Entries Tagged 'User Centered Design' ↓
December 14th, 2009 — ROI, Usability News, User Centered Design
My seven controversial usability predictions for 2010
Flickr New Year Baby Photo via Skokie Public Library Creative Commons License
I have seven somewhat controversial usability predictions for the 2010 I think you might be surprised to read. These predictions are based on my understanding of the state of the usability field based on blog posts, articles, tweets and all the other news and information I’ve picked up throughout the year. Whether you agree or disagree with these predictions, I think you’ll agree that in the past year we’ve seen plenty of change, and will continue to see increasing changes in our field in 2010.
1. The cost of conducting usability testing will decrease by a factor of 10.
As I mentioned in my article; 24 web site usability testing tools, I’ve noticed a recent significant increase in the number of low cost or free usability testing tools available. In 2009, several new, simple but effective tools have risen to prominence. Considering there are many additional new and easy-to-use tools being developed even as I type this, it seems reasonable to assume usability testing and analysis tools will be available in unprecedented numbers for amazingly low costs.
Anyone still renting a usability lab, going through expensive recruiting firms for participants, or using specialized rooms with one-way mirrors and multiple video cameras is wasting money – lots of money.
For a company that switches to low cost usability tools instead of renting a lab, this will decrease their usability testing costs by much greater than a factor of 10. For companies already using these low cost tools, the incremental increase in use of the tools means many more usability reports and optimizations, at extremely low costs.
The year 2010 should see many more firms converting to these lower cost usability testing methods, and saving tremendous amounts of money doing so.
2. There will be a dramatic increase in the use of low cost web-based usability testing tools
In 2010, several new, cheap and powerful web-based usability testing tools will be launched. This will have a positive impact on usability practitioners. The positives include additional functionality at very low costs, a greater variety of types of tools for specific testing tasks, and anywhere, anytime access to tests and data. All of which means a lot more people can and will be using these usability testing tools.
In the bad old days, usability testing tools were expensive hardware/software contraptions that were not easily accessible, portable or cheap. Because of the significant increase in these new low cost web-based tools, usability practitioners now have a much more usable set of tools with which to ply their trade.
There is a downside however, especially for vendors of the more traditional tools: the added competition of the new tools will force the older usability testing companies that have PC hardware/software solutions to change their products – or go out of business. Increasing low-cost competition means less ability for these older companies to operate in a marginalized capacity. For 2010, the older vendors will need to re-think their products and pricing – or potentially face exiting the business.
The good news for usability practitioners is 2010 will be a banner year for new and exciting low cost web-based tools.
3. True usability ROI will continue to elude usability practitioners
True ROI, in terms of bottom-line numbers reported in annual reports and quarterly statements, will continue to elude the usability profession. The sad fact of the matter is most corporations do not realize usability is in fact a profit center. As I mentioned in my ROI article, it’s not practical, or wise, to quote ROI guarantees for a usability project. Typically usability improvements decrease overall costs, and increase revenue potential. Yet from the conversations I’ve had with usability practitioners, the conversation always seems to come back to, “how do I ‘prove’ that adding more usability testing will bring a positive ROI?”
The on-going education of corporations by usability practitioners, Associations such as the UPA and educational institutions is the primary way to continue to make headway in obtaining usability advocates. Until someone can formally introduce a usability ROI metric that is used in annual reports and thus can be understood by the Wall Street crowd, many corporate executives will continue to believe true usability ROI is a myth.
For 2010, this trend of non-belief of usability ROI will continue to exist.
4. Use of remote moderated usability testing will increase by a factor of 10
As more and more usability practitioners use remote moderated usability testing, and talk about with their practitioner friends, use of this low-cost and effective testing method will explode.
In the past, tools like UserVue or video conferencing rooms were about it for practitioners who wished to conduct remote moderated testing and recording of usability sessions. But the increasing access to cheap and effective tools like WebEx, GotoMyPC and Webcams coupled with high-bandwidth internet access and conference calling has effectively eliminated the barrier to entry for practitioners.
Saving thousands of dollars in travel costs, and enabling testing of users literally around the world are powerful reasons why remote moderated testing will become the way to get things done in 2010.
In 2010, more and more usability practitioners will take the plunge and use remote moderated testing as their primary way to conduct usability testing.
5. The UK will become a major source of usability expertise
The United Kingdom and the European Union already are doing significant usability work – and have the smarts to prove it. But have you noticed the amazing number of usability practitioner job openings in the United Kingdom, or the increasing number of usability projects occurring there and in the rest of the European Union in the past year? I have. And I’m not alone. Recognizing the significance of usability in the EU, for the first time ever the Usability Professionals Association International conference will be held outside North America – Munich, Germany to be precise.
I’ve also noted that there have been an incredible number of new job positions opened in 2009 for usability testers, information architects and user experience designers in the UK. All these new positions mean lots and lots of usability work – and with that work comes knowledge and expertise.
I fully expect to start seeing many more UK and EU based brilliant usability practitioners providing their expertise to a host of small, mid-size and large companies. I also expect to see many more usability projects and experiments, with resulting white papers, articles and blog posts demonstrating the expertise and thought-leadership resident there.
In 2010, the UK will dramatically increase the number of usability projects, and thought-leadership this provides.
6. The phrase “user experience design” will become overused and almost meaningless
It’s amazing to see the number of job positions titled “user experience design” in which it’s quite clear what the hiring manager is actually after is a graphics designer that knows css, flash and html, and can create wireframes, prototypes and final production files. In my humble opinion, and the opinion of others such as Nielsen, this is not a correct usage of the term ‘user experience.’
According to Nielsen/Norman Group’s definition of user experience…
“”User experience” encompasses all aspects of the end-user’s interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother. Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that are a joy to own, a joy to use. True user experience goes far beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing checklist features. In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company’s offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing, graphical and industrial design, and interface design.”
Here then is the problem; the term ‘user experience design’ is more and more often not being used to reflect someone who creates all aspects of the user perceiving, learning and interacting with a company’s products and services. Instead, it’s being used to define a designer that only designs web interfaces – without the myriad other research, behavioral and usability knowledge that is needed to truly design a holistic user experience.
And because it’s over-used, and used incorrectly, the term ‘user experience design’ will become more and more generic, confusing and thus meaningless. Will it continue to be used? Yes! But you can expect to hear many more conversations like, “So, you have a job position for user experience designer, I’d like to apply, but I need to know, what will this person actually do?”
For 2010, the term ‘user experience design’ will become abused and thus more meaningless as an actual description of true ‘user experience design.’
7. Without professional certification being required, more and more charlatans will be attracted to usability
Dentists, Pilots and Public Accountants all have to pass training and certification before practicing their occupation. However, with usability anyone can declare themselves a ‘usability professional’ and set up shop, providing usability services to unsuspecting clients.
Without some form of formal certification, anyone can (and will) provide usability testing services if they believe there’s money to be made – whether they know the difference between a card sort and a heuristic review, or not. The same access you and I have to free and low-cost usability tools likewise means college students, stay at home moms and dads and even children can create usability services and sell them on the internet, using these same free or low-cost tools.
This isn’t a new topic of discussion, the UPA went down this path of investigating usability certification in 2001.
The only way to ensure a professional is providing usability services is to make usability a profession, via a certification process in which the practitioner has demonstrated the expertise and knowledge necessary to properly practice the art and science of usability. Without this certification in place, anyone can and will declare themselves a usability vendor, if they believe there’s money in it.
For 2010, more and more fake usability practitioners will set up virtual shops, using the free or low cost usability testing tools now available.
Conclusion: My 7 controversial 2010 usability predictions
So there you are, my rather controversial predictions for usability in 2010. Do you agree with them? Do you disagree? Share your thoughts about my 2010 predictions, or better yet make your own by adding a comment! Only time will tell if you and I are right!
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November 19th, 2009 — Design, Methodology, Testing, User Centered Design
The BEST way to do usability testing
My friend Matt knows the best way to add usability testing to application development – do usability testing early (and often) – unfortunately he (and many other application development companies) can’t always do it.
Matt’s a business development guy for a software development company – not only is he good at application business development, he’s also a really nice guy.
Matt is up in Chicago right now freezing his tail off, demonstrating a new application to his customers and getting feedback from them. Unfortunately, Matt couldn’t add usability early in this project because budgets, timelines and deliverables were already contracted before he met me and thought about adding usability to this project. Next time Matt!
Anyway, Matt wanted to include usability testing as part of the development process, knowing this would make for a more usable application and provide his clients with a better application. The problem however is the application development process for his application is almost complete. All the design and usability decisions have already been made, coding is done, and it’s a bit too late to make significant usability changes now.
The best usability means starting usability testing early
Matt and other smart developers know that adding usability testing very early, like at the beginning of the development process is the best way to go.
There are 2 major advantages to adding usability early:
- Lowest Cost – Adding usability at the beginning of application development is the lowest cost way of performing usability testing and optimization. At the early conceptual stage, card sorts, wireframe tests, reverse card sorts and user research can be conducted easily, with minimal tools (like paper and pencil even) but with maximum data.
Obtaining user feedback about information architecture, labeling, navigation and layout is super easy at the stage. And it’s amazingly low cost, the only real costs involved are time spent considering alternatives, time spent asking users usability questions, and time spent re-drawing an information architecture, wireframes or cards for a card sort.
- Highest Influence – Conducting usability testing early in the design stage enables developers to have access to information that can dramatically influence the design of the application. User feedback early in development will uncover any potential major issues with information architecture, because users can provide feedback about their mental map of how a process should flow.
Being able to make major changes to an information architecture to better suit your end-user needs at this stage is as easy as re-drawing an information architecture document, but as significant as saving an application from major usability issues and massive wasted coding time near the end of the project. It also saves the large amount of time and resources necessary to make changes to the application after it has gone live – to “fix” usability problems post-launch. It’s far more efficient to catch usability issues prior to coding, rather than after coding.
Obtaining direct user feedback as the software development life cycle advances means making continual small but significant optimizations to the application.
Consider Matt on his airplane flight from Boston to Chicago – it’s far easier for his plane to make small course corrections as it travels on its path, vs one major course correction near the end of its journey. Likewise, it’s far easier, but more significant, to make small application changes based on end-user feedback from usability testing throughout development process, vs at the end.
This chart that I had used in my Overview of Usability presentation I think summarizes pretty well why starting early with usability makes the biggest impact.
Usability and its impact on design
What am I saying here?
Your best usability impact on an application comes early in the process, while your ability to make changes is great, and the cost to make those changes is minimal.
Don’t wait for your application to be coded before you think about adding some usability testing. Your best method of adding usability testing is at the very start of the project.
For my buddy Matt and his Chicago clients I’m keeping my fingers crossed and hoping for the best. For you and your applications you now know the best way to add usability to your development process.
For more information about the best way of adding usability testing to your application development process just contact me. I’m a nice guy, and I really know my usability stuff, just ask Matt!
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September 3rd, 2009 — Presentations, User Centered Design
An overview presentation about usability
On occasion I’m asked to define what usability is, and why usability can benefit an organization. I’ve had several versions of usability overview presentations, but nothing that really pulls all the information on the who, what, where, why, when and how of usability.
So I’ve created the usability overview presentation below to hopefully help inform (and inspire) people to include usability when developing systems. If nothing else, hopefully this can be a conversation-starter about usability for firms that have not yet added a usability component to their development life cycle.
Benefits of Usability
I believe there are many benefits of adding usability to development projects, but I think there are 4 primary benefits of adding usability to the software development life cycle that I touch on in the presentation, they are:
- Limiting the need for expensive post-launch “revisions” of software
- Improving user efficiency, which increases conversion
- Reducing the time it takes to learn to use an application
- Increasing user satisfaction, which positively impacts brand attitudes
I go into more detail about each of the benefits in the presentation.
As with most things, I think there’s always potential improvements that can be made, so please have a look at the presentation and let me know your thoughts – I welcome your feedback!
Thanks!
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April 24th, 2009 — Corporate, User Centered Design
When Institutionalizing usability, it’s critical that 5 user-centered design principles be developed and adhered to.
I was recently reading HFI’s white paper on Digital User Experience Strategies, and I came across an interesting sidebar that captured my attention. In this sidebar the Author, Jarome Nadel, discusses the 5 critical user-centered design principles an Enterprise must have in order to facilitate a digital user experience strategy.
I found the side note interesting, because I believe it accurately and simply explains what it takes to have an Enterprise-wide user-centered design methodology. Take away any of these 5 principles, and institutionalizing usability will not happen.
Here then are the 5 user-centered design principles mentioned in the sidebar, and my comments about each:
1. Executive Support for Usability:
Simply put, an executive champion is critical to institutionalizing user-centered design. Anyone who’s worked in a large company can tell you horror stories about “silos.” Each silo (aka business unit) owner must make decisions that either improves the unit’s revenue, or decreases expenses.
For example, many years ago (pre-Twitter or WordPress if you can believe that!) when I worked at a very large health care company here in the U.S., the Senior Vice President of Individual insurance had vastly different goals than the SVP of Large Group, or of Senior. Their ultimate goals were the same, 15% increase in profit, but their methods for achieving their goals were vastly different.
Because of this, institutionalizing a single overarching set of resources and standards, to promote a unified strategy for user-centered design, could not happen. A project that was mission-critical to Individual, say for example an easy to use online health insurance quote form, was not at all needed or necessary for Large Group, which for example might have needed an easy to use group administrator dashboard.
Without executive support to bring resources and standards to help each unit, based on a set of overarching user-centered design standards and a unified design strategy, the units were left to themselves and could make design decisions in a vacuum, sans Enterprise design strategy and standards.
For that company, this silo strategy was the preferred method of operation and worked well, as witnessed by years of steady business growth. However not all companies can use such a philosophy, and it should be noted that in this new Customer-empowered web 2.0 world chinks will show in the armor. Say for example customers transition from one supporting business unit to another, or wish to use the same applications no matter how they contact the company (phone, web, cell-phone, etc).
With more and more empowered digital customers connecting to an enterprise using multiple channels, and expecting a single and unified customer experience, the Enterprise strategy for user-centered design and standards becomes ever more important, as does the need for a executive champion.
2. User-Centered Design Process
The process the Enterprise sets in place to achieve a comprehensive user-centered design methodology is critical.
This user-centered process includes;
- Creation and maintenance of all digital assets
- Development and adjustment of an overall user-centered design strategy
- Conducting on-going primary and secondary research into customer Personas and needs
- Mandating usability testing throughout the development process, at key points along the way
- Validating designs post launch, with a master set of customer experience and usability metrics that track performance over time.
- Feedback loops to provide key learnings back into the business and technology units (I added this one. Remember that old feedback arrow from that ancient Dinosaur “Continuous Quality Improvement?” It still works!).
3. Standardization
As is so well put by the white paper:
“When business units run their digital operations in the same way, usability variances are essentially eliminated and efficiencies are optimized.”
I’m reminded of a funny story. Again, at that large health insurance company a long time ago, we invited Dr. Eric Schaffer (of Human Factors International, Inc. fame) to provide an executive consultation to senior executives regarding the best way to develop a corporate eCommerce design strategy. Eric was discussing standards, when one of the executives raised their hand and asked,
“So, how many standards should there be? Should we have one standard for internal-facing applications and a separate set of standards for external-facing applications?”
Eric stopped, gathered his thoughts for a few seconds and then said in a quiet voice,
“Well, if you have multiple standards, then you really don’t have a Standard, do you?”
The room was dead quiet for several heartbeats as the pure and simple logic of this statement drilled into everyone around the big table. The meeting continued, but the point was brilliantly driven home. A single set of design standards is one of the easiest ways for an enterprise to ensure a good and consistent user experience, while reducing the expense of design and development teams “re-creating the wheel.”
4. Usability Maturity
Usability can actually be a competitive advantage for a company. All else being equal, an enterprise that has a fully mature usability set of standards and design principles will be producing applications more efficiently, and more effectively.
The improved customer satisfaction received over time by these more usable applications will begin to help move that enterprise above competitors who approach design and development with ad-hoc, or worse, cross-purpose user-centered designs.
Usability becomes the lever that moves the usability-mature enterprise above all competition, and keeps it there. The rest have to play catch-up.
5. Usability Metrics and Modeling
One of the top 12 useful usability books I recommended was “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day.” Why? Because it’s the smart usability practitioner that constantly analyzes metrics coming from web sites or applications. This provides three benefits:
First – Analyzing metrics helps determine the usability “health” of the web site or application. Sudden changes in metrics will call out a potential problem that has occurred. Knowing the best and worst performing pages or tasks will also help prioritize where usability resources should be applied.
Second – The rest of the enterprise speaks metrics. By speaking the language of the rest of the enterprise, the smart usability practitioner is actively involved in business discussions, and can proactively contribute to discussions of how to improve results, by applying usability.
Third – The usability and related user experience metrics will over time provide enough data with which to conduct modeling. Keeping a storehouse of knowledge, learnings and best practices will also prove useful as potential new designs are applied in models. The point is to leverage the massive amounts of usability and related metrics to help build smarter design processes and create efficiencies over time.
The 5 enterprise user-centered design principles
I believe that there’s a lot of information in that one little side bar in the HFI white paper! I think the enterprise that incorporates all 5 user-centered design principles has much better chance of being the enterprise that rises above the competition.
As more and more people move into the web 2.0 world, and use their individual voices to communicate with an enterprise in multiple channels, it becomes more and more critical for an enterprise to offer a consistent and satisfying user experience across all touch-points.
You can download and read the free HFI white-paper: “Digital User Experience Strategy: A roadmap for the post-web 2.0 world“
Dr. Eric Schaffer’s book about institutionalizing usability: “Institutionalization of Usability: A Step-by-Step Guide“
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November 28th, 2008 — User Centered Design
User Centered Design Has Been Around Longer Than You May Think! Case in Point; Irving Thalberg and Previewing the Movies of the 1920s and 30s.
Sometimes it’s easy to forget that user centered design is not just a recent practice associated with building web sites or designing mobile devices such as cell phones or iPods. In fact, user centered design has been around for a long time, in many industries, although it may not have always had the title we give it today.
Irving Thalberg and User Centered Design
One example of user centered design is Irving Thalberg and the popular and successful movies he produced and previewed with target audiences in the 1920s and 1930s.
Irving Thalberg was referred to as the “boy wonder” of Hollywood, and his story is the stuff movies are made about.
Thalberg was born on 30th of May, 1899 in New York City and had health issues all his life, especially a bad heart due to a bout with rheumatic fever he contracted during his teen years. His bad heart and poor health due to overworking would eventually lead to his death at the early age of only 37.
Thalberg was especially intelligent and drove himself hard, skipping going to University after graduating from High School and instead going to work for the largest movie production company of that time, Universal. Thalberg quickly established himself in the upper echelon of Universal, but after a short stint there left to go to a smaller upstart company, Louis B Mayer Productions, partly because of a failed romance with the daughter of Universal’s head, Carl Laemmle.
Thalberg began producing successful movies for Louis B Mayer and soon benefited from the acquisition of Louis B. Mayer Productions by the highly successful theater owner, Marcus Loew. Loew had recently merged Metro Productions with Goldwyn Pictures and needed expert producers to help bring in out-of-control and poorly run movie productions. Thalberg and Mayer would quickly take the new MGM to the pinnacle of Hollywood studios, and make MGM the largest and most successful studio for decades.
User Centered Design: Movie Previews
In many ways Thalberg can be credited for creating the modern movie studio system and many successful production practices still used today. Included in this was Thalberg’s commitment to previewing movies with real audiences prior to releasing the movie to the general public. Previewing a movie with a target audience is an example of user centered design, a practice by the way which is still used today for movies and TV shows.
Thalberg’s use of user centered design worked well, most of his movies were popular with audiences, and the vast majority brought in bountiful profits for MGM. Thalberg used these previews to determine if additional editing or changes were necessary to improve the movie, prior to it’s final release. Thalberg’ genius can even be said to have extended beyond the obvious audience experience, he was apparently able to read the audience’s non-verbal reactions to scenes of a film and instinctively knew what to add or change to make the audience’s reaction for those scenes even better.
One example of Thalberg using this non-verbal user feedback to improve the experience was the changes he made after previewing the movie “The Big Parade” as mentioned at the Internet Movie Database:
Thalberg took the rough cut and previewed it before live audiences in Colorado. Although the audiences responded favorably, Thalberg decided to expand the scope of the picture as Vidor had created a war picture without many scenes of war. He had Vidor restage the famous marching Army column sequence with 3,000 extras, 200 trucks and 100 airplanes, adding about $45,000 to the negative cost of the film. After Vidor moved on to another project, Thalberg had other battle scenes shot by director George Hill. The result was a classic, a major hit that proved to be M.G.M.’s most profitable silent picture. “The Big Parade” was an example of Thalberg’s perfectionism as a managing producer.
Sadly, with Thalberg’s success came jealousy and greed. Louis B Mayer became unhappy with the Boy Wonder, especially after Thalberg received a bigger stock compensation reward than Mayer did. With failing health, Thalberg took time off from work and went to Europe with his wife. Mayer used Thalberg’s absence as an opportunity to bring in other Producers, and eliminated Thalberg’s role as the sole Producer of MGM. Thalberg continued producing movies in his more diminished role at MGM, but eventually overworked himself again and caught pneumonia, which resulted in his untimely death.
User Centered Design in Movie Production Today
Thalberg’s legacy lives on today, including the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial award given to a distinguished Producer at the Academy Awards every year, and of course the continuing practice of user centered design with previews of new movies. I actually attended several movie and TV show previews, the one that most readily comes to mind being a preview for the movie The Abyss. I distinctly recall the fairly lengthy multi-page survey each audience member had to complete after viewing the movie, including questions about how much I liked or disliked each of the major characters, scenes I like best, or worst, and overall satisfaction with the movie, along with many others. It’s interesting to think that a user centered design practice established during the beginning of the golden age of the Studio system is alive and well and still being used today.
For more about Irving Thalberg:
WikiPedia Irving Thalberg article
The Mediadrome Thalberg Biography
The Internet Movie Database Irving Thalberg Biography
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