure that you are seeing a broad enough range of people based on their variance along key dimensions relevant to the site you are testing. A good source for this type of information is Qualitative Evaluation Methods, by Michael Patton. The art is that an experienced design researcher can estimate the variability they are likely to see for a given system and set of user segments, and balance that with the research goals and budget to designate a sample size that is likely to result in enough repetition to give the team confidence in the results. To publish a paper about this number of participants and have people apply it to their projects without understanding the impact of different design variables, different goals, different user segment characteristics, etc., is to sell your audience a bill of defective goods. Paul Bryan Usography (www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46278 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Incentives for UI testing
We usually pay about $100 per hour for e-commerce user research. It is often for a retailer, and in that case we use gift cards about 50% of the time and cash 50% of the time. For employee research, most companies opt to not provide any incentives, although we try to give some kind of swag. My experience has been that the monetary amount of incentives does impact behavior. This effect has been written about in the medical literature in terms of conflict of interest in clinical trials. When we have offered higher incentives, it seemed as though a larger proportion of the participants tried to "earn" the incentive by giving us the kinds of answers they thought we wanted. We also seemed to get a higher percentage of professional research participants who go from test to test. This obviously impacts the validity and reliability of the data. When we've assigned homework, such as a diary, to go along with the interview, specifying an amount for completing the homework seemed to result in higher completion rates and more content per entry. When we've tried lower incentives, we've predictably experienced more last minute cancellations, especially around rush hour in larger cities or in bad weather. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46204 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Design Deliverables for Web Apps or Websites
The design activities and deliverables that we produce for web apps depend on the value to the company of an optimized design vs. an average design. That doesn%u2019t mean we turn out crap unless required to do otherwise. It means the background work we do to build understanding prior to creating the deliverables, and the depth of detail in the deliverables, have to be worth the cost in time and resources. While I agree that some of the production values in the deliverables serve more of a marketing or political function, I think the contents of design deliverables are also very important in the same way that a blueprint is important. For a dog house, maybe a pencil sketch will do. For a high-rise, a room full of architectural specifications are required. In a web app we designed for GE that was used at all levels between practitioner and VP, we documented the following: - User interviews at all levels - Audience segmentation and user archetype profiles - User interface requirements for each segment - Task flow diagrams - Interaction modes with mini-screen flow diagrams - Organizational structure - Navigation system - Concept wireframes - Functional specifications with screen states and error handling - Design templates To be effective, the web app design documentation you produce has to fit in with the development process, and you need to time design deliverables to be inputs to the development cycles. The details in the documentation should be greater when design and development are separated functionally or organizationally. That was the case in the web app above. The dev team said the documentation helped them to develop the app very efficiently. A six sigma study of the app after release showed significant ROI of the design process we followed. Paul Bryan Usography (www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=46048 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Need tips on how to formalize usability activities in a big Internet business organization
Your manager is definitely heading down the right path by implementing standards for user research. However, I have seen some very large companies try and fail to implement such standards. The two main reasons I%u2019ve seen for failure have been: 1) The expense and time are not warranted by the value received; and 2) the research method was generic rather than specifically selected to match the problem or opportunity. To warrant user research, a project should be assessed for its potential value to the company in terms of revenue and other considerations such as brand reputation, and the percentage of that value that is at risk if the design is not optimized through research. Selecting an appropriate research method is more involved than simply putting each site in front of a handful of users. The research method has to be capable of providing answers to specific design questions unique to each initiative. (More on this at: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com/?tag=research-methods). For example, if the site has a high revenue potential, then it may be worth conducting field research that models current customer behavior and processes in order to design an innovative product, rather than simply testing a prototype or design spec for usability problems. Your process should be able to demonstrate value received for resources expended, which shouldn%u2019t be too hard in e-commerce, where numbers tell the story. Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45733 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] e-Commerce detail page design
People looking at product detail pages are in the middle of some larger life context that brings them there and impacts their decision-making. The design strategy needs to take into account the product-finding and decision-making criteria that customers have carried with them to the detail page in order to provide them with the ingredients for a successful transaction, or to get a high priority in the consideration set. With that caveat out of the way, and purposely omitting my clients, some of my favorite detail pages include: Ikea, Williams-Sonoma, Crate & Barrel, REI %u2013 Clean, simple, allow customers to fall in love with the product; however, their categories require fewer specs than your category Sears %u2013 Lots of e-comm functionality and content (ratings, share, call for questions, buy online pick up in store), but plain, clear, balanced presentation. Also, MySears is quietly building social media mass in the background and is organized by product category; however, the tunnels seem to be one-way between catalog and discussion. Victoria%u2019s Secret %u2013 Excellent handling of multi-sku purchases, on-brand interactions and imagery; however, lacking image options of their e-commerce competitors Best Buy %u2013 clear modal segmentation, click to call and call me options, relevant buying guides; however, too much visual noise and missing connections between product details and buying guides Amazon.com %u2013 outstanding crowdsourced content; however, seemingly random barrage of related products (outside of the stats-driven customer purchase info) Toys R Us %u2013 clear paths for online vs. store purchases; however, no clear %u201Carrive by%u201D date, and lacking safety info that I think their category needs Paul Bryan Usography Corp. (www.usography.com) Blog: www.virtualfloorspace.com Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45740 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] User Experience Research Issues
We%u2019ve used Nielsen Net Ratings and comScore for competitive site traffic data. Nielsen is the same company that has measured TV audiences for years. Nielsen: http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product_families/nielsen_netratings comScore: http://www.comscore.com/Products_Services/Marketing_on_the_Internet Paul Bryan Usography (http://www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts Blog: http://www.virtualfloorspace.com -- Ali Naqvi asked: [snip] How can you find such information about the competitor's traffic? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45553 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] iPhone Persona Examples?
Here is a persona we have not used anywhere yet. It is partially based on Gizmodo%u2019s iPhone demographics article (http://gizmodo.com/tag/iphone-demographics/) Name: Christine Martinez Age: 31 HHI: $82,000 Location: NYC Education: Bachelor%u2019s degree, Communications Job title: Human resources generalist Marital status: Single, involved in relationship Internet IQ: High Shopping IQ: High Adoption segment: early majority, fashion forward Favorite TV shows: Dancing with the Stars; Grey%u2019s Anatomy; Men in Trees Reading now: Ad Age, Ad Week, BrandWeek, Outliers, The Time Traveler%u2019s Wife Primary goals related to cellphone purchase: Email access, web browsing, car safety Most relevant features: Touchscreen, Pandora access, voice activated dialing, social media app integration Drivers: Convenience, customer service, cost of phone data plans, in-sync with trends Loyalty: High, despite frustration, does not want hassle to switch. Favorite web sites: Zappos.com, Amazon.com, Hotels.com, woot.com Internet profile: 2 hours per day of Internet usage, not including email Technology profile: Dell laptop (provided by job); iMac at home; iPod touch; iPhone 3G Social media profile: Averages 30 minutes per day on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn Characteristics that impact purchases: Tracks deal web sites like woot.com and , always searches for coupons, willing to spend to not appear out of touch, does not monitor bills Business value: Periodic high impulse spend despite cautious purchase patterns; refreshes technology every 2 years; open to fashion add-ons Purchase barriers: What she reads has a big impact on purchase decisions. Negative remarks in Twitter or other social media interpreted as fact. Depends heavily on smart search feature to find products. Wants to see how she or home will look with product, so she often won%u2019t buy until her friends have it. Purchase Tunnel Dropoff: Difficulty viewing total price before purchase, lack of clear arrival date, lack of clear return policy, better deal on similar item that has same appearance value Requested content/features: High-level comparison that includes discounts, feature demos, toll-free customer service that is in USA with phone number on web site home page Switch behavior: Low-switch behavior. Unlikely to switch complex services unless she feels customer service has cheated her. For non-complex switch situations, e.g. cable TV, will switch when she sees an ad with clearly superior pricing and equivalent feature set. Unlikely to switch for features. Quotes: - I am on a mission. I go to the Internet with a specific purpose in mind. I don%u2019t browse around for no practical purpose (except Zimbio and YouTube) - I want to see what other people say about it before I make a decision. If a product is good, it will be popular. - I don%u2019t trust those companies you never heard of before. - I don%u2019t want to start from scratch every time I go back to a web site. I like stores and web sites to remember me, the ones I trust, that is. - I bought it at Best Buy because I had a 10% off coupon - I don%u2019t like a lot of marketing noise. I don%u2019t trust it and when I see a lot of mixed marketing messages it makes me think that they are desperate and confused about what they are selling. Method for tracking this customer type with web analytics: - Entry through marketing campaign on affiliate site that has content targeted to 30 yr. old single female - Purchases fashion accessory that has higher than average price - Views many photo pages, does not view many detailed specs pages - Responds to clickthrough articles and ads with fashion and appearance as main topics - Search terms: most popular, best deal Typical purchase scenario: - Sees ads on TV and billboards - Sees friend with product - Google search - CNET review - Discussion forums (professional, technical) - View in store - View cost breakdown - Search for coupons, deals - With a discount, on occasion when she feels prosperous, takes the plunge, buys 2 or 3 accessories to make product look better Experience gaps: - Product links from Facebook pages of friends to catalog - Realistic visual cost meter on services - Customer service guarantees - In-store video product details mixed with humor, popularity, and deals; accessible on web site for replay (Copyright, 2009, Usography Corporation. Permission granted for single use with disclosure of source.) Paul Bryan Usography Corporation (www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45396 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Aside from research, what do you do to relate better to users?
I%u2019m not sure if you count this as %u201Cresearch%u201D but when I want to understand heartfelt customer sentiments related to e-commerce topics I browse around twitter. A couple of example topics below. Topic: iphone and frustration %u2022 Wow, iPhone directions took us 10 minutes past our destination, now turned around, even hungrier from frustration. %u2022 It's really frustrating when trying to access hotmail from the iphone. %u2022 call in segment on KPCC iHate My Slow iPhone...frustration with AT&T is running very high %u2022 I hear ya. if it was me with my mom, I'd be iphone-less bc I probably would have thrown it at a wall in frustration. %u2022 building iphone apps is a crazy mix of joy/pain/excitement/frustration/confusion %u2022 AT&T iPhone 3G and 3G S officially getting MMS on September 25: After months of speculation (and frustration.. %u2022 (And, I do feel your pain. I've been very close to ditching the whole iPhone gig due to frustration dealing with Apple.) Topic: shoes online %u2022 I questioned my older cousin about why I didn't get school shoes & clothes. He said bc I'm not in school & online classes don't count lol %u2022 only thing I'd buy online is shoes man! %u2022 Dear online shoes.com, Thank you for giving me one shoe to choose from. Wow, do I feel like a freak. %u2022 Just add heels and leggings for evening chic! Lipsy shoes arriving online tomorrow %u2022 fashion blog reading to online shopping to a new bag and boots coming in a week. i swear bags and shoes are my weakness %u2022 I bought a LOT of things from xxx :) Oh and somee CUTE shoes %u2022 hey doll I got some mini skirts, tops, a dress, a pair of shoes, n now I'm ordering over the knee boots online! Need help! %u2022 Looking at amazing shoes that I want to buy online, but have no money. %u2022 i saw those online and almost ordered them!! they're very cute. blue shoes are my new thing. are they comfy? Not exactly dimensions that can be measured or validated, but the tweets definitely convey nuances of experience. Paul Bryan Usography Corporation Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45395 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Breadcrumbs including page title or no?
Do you feel confused right now? Because the page you are viewing has no breadcrumbs. (I know, skewed sample). Breadcrumbs should be used as a means to reduce ambiguity and/or provide convenient access to higher levels within the organizational structure. You can get a rough feeling for the awareness/utility of your title breadcrumb by the volume of cllickthrough's on the breadcrumb's active links. Depending on the design system and technical execution, page title breadcrumbs can cause some problems. I've been in situations where extra-long title breadcrumbs have crowded out right side page functions, like print or email page, which got pushed down a couple of rows, which in turn pushed meaningful content below the fold. The breadcrumb was detrimental in that case, because the questionable redundancy reduced visibility of meaningful information. I've also seen situations where the breadcrumb title and the page title were slightly different, and that really confused users. Redundancy is not necessarily a bad thing. One person's redundancy is another person's confirmation. If the title breadcrumb is not causing any problems there's no need to spend LOE fixing it. Paul Bryan Usography Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45266 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] UX Team Collaboration
If version control problems are likely to cause serial heart attacks, then I prefer Visual SourceSafe, even though it can be a pain. In a recent project involving several parties we used Basecamp to share docs and had no problems (http://basecamphq.com). Paul Bryan Usography Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45252 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Design Strategy / Business Rethink - How to communicate
You mentioned design research. What is the nature of that data, i.e. customer interviews, user testing, surveys, ethnographic data, web analytics? One artifact we've used successfully at the stage you mention are current state/future state scenarios. We use stock photos (veer marketplace or bigstockphotos.com are very cheap) to tell the story, and maybe a few lifestyle-oriented flows to illustrate needs and goal attainment. I can't post artifacts because of IP restrictions, but they're straightforward. We don't design on spec, because that's a slippery slope. Where possible, we add statistics in the sidebar to justify design strategy recommendations. E.g. to recommend addition of a single woman homeowner persona, we add whatever primary or secondary data we have to support that perspective: "Single women now represent the fasting growing component of home buyers in the United States. A Harvard University study showed that single women were responsible for 30 percent of total homeowner growth " Paul Bryan Director, User Research and Design Strategy Usography Corporation Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45175 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Website UI competitive analysis
If usability is the differentiating factor between the competitors, then a heuristic assessment would be useful. However, in many cases usability issues are table stakes that should be optimized apart from what the competition is doing. For a competitive analysis I suggest starting with the manner in which each competitor has chosen to solve the most valuable and complex needs of your customers. I don%u2019t know what industry you%u2019re in, so take the kitchen sink as an example. If you look at 4 competitors in this space you might look at Kohler, Franke, Moen, and Blanco. The links to their sinks are below. Kohler: http://www.us.kohler.com/onlinecatalog/category.jsp?category=5) Franke: http://www.frankekitchensinks.com/ Moen: http://www.moen.com/ecatalog/gallery/kitchen-bar-sinks/_/N-687 Blanco: http://www.blancoamerica.com/index.html?p=KITCHEN_SINKS If you were to conduct a heuristic evaluation of these competitors, it would be very time-consuming; the results might not tell the story of what really differentiates these sites; and the site owner may still not know what needs to be done to reach parity or superiority in key areas. It would be more helpful to focus on more strategic design elements, such as: - Approach to product selection - Category-specific filters - Use of rich media - Personalization - Supporting content - Design tools - Interactive demo in a home context - Use of social media to promote awareness - Consistency with offline brand collateral To support your ratings of these strategic design elements, you could provide screen captures (e.g. using software like SnagIt) showing how customers would go from initial entry to goal attainment in the different sites. You should use a rating system, like the one in the IBM paper you referenced. But I%u2019ve found that stakeholders pay more attention to the recommendations than the assessment itself, so I always take the time to develop a perspective as to which areas should be tackled first, comparing level of effort and expense to anticipated business value. Paul Bryan Director, User Research and Design Strategy Usography Corporation (www.usography.com) Linked In: www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44753 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Global navigation: persistent or not across all pages?
I don%u2019t see a lot of convenience or utility to customers from having the full header in the community section. Looking through the site, I think the question is the degree to which you want the community to appear to be a separate entity from the primary offering. The examples below illustrate a range of options from completely integrated to almost completely differentiated. Amazon completely integrates community into into its product catalog. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000EZYKTS/ref=s9_al_gw_tr02/179-0449618-1343656?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-3&pf_rd_r=1FG9MJMZR5FS1MFW2C5A&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=488826231&pf_rd_i=507846 HP keeps the header on the landing page of communities%u2026 http://welcome.hp.com/country/us/en/welcome.html#Connect %u2026but then uses a streamlined header once you%u2019ve selected a community http://www.communities.hp.com/online/ Dell uses a market segment approach to global navigation, similar to TrendMicro%u2019s global nav. Once you go to the community piece, you see a streamlined header that makes it seem like you are on slightly more neutral territory. http://en.community.dell.com/forums/ Best Buy has a community site that is clearly distinct from its primary e-retail site, but which does not sub-branded to the extent that Sears is. http://www.forums.bestbuy.com/t5/Computers/bd-p/Computers_New Pampers does the inverse of Amazon, integrating its product offering into the community piece. http://www.pampers.com/en_US/Shop Sears uses a completely different visual treatment for its community, giving you the impression that you are closer to the other customers and a bit removed from the commercial entity Sears. http://www.mysears.com/ Paul Bryan Director, User Research and Design Strategy Usography Corporation (www.usography.com) Linked In: http://www.linkedin.com/in/uxexperts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45003 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Usability Reports: A waste of time?
The scope and contents of a usability report should be tailored to reflect the organizational context in which it is sponsored and produced. If you are internal to the organization, and the organization is small, then I think a bullet list of recommended changes that can be discussed in person will probably be more effective than a report. In the event that you are working as a team member in an Agile environment, then I think the report needs to be tailored to the local flavor of Agile, and scheduled to conclude one cycle ahead of development, so that it can be immediately digested and acted upon. If you are external to the organization and it is very large, then I think a written report of findings and recommendations can be very useful: 1. The report is a way for you to fully explain the design direction and changes you are advocating, so that the people who don't agree with you will need to prepare a good case for ignoring your recommendations. 2. Stakeholders who have a vested interest in the results but who can't or won't sit down with you to discuss your findings can understand the reasoning behind the changes you're recommending. 3. Third parties who get involved further down the road have a concise, logical presentation of factors that influence the success of the design. 4. Site owners can wave a large, weighty, well-designed document as justification for doing what they wanted to do before you wrote the report. Frustrating, but it happens, and I can't say that I would turn down a project tomorrow even if knew ahead of time that was going to happen. Why? Because I found out that this happened with a very large client; but then a couple of years later I learned that subsequent people had picked it up and got a lot of value from the report. I always try to scope in a brief user interview along with usability testing, so that a study's findings are more generally applicable to a customer's interaction with the company's interactive offering in general, as well as their response to the specific design in question. This makes the study useful long after that particular design iteration has come and gone, because it uses specific results to address concepts that will remain relevant. For example, in a usability test I might find that certain types of users have difficulty undertanding how to pair a mobile device with a carrier plan. I will recommend a way to fix the particular design that was tested so that users will be successful when it launches, but I will also frame the users' challenge more generally so that the design continually evolves to address this fundamental customer issue more effectively. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44960 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Global navigation: persistent or not across all pages?
Like David Danielson did in the paper Victor referenced, the best bet is to test the headers with users, in as quantitatively representative a manner as is feasible for your team. If there's no budget / time / interest in researching this topic with users, then it's a question of the relative weight you would assign to the factors you listed above: branding, consistent context, convenience of quick access points, and the relative quantity of useful content that fits above the fold. I wasn't able to access the link you provided (forbidden) so I wasn't able to get a feeling for your goals, audience, content, etc. So, in general I'd say that if the header is providing useful context about the information hierarchy and is surfacing often used links and functionality, then it makes sense to keep it for all applicable pages. If it only serves as a branding tool, then a visually consistent but less obtrusive brand voice would probably have more impact. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=45003 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Greyed background for popups
Graying out backgrounds to change focus was very common in multimedia training design, back in the days when the web was static and graying out pages was challenging from a coding perspective. Some high-traffic e-commerce sites have resurrected the practice in a way that multiple browsers can understand, and is returning as a de facto standard for indicating to users "you were in the middle of doing x, but now you need to do y before proceeding." Paul Bryan Principal Consultant, Usography Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44487 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Company goals vs. user goals
If you have data that shows customers are frustrated with an aspect of the design, and yet the chief stakeholders choose to persist with that design, then the fundamental problem is not usability but education. I agree with Alla above that instead of advocating sweeping changes of the UX design process, which may strike fear into the heart of execs, pinpoint one area where there is a tangible cost to the company, try to quantify it, support it with analytics or other data to the extent you can, and then propose the way forward to a more successful design with cost-effective iterations. Paul Bryan Principal Consultant, Usography Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44399 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Pragmatic language theory and usability theory... same same or what?
I agree with you about the importance of language in user experience design. An understanding of semiotics and related aspects of information theory support the creation of interactive access points that most closely mirror the intentions of the largest or more most valuable segments of users of a given web site. Some aspects of user experience design that are better supported by sciences such as ethnography, market research, web analytics, etc., include such things as task modeling, competitive differentiation, and perceived utility. If the words are optimal, but we have users step through processes that don't mirror the mental image they have of those processes, or are not intuitive in terms of a mental leap to a new process, then in studies we've conducted they clearly get confused and abandon the experience. Also, we can create a system with optimum words and images, but if users don't perceive that they will benefit more from using this system than other available options (like calling HR or stopping at the mall after work), then they will not even start the experience. For this reason, user experience designers need to rely on many branches of social science, including semiotics, to achieve optimal, measurable results. Paul Bryan Principal Consultant, Usography Corporation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=44465 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Corporate website redesign, where to put intranet access?
Hi Elizabeth, Experts, like the people reading ixda discussions are a good source for best practices. However, I think you need to get your users involved in this process, even if you have no budget for it yet. It%u2019s a great way to counter-balance the previous owner%u2019s opinions with the voice of the people. First identify the broad categories of people using the Intranet: Executives, inside sales, field sales, marketing, managers, product development specialists, etc. Invite a representative of each of these groups to a working lunch where you do a traditional card sort exercise, which will result in a good set of terminology for the links, and a hierarchy of how things should be organized. If you don%u2019t have info about card sorts, please email me and I%u2019ll find some for you to work with. Then create a profile on each of the user types you have identified. With their input, create some realistic scenarios of how these user types will use the Intranet. (For more info how to create user scenarios for employee portals see the related link on the home page of my web site, usography.com.) Step through each of these scenarios and see if the structure you came up with after the card sort makes sense. Make adjustments as necessary, and then socialize this to the stakeholders to get their buy-in. This approach will give you an organic, bottom-up organizational structure and nomenclature system that will be authentic to your organization. Kind regards, /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37401 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Design Strategy: Archetypes vs. Analytics
Thank you for these thoughtful replies. I don%u2019t think my colleague was wrong. He works for a different company that has been focused on personalized experiences that are dynamically generated based on historical data. I was just wondering how quickly, and how thoroughly, you think quantitative data will displace qualitative data and %u201Ctraditional%u201D conceptual design processes that are well known in the web world. I think you%u2019ve done a great job in pointing out the limitations of quantitative data as the *sole* basis for design strategy. Kind regards, /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37301 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
Re: [IxDA Discuss] Data to support the ROI of an Intranet re-design
When HP redesigned the @HP portal a couple of years ago, I remember seeing detailed ROI case studies about it. There were significant social network enhancements of their portal, so you might find something relevant on that topic. A condensed case study is provided by HP: h40110.www4.hp.com/soluzioni/pdf/PortalSuccesStory2.pdf. It seems to me that executives of larger companies talk more about what is delivered by a portal, (Knowledge Management, Business intelligence, etc.) than they do about the Portal itself. Especially since they started getting excited about cloud computing. However, CIO did run an article %u201CSeven Reasons for Your Company to Start an Internal Blog%u201D (CIO.com, by C. G. Lynch). I was working with a corporation to measure ROI of a portal app using Six Sigma, and it ran rather soft. If you%u2019re looking for the kind of Portal ROI that impresses the Finance Dept., you have your work cut out for you. I think you have a lot of ammunition out there, even in today's rough environment. /pb . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=37307 Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
[IxDA Discuss] Design Strategy: Archetypes vs. Analytics
Hi, A colleague of mine and I were having coffee recently. I was telling him about my user archetype (persona) development project. He snickered and said, ³My team is delivering an individualized design experience based on hard data. You¹re stuck in design yesteryear.² After this discussion I was wondering: Is the future of interactive design strategy in the hands of statisticians? What do you think? /pb Paul Bryan Director, User Research and Experience Design Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .. http://www.ixda.org/help
