Usability in practice - tips from the field.

A talk I gave to the students of the Manukau Institute of Technology.

1. Usability in Practice Usability in Practice – Tips from the Field Justine Sanderson | 2 May 2007 © 2007 Justine Sanderson
2. Today 1.  User Centred Design 2.  You are not the user 3.  Interviewing people 4.  Creating personas 5.  Running heuristic evaluations 6.  Doing a Navigation Stress Test 7.  Making sense of the data 8.  Book recommendations
3. User Centred Design
4. User Centred Design
5. User Research: Contextual Enquiry
6. Iterative Design: Prototyping
7. Development: Usability Evaluations
8. You are not the user
9. Hang out with people hang out with people who don`t use a computer 8 hours a day
10. Typical occupations architect 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
11. People do strange things on their computers
12. You do not have their undivided attention
13. Interviewing People
14. 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.
15. Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions Open 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 lyesz or lnoz or in short, factual answers •  Tend to bring the conversation to a stop, requiring more questions to get the full story
16. 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…
17. 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 lpersonz who represents a user segment
18. Personas
19. 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
20. 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.
21. 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
22. Task Analysis
23. Task Analysis
24. Task Analysis
25. Doing Heuristics Evaluations
26. Jacob Nielsen’s Heuristics 1.  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
27. Visibility of System Status
28. 1.  Visibility of system status
29. Match between the system and the real world
30. 2. Match the system and the real world
31. 2. Match the system and real world
32. 2. Match the system and the real world
33. 2. Match the system and the real world
34. User Control and Freedom
35. 3. User Control and Freedom
36. Consistency and Standards
37. 4. Consistency & Standards
38. 4. Consistency & Standards
39. 4. Consistency & Standards
40. 4. Consistency & Standards
41. Error Prevention
42. 5. Error Prevention
43. Recognition rather than recall
44. 6. Recognition rather than recall
45. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use
46. 7. Flexibility & Efficiency of Use
47. Aesthetics and Minimalist Design
48. http://dev.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000015.php 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
49. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
50. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
51. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
52. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
53. Help Users Recognise and Recover from Errors
54. 9. Help Users Recognise Errors
55. Help and Documentation
56. 10. Help & Documentation
57. Other Guidelines •  Bruce Tognazzini’s First Principles of Interaction Design http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html •  A good introductory summary from a fellow student http://www.charlieguo.com/web_design_readings.php
58. Doing a Navigation Stress Test
59. 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
60. Navigation Stress Test What 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.
61. Making sense of the results
62. Affinity Diagramming
63. Recommended Books
64. Donald Norman
65. Steve Krug
66. Alan Cooper
67. Jenifer Tidwell