UXDesigner

     One of the most common patterns we learned about that emerges when a participant is reading a webpage is the F-shaped pattern. That is: two horizontal stripes followed by a vertical stripe. There are several consequences of this pattern. Users tend not to read all of the words that are on the screen so sometimes important information can be missed. The first two paragraphs on the page should contain the most important information because that is where a user is most likely to see it and the first word of sub headers, paragraphs and bullets should have an information carrying word. By doing these two things users will have more chance to see the information you want them to read if they are just scanning the page instead of reading all of the words.

              Eye tracking is used to show several things to researchers. It will reveal the order in which a participant looks at the information on the page, it highlights which information they see and which they are not looking at. Eye tracking will show the amount of time taken to complete a task, this shows how easy or complex a particular element is to find on a given page. It will also show how long a user looked at any one element, this will reveal how interesting or incomprehensible an element may be to a user. Eye tracking will also reveal how many glances there are per element, this will show how valuable, confusing, or complex the element may be.

     With this being the case we need to ask ourselves during testing “Do users understand the gestures, can users perform the gestures, and are the gestures satisfying to use?” When we are testing an app or website with participants, we want to not only ask their opinions on different elements, but we want to observe how they try to complete the task. Did they try to pinch an area of the screen when they should have tapped or were they trying to rotate when they should have dragged? These are the kinds of observations that we as facilitators need to make when we do mobile usability testing. A user may not point out to us that they wanted to drag the screen, but since that was their first instinct it is telling for us that, that is what they think the interaction should be.

     Overall, a mobile usability lab consists of four things: a device on which to test (or the ability for a participant to bring their own device to test on), a webcam with an extendable arm so the facilitator can document the gestures and how they are interacting with performing the different tasks, a screen-recording software, for later review and analysis purposes, and a laptop on which to transmit the study as it is occurring so the facilitator can watch and ask questions to the participant. These four things at a minimum make up a good mobile usability study.

     There are both benefits and drawback of unmoderated testing. Some of the benefits include: It takes less time to complete because participants can complete it on their own time, not just when a facilitator is available. There is less chance of bias because a facilitator cannot ask questions that may lead a participant. It is cheaper than needing to pay for a location, materials, and facilitator to conduct. It is easier to conduct people who are willing to participate if they can do it on their own time. However, there are also drawbacks of unmoderated testing: Users may not complete a task correctly and just move on to the next task. Less quality information is collected due because no one is there to filter it. There is no way to dig into answers that are provided giving less research for the team to analyze.

              Although moderated testing can help you dig in more to what a user is thinking about a certain task, problem, or item, without practice, a moderator can accidentally begin to lead a user toward the answers they think they are going to answer and not what they would say organically. This is why unmoderated user testing can be a good choice for some situations. While a moderator is there to help in some situations during a moderated usability test, they should never interfere with the integrity of the test. For example, a moderator should never lead, explain how to do a task, or answer questions about the results during testing. In order to get unbiased results, a moderator needs to be unbiased.

              In particular, we learned about Mechanical Turk and Ethnio and the pros and cons each tool has. Mechanical Turk is low cost for large projects, allows for users to be recruited from all over the world, and users with very specific skills can be recruited. However, its disadvantages are it is geared towards a single task completion, not typical usability testing, the pricing model is complicated and in order to get very specific with the screener a user would need to get help from a consultant to find out the price, and most people who would be your participants are not going to be people who would typically use your site. Ethnio has a clear pricing model, it allows for participants to be recruited based on a screener that you build yourself so you get only the participants you want, the participants can be recruited from your own site so you know they are interested in the information you are supplying, and the results are aggregated. The disadvantages are in order to gain participants they do have to come to you or you have to find them there is no recruiting from Ethnio, users to your site may not be happy with a popup or request to take your survey, and this only works if your recruiters are ready and able to conduct the tests because you ask the users when they want to schedule at the time they agree to participate.

              The benefit of this week’s activity was being able to see the results of all the tests in one single place. I was able to aggregate all of the challenges that users were facing as well as seeing what they thought would work better for them by capturing quotes of what they thought of the site. By being able to put all of the information into a single document that could be delivered to the stakeholder they would be able to find out how satisfied participants are with their site, identify required changes they need to make to their site to improve user performance and satisfaction and analyze the performance to see if it meets the usability objectives.

     I also caught myself a couple of times during the tasks wanting to lead him to the correct answer when he was struggling instead of letting him either figure it out for himself or finally tell me he couldn’t do it. However, that seems to come with the territory. I have noticed I have significantly improved on that since my very first usability test where I would jump in immediately when they struggled, where now it is mostly just feeling like I want to when they are struggling. Although, I do still catch myself actually jumping in to save them from time to time.

     The other thing that happens often times at our company is people who misunderstand the numbers we report to them and they run with them and start spreading them without actually understanding what different metrics mean. An example of this was we did a study with users then shared out the time on a particular task was X then one of our stakeholders started sharing with the executives of our company that, that was the case. However, when they were asking him what it meant, the task that he was explaining to him was not the same at all and he was leading them down a rabbit hole and was creating problems throughout the organization because everyone believed there were problems that there actually were not. I have definitely learned how necessary it is to make it very clear when reporting out what tasks we are talking and what numbers truly mean.

     I never realized how much went into understanding the audience. We have always discussed with the people who were doing the recruiting for us what the study is and who our intended audience for our site is in depth, but I had not thought about how much of that actually goes into the recruiting process. Having to send out emails to thousands of potential people and whittle down the list to just a handle is extremely time consuming and for that I am grateful we outsource that part of the usability process.

     This is why I have enjoyed the last two assignments. Getting to learn more about things I deal with every day on the job and how I can craft a better argument for the work I am doing is only going to help me to succeed in what I am trying to accomplish. I want to be able to create the very best user experience I can for our customers.  In order to best do that, I need to have buy-in from all of our executives and managers who sign off on the testing. Hopefully, this class is going to help me really learn and hone my skills in those areas

Slowly, but surely we are providing knowledge to executives in our company to help them understand the value of UX in the company and in all companies. Hopefully over the next couple of years we will be able to build UX into the processes that are already in place without there needing to be a fight every time there is a new feature released within the walls of our company.

     This week, we planned usability testing for the Lunch Money Buddy app we created. Usability testing is good for a company, as it can provide a lot of valuable insight into what an app or website should be based on, data, not opinion. If we are able to provide user feedback to a company before new features or an entire new product goes into development letting them know there are issues with it; then we can save valuable time and money for everyone involved. As we perform user testing, we keep the focus on the people who will be using the app or website. By doing this, we are able to find the most potential problems and find additional features the users will need to complete their end goals and improve the products. In order to get the most out of the usability tests, we can perform them throughout the design process. If we perform them before and during development, it should look at the effectiveness of the design. This type of usability test should collect information about things that are more subjective and qualitative in nature such as “What do you think of the product?”  If the usability testing is completed toward the end of the development, it should look at the ability for a user to complete a task and follow the system well enough to remember how they got to certain screens more so than their feelings about look and feel.

     As our class is wrapping up, we once again were asked to create a piece for our portfolio. A portfolio is a collection of creative work someone uses to display their skills, especially to potential employers. Portfolios can take many shapes, but for the most part they contain four main parts. They define the problem the project was addressing and what you were asked to design for. They explain the approach an individual used in order to define what they did and how they did it. In the results section, the individual explains what happened as a result of their work, what the final product looked like, and what changed through the course of the work, even if the product was never released. In the final section, the individual usually will describe what they learned from the overall project and what they will do the same or differently in the future.

     This week we were asked to complete a draft of our projects, then post our progress to the class for discussion. In those discussions an interesting question was posed, “How do you feel about static prototypes vs. interactive prototypes?” This got me thinking about when was the best time to use each and what should each type be used for. So I did some research. Prototypes have two main benefits that static prototypes are lacking in: 1. They save development time as ideas are shown rather than inferred and 2. They allow for more effective communication of design ideas with stakeholders earlier in the process. However, if a team is particularly agile and or has a high amount of communication between them paper prototyping can be quite effective as well. The communication structure of the organization, the stakeholders involved, and the degree of interactivity should all be taken into account when deciding between static or interactive prototypes. So the answer of which is better really is it depends on your organization or your personal preference. There really is no “right” answer.