Are You Really Prepared for Your Usability Study? The Three Steps for Success. By Christine Perfetti Originally published: Jun 22, 2010 Over the years, many design teams have come to me requesting usability testing consulting services. One of the reasons they reach out is because they think usability testing must be a complex and scientific process. As a result, they'd prefer to have an outside consulting company conduct their tests. The first thing I tell people is that usability testing is not a complicated process. At its core, a usability test involves putting a person in front of the product and watching what they do. We consider a usability testing project a success if, after working with us, the team considers testing so valuable that they decide to bring the practice in-house. If you're thinking about bringing your usability testing in-house, you'll want to take the time to prepare appropriately for your first study. 1. After completing these steps, you can begin your usability study with confidence.
Step 1: Writing a usability test plan 1. 1. 2. 3. Chapter18.pdf. Documentation Deliverables for UX by Xavier Roy, Bally Technologies. Usability Testing. Project Management (4) A project plan takes into account the approach the team will take and helps the team and stakeholders document decisions made regarding the objective, scope, schedule, resources, and... Creating an interdisciplinary team with the right mix of skills is vital to the smooth and successful execution of any project. Team members may be able to cover multiple roles or there may... Use your kick-off meeting to discuss the business case related to the site, the vision and mission based on user and organizational goals, and the vision for the site moving forward.
Website requirements are a list of necessary functions, capabilities, or characteristics related to your website and the plans for creating it. There are several types of requirements that... User Research (14) When reporting results from a usability test, you should focus primarily on your findings and recommendations that are differentiated by levels of severity.
Usability Evaluation (14) 10 Heuristics for User Interface Design: Article by Jakob Nielsen. Download a free poster of Jakob’s 10 Usability Heuristics at the bottom of this article. #1: Visibility of system status The design should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within a reasonable amount of time. When users know the current system status, they learn the outcome of their prior interactions and determine next steps. Predictable interactions create trust in the product as well as the brand. #2: Match between system and the real world The design should speak the users' language. Use words, phrases, and concepts familiar to the user, rather than internal jargon. The way you should design depends very much on your specific users. When a design’s controls follow real-world conventions and correspond to desired outcomes (called natural mapping), it’s easier for users to learn and remember how the interface works.
. #3: User control and freedom Users often perform actions by mistake. . #4: Consistency and standards #5: Error prevention See Also. Conducting an UX Expert Review | Steve Bromley - Games User Research. By Steve Within our HCI classes, we have started reviewing the UX of an upcoming multi-platform game from a prominent client, and are performing an expert review on it. An expert review, as opposed to a user-based study, involves having usability experts play the game themselves, and uses tools and their expertise to find faults.
This is different to a user-based study, where the expert would observe another player playing the game. Because of the time constraints involved, we selected an expert review as the most effective method to review the UX of this game. To get the best results possible, and be as helpful as possible to the client, we had to choose our methodology carefully. In this blog post, I’ll discuss how we chose to approach this task, why we chose these methods, and what the alternatives are. The first rule placed on us is that we are to work in groups of 3. Plus too many cooks spoil the broth Two experts watching one player Advantages: Disadvantages: Competitor analysis. Summary Competitor analysis identifies the strengths and weaknesses of competing products or services before starting work on prototypes.
A 10 minute tour of each of 4 to 10 of the most popular competing products showing how typical tasks are achieved is presented to a half day meeting of stakeholders. The competitive advantages of each product are discussed, and a short summary of the market position is generated at the end of the meeting. Alternative methods are market surveys or lab tests of competitor products Benefits To discover the strengths and weaknesses of competing products or services, to develop a list of issues that need to be addressed in order to compete effectively to gain consensus among a group of project stakeholders. This method may also result in a list of desirable features that the new product could include. Method Planning The main objective of the planning phase is to obtain access to four to ten competitor products. Running a competitor analysis Reporting Next Steps. User Experience Competitive Analysis.
Effective product design involves an understanding of context, including the services or features, techniques and standards of others in your market space. Your users have a choice. What can make your product stand out against the competition? We conduct user experience competitive analysis to assess the strengths and weaknesses of your product.
Competitive analysis accomplishes a number of goals: Understand the marketplace: Who are your competitors? Our results help you gather ideas and leverage wisdom to continue where your competitors left off, discover strengths and weaknesses of a product or process, and make difficult decisions about your strategic direction. Competitive Analysis: Understanding the Market Context. Effective web design, from the simplest brochure website to the most complex web application, needs to involve an understanding of context. While user-centered design focuses on user needs/tasks, and information architecture focuses on content, these two aspects alone offer an incomplete picture. What is missing is the context: the environment in which the website or web application is used as well as the market in which it exists.
Rosenfeld and Morville’s “Three Circles of Information Architecture”: diagram offers a visual representation of these overlapping areas, although I propose a slightly different view: Relationship of context to content and users Exploring one aspect of this context, the business marketplace of competing companies/products/services, is the focus of this article. Our primary tool in this exploration is competitive analysis, which is an examination of the websites/web applications of your competitors.