Nearly all of what I've heard and experienced about all of these
kinds of things is that you end up with people who aren't designers
(engineers, product managers, etc.) and because of the audience do a
lot of basic stuff and then a good chunk of group exercises that
aren't all that useful if
We are playing with the Acrobat indexing function as that seems like a
good candidate for us -- it doesn't require anyone to write in a
specific format or really do anything special, but it does make it
seem vaguely possible that you could find a needle in a haystack.
Thanks!
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Apps I love:
Greenprint: http://www.printgreener.com/
(Installs like a printer, lets you easily exclude pages without
anything useful on them, images, etc. when you print)
I cannot do anything without Typinator:
http://www.ergonis.com/products/typinator/
I love Screenflow for usability
You might also give them the option to do the questions immediately or
schedule a follow-up time. Even though it's only 15 minutes, having
the option to schedule it later removes all the pressure and makes it
easier to say yes...
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live, have you had luck with Mechanical Turk? It's tempting, but I am
wondering if you have issues with ESL?
I use college students to take detailed notes, not
transcriptions. It's better, frankly, as they helpfully edit out
things like my daughters hollering for me in the background at my home
I'm in love with ScreenFlow. Relatively inexpensive, lets you edit,
captures mic audio, computer audio, camera of participant and screen,
in any combination. Invisible when recording. I don't think it would
work for mobile, though.
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I am working in an organization that is focused on doing quick,
lightweight usability research, especially once the work has a good
foundation: bringing a design into a coffee shop, for example,
running 5 quick (15 minute) studies, making changes, showing 3 more
people the next day, etc.
In this
/bbbCHI2010 or on Facebook. We post links and cool
research about this theme.
-
Organizing committee
* Audrey Girouard, Tufts University
* Erin Treacy Solovey, Tufts University
* Regan Mandryk, University of Saskatchewan
* Robert Jacob, Tufts University
* Desney Tan, Microsoft Research
I think what you mean here is that you have already created personas
based on real research, and your client wants them validated.
I've had clients ask for that too. Often this is their first foray
into qualitative research, and they don't feel comfortable, and want
some quantitative comfort. I
Marty Cagan has done some good stuff, and is always focused on
bridging the gaps between design, eng and product.
From this post: http://www.svpg.com/assessing-product-opportunities/
Fortunately, it%u2019s really not that hard to do a useful product
opportunity assessment. I ask product managers
FWIW, I would definitely recommend Mulder's book over Adlin's. They
are both useful, but if you only have time for one, the former is
shorter and more specific and to the point.
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Posted from the new ixda.org
Following up on Chris' comment, with which I wholeheartedly agree,
I've had some success with the following (assuming that you've
conducted and recorded your research):
1. require all attendees to watch or listen to at least 1/3 of your
interviews (or they'll be skewed)
2. have them note key
Rachel, see Google's search nearby.
Put in an address.
Click on the marker
Click on the search nearby link in the window that opens.
Type restaurant
Look in the left column. You'll see Narrow by and some links
that effectively act like pull-down menus as far as limited space for
the links
On a different track -- I studied some mathematics (specifically pure
mathematics, lots of proofs, few numbers) in college.
My favorite kind of magic, and the kind that I can most relate to
when talking about design, is this kind: http://bit.ly/S5Xgc. I think
it falls outside Jared's 3 because I
Hmm...
I haven't seen that frequency of posting is inversely proportionate
to quality of input. I can think of at least one very frequent poster
who's always thoughtful and interesting to read.
Aren't you trying to say, Don't post stupid, overly wordy, or
redundant stuff?
Good luck with that.
Thank you for your thoughtful replies.
I don't agree that including page titles in breadcrumbs is a
standard -- lots of sites do it, but many don't. If Apple isn't
doing it, can it really be a standard? ;-)
With a visually-related title and breadcrumb (alignment, proximity,
, etc.) I cannot
Outside of the breadcrumb conversation altogether, and assuming that
simpler is better where simpler is reasonable, feasible, etc.
redundant is simple shorthand for this is already here and it's
not adding value precisely because it's already here.
If one thing is doing something different from
I tried to make a change to a site I'm new to working on, to remove
the page title as the last element of the breadcrumb and simply treat
the title itself as the last element in the breadcrumb, including a
last and keeping the title immediately below. I was surprised that
not only wasn't it a
But if it isn't clear (that this is where you are), shouldn't there
be better ways of making it clear than providing a redundant
non-functional element?
Maybe with the You Are Here: and including that last ?
I might test this. I'll let y'all know if I can sneak it into a
usability study and what
I am glad that Jim brought up the QA team. They should have specs,
scenarios or prototypes from which to build test plans. If eng knows
they'll get a bug filed against them, they're more likely to
implement to spec.
Designers should also be brought into the QA cycle to catch visual
problems that
Navid, can you share more about where they're at now? What's their
current perspective on design? What is their background?
Is there an existing team? Are you trying to make them more central
or staff up, or...?
Much of Marty Cagan's writing is relevant to this. See his book
Inspired, or his
I can say that I've had clients say, In light of the current
economy, we expected the price to be lower. And I've lowered it,
10-20%, when that happens. But it's happened less than half the
time.
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Posted from the new ixda.org
Entirely in agreement with Nasir and Robert,
I do it in the light of, %u201COk, how can we pare this down or
narrow its focus to fit within the budget you have in mind.%u201D
It%u2019s very rare that I would agree to do the same thing, just for
less $$, as if the original cost was just arbitrary.
I'm looking for examples of personalization that happens when a user
has not yet logged in, either via cookies, geo location by IP
address, or flash cookies (local shared objects).
Examples I have so far are:
- Amazon's home page, if you've ever logged in before
- Google local results in
Do you have a list of company goals? And a list of research-based
customer goals? Seems simple, but showing him those two lists...
Well, you must have tried that.
A nice way to show alignment of two lists of goals is an example
that's in The User is Always Right by Steve Mulder. He uses it for
...if you know anyone who is great...
Kelley Blue Book is looking for a Director of User Experience to lead
the vision, strategy, and execution of the interaction design of
Kelley Blue Books website, kbb.com. This individual will work
closely with other senior level executives to identify
Couldn't agree with Harry more.
Another benefit is that open exploration gives you a chance to learn
things that you might not even know (and didn't know you didn't
know), and it lets the participant get comfortable rather than just
jumping right in with a test.
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See also the related discussion on filters:
http://www.ixda.org/discuss.php?post=43844
In usability of the site I'm working on and others, which has mostly
newbies as users, dynamic filters have the drawback of being miss-able
(Is that navigation on the left, or...?) and scary (Ahhh! What is
uBid has an interesting solution: they appear to create filters out of
the search results once a user has narrowed the query somewhat, and
then they treat it almost like customizing (Choose Your New Car):
http://bit.ly/rcEfi
(If you click Edit on any of the choices under Modify Your Car,
the
Thank you for your thoughts...
I cannot help but think that we're missing a much-needed tool here
for beginners who need to make a complex query.
Shopping for cars, televisions, houses, vacations... All require this
method. People shopping are probably beginners, since they probably
don't make
I've been collecting and thinking about filters, and also watching
people (try to) use sites with various filtering schemes.
It seems to me that there's a limit to what you can do with a set of
filters such that the filters are 1) noticed, 2) clear and 3) not
overwhelming.
The problem is that
I'm with Anne. Go back to the KPIs (and if you don't have any, posit
some and watch people scurry around and make them), and then show a
relationship between those and this specific decision. Or predict it
with guerrilla usability.
The nice thing about that is it sets you and the developer up
KPI = key performance indicators = specific goals we're measuring
success against
It is nice to remember that anything you do will be an improvement...
Just imagine what v3 could be!
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Posted from the new ixda.org
Andrea, I find more open-ended experience/storytelling questions to be
more useful, for example:
Can you tell me about the last time you visited the site?
Can you think of a time when you couldn't find what you were looking
for on the site?
What was your best experience with the site?
(I think
I thought his comment about specs was heartening in a world where I'm
seeing more developers perceiving design and planning as anti-agile:
Functional specifications are so important one of the few hard and
fast rules at Fog Creek is %u201CNo Code Without Spec.%u201D
If spec=design, as it seems
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