UX ProjectsUsability • Accessibility

UX Process and Standards

I focused in my reading on three types of user experience building relevant : User Research, Usability Evaluation, Information Architecture (IA), and User Interface Design.

User experience (UX) focuses on having a deep understanding of users, what they need, what they value, their abilities, and also their limitations. It also takes into account the business goals and objectives of the group managing the project. UX best practices promote improving the quality of the user’s interaction with and perceptions of your product and any related services.

I focused my reading on three types of user experience building relevant to my client projects: User Research and Usability Evaluation, Information Architecture (IA), and User Interface Design.

• User Research focuses on understanding user behaviors, needs, and motivations through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies.
• User Interface Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and used to facilitate those actions.

Usability Research

While there are many examples of user research methods, the goal is always to understand the user and how they interact with a product. Usability testing is one more formal example of this, but this can be accomplished through interviews, surveys, task analysis, and focus groups. In my projects, deciding which option to take has been mostly dependent on the product and the use case.

Card sorting and think-aloud protocols have been useful ways to determine the thoughts of users and ensuring that my assumptions about what users want match what users actually want. Usability tests are helpful to learn if participants are able to complete specified tasks successfully. Usability tests can also be used to:

• Identify how long it takes to complete specified tasks
• Find out how satisfied participants are with your Web site or other product
• Identify changes required to improve user performance and satisfaction
• And analyze the performance to see if it meets your usability objectives

Card Sorting

Card sorting is a method used to help design or evaluate the information architecture of a site. In a card sorting session, participants organize topics into categories that make sense to them and they may also help you label these groups.

By completing a card sort, you can understand how the user categorizes options in their minds to better understand how they might go about navigating an actual system. Once complete, the results of a card sort can generate useful information for defining the navigation of a site.

Usability Testing

My experience in UX also includes multiple formal usability tests. During a test, participants will try to complete typical tasks while observers watch, listen and takes notes. The goal is to identify any usability problems, collect qualitative and quantitative data and determine the participant's satisfaction with the product. Usability testing is the best way to move a discussion forward. Steve Krug has a chapter near the end of the book, Don’t Make Me Think on usability testing arguing that it doesn’t have to be a “big deal” with extensive money spent to be effective. By recruiting 3 or 4 participants once a month you can determine the most important things to be fixed. Best practices in usability testing include think-aloud protocols, and retrospective probing. A typical usability test is well planned with just a few important tasks. The facilitator notes behaviors, comments, errors and completion of each task documenting results in a report.

Personas

The end result of user research is a reliable and realistic representation of an audience. The most effective way to display the results of audience research is through a persona. “Personas help to focus decisions surrounding site components by adding a layer of real-world consideration to the conversation.” Personas can help describe a user’s personal, professional and technical background to show what might motivate them while using the product. Personas include:

• Persona Group (i.e. web manager)
• Fictional name
• Job titles and major responsibilities
• Demographics such as age, education, ethnicity, and family status
• The goals and tasks they are trying to complete using the site
• Their physical, social, and technological environment
• A quote that sums up what matters most to the persona as it relates to your site
• Casual pictures representing that user group

User Interface Design

User Interface (UI) Design focuses on anticipating what users might need to do and ensuring that the interface has elements that are easy to access, understand, and use to facilitate those actions. Best practices in UI include limiting the amount words used to convey the most information in small chunks. Assume that users can access pages through search engines and don’t necessarily start at the home page. Clarity and consistency are key, particularly when communicating the next steps. Careful placement of items draws attention to what is important. User interface design involves taking chances on how users interact with systems based on previous user research. Everything stems from knowing your users, including understanding their goals, skills, preferences, and tendencies. Every system should be backed up with further usability research to ensure user-centered design choices were correct.