Salvage Your Usability Session! Practical Tips for Moderators
Usability in Practice - Tips from the field
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Transcript of Usability in Practice - Tips from the field
Usability in Practice
Usability in Practice – Tips from the Field
Justine Sanderson | 2 May 2007
© 2007 Justine Sanderson
Today
1. User Centred Design2. You are not the user3. Interviewing people4. Creating personas5. Running heuristic evaluations6. Doing a Navigation Stress Test7. Making sense of the data8. Book recommendations
User Centred Design
User Centred Design
User Research: Contextual Enquiry
Iterative Design: Prototyping
Development: Usability Evaluations
You are not the user
Hang out with people
hang out with people who don’t use a computer 8 hours a day
Typical occupationsarchitect cleaner waitress
policeman teacher gardener
farmer midwife receptionist musician builder marine biologist nurse florist photographer
sales assistant nanny plumber sharetrader banana ripener accountant journalist coach politician student machine operator truck driver manager secretary
People do strange things on their computers
You do not have their undivided attention
Interviewing People
Active Listening
• Asking open-ended, clarifying questions to gain further information and insight.
• Paraphrasing, or repeating back in our own words what the speaker has said, in order to clarify or confirm understanding.
• Probing - questioning in a supportive way that requests more information or that attempts to clear up confusions
• Providing nonverbal communication, like body language and facial expressions, to show we are paying attention.
• Learning when to be quiet. Giving the other to time to think as well as to talk.
Open-Ended vs. Closed QuestionsOpen Questions• Begin with how, what, or why• Are used to clarify information and keep the
conversation open by encouraging a person to share as much as they wish
Closed Questions• Result in a simple “yes” or “no” or in short,
factual answers• Tend to bring the conversation to a stop,
requiring more questions to get the full story
Lead-Ins for Paraphrasing
• Did I hear you say…• So what you’re saying is…• You’re telling me that…• Am I hearing you correctly that…• Am I hearing you clearly that…• So what I hear you saying is…• I believe that you are saying…• Okay, let me see if I got what you said…• So let me summarize what you just said…• I want to be on the same page as you, so let me go
over what you just said…
Creating Personas• Archetypal
representation of your target audience
• Based on user research (ideally)
• Aggregation of your users’ goals, attitudes, and behaviours
• Presented as a vivid, narrative description of a single “person” who represents a user segment
Personas
Sample Persona•Jordan is a 22 year old college senior majoring in graphic design. He is pretty laid back and fairly social. He frequently goes clubbing with friends. Jordan also does some of his own DJing for parties. He enjoys music and the ability it has to entertain and to make other people happy.
•Jordan takes some pride in his extensive digital music collection. He gets music from his own CDs and from sharing with his friends. He is constantly looking for new music, often by browsing through Newbury Comics and other record stores that carry unusual things.
http://hfid.olin.edu/sa2005/engr3220-gouda/phase1_persona_jordan.htm
Goals• Listen to a wide variety of music. • Find out about new or unusual music. • Entertain and/or help his friends. • Easily identify and play music to suit
his activities. • Remain aware of all of his music.
Task: Share music with friends • Determine what specific songs, artists,
albums, etc. that he likes or has liked
• Make this information available to his friends
• Find out what particular music his friends like
• Determine what of this he likes
Task Analysis
Task Analysis
Task Analysis
Doing Heuristics Evaluations
Jacob Nielsen’s Heuristics1. Visibility of system status 2. Match between system and the real world 3. User control and freedom 4. Consistency and standards 5. Error prevention 6. Recognition rather than recall 7. Flexibility and efficiency of use 8. Aesthetic and minimalist design 9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and
recover from errors 10.Help and documentation
Visibility of System Status
1. Visibility of system status
Match between the system and the real world
2. Match the system and the real world
2. Match the system and real world
2. Match the system and the real world
2. Match the system and the real world
User Control and Freedom
3. User Control and Freedom
Consistency and Standards
4. Consistency & Standards
4. Consistency & Standards
4. Consistency & Standards
4. Consistency & Standards
Error Prevention
5. Error Prevention
Recognition rather than recall
6. Recognition rather than recall
Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
7. Flexibility & Efficiency of Use
Aesthetics and Minimalist Design
http://dev.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000015.php
8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
Help Users Recognise and Recover from Errors
9. Help Users Recognise Errors
Help and Documentation
10. Help & Documentation
Other Guidelines
• Bruce Tognazzini’s First Principles of Interaction Design http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html
• A good introductory summary from a fellow studenthttp://www.charlieguo.com/web_design_readings.php
Doing a Navigation Stress Test
Navigation Stress Test• "Randomly" pick a low-level page,
not a home page, from your site • Print the page out in black and
white, without the URL listed in the header/footer
• Pretend that you are entering this site for the first time at this page and try to answer to questions below
• Mark-up the piece of paper with what you think the answers are
Navigation Stress TestWhat is this page about? Draw a rectangle around the title
of the page or write it on the paper yourself
What site is this? Circle the site name, or write it on the paper yourself
What are the major sections of this site?
Label with X
What major section is this page in?
Draw a triangle around the X
What is "up" 1 level from here? Label with U
How do I get to the home page of this site?
Label with H
How do I get to the top of this section of the site?
Label with T
What does each group of links represent?
O: Off-site pages
How might you get to this page from the site home page?
Write the set of selections as: Choice 1 > Choice 2 > .... Connect the visual elements on the page that tell you this.
Making sense of the results
Affinity Diagramming
Recommended Books
Donald Norman
Steve Krug
Alan Cooper
Jenifer Tidwell