User Study is not Optional - It is required...

I am facing a same problem again...
"We do not have time to study users.
We do not have money to study users.
We already know our users.. I will tell you about them"
Stakeholders are always looking to get a quick result that can be demonstrated.
Same story... same mistakes...I now see a pattern. It is time to fix this issue. Share

Does a good UX create a more sophisticated user?

In a sense yes,

It really depends how you define the word 'sophisticated' I guess. Good user experience is like eating a good food.. you will remember the taste and how much you liked it. Next time you eat the same food again, you will be more sophisticated taster, little bit different than the last time, because now you have expectation, you have been educated.
Someone who experienced Apple product would not necessary expect the same experience at a $ store. But the person will expect the same experience next time he purchase another Apple product. So I have to say that user experience create a more educated user. Share

High Impact UX

I am going to be talking about "Building High Impact User Experience" in couple hours at Interactive Austin 2008.
I am going to use this blog to jot down some of the key concepts I need to talk about.

What is User Experience?

State of user's mind during the interaction with an artifact:

User experience is not the question of how you are doing it. It is a question of how you feel while you are doing it. It is not question of how fast you got there, or how many click did it take to you get there,but it is a question of the way you feel while you are getting there.
Essentials to create high impact user experience:

• Being an user advocate.

• 1. Observe Users
• 2. Ask Users
• ------------------------------
• 3. Be a User
• ------------------------------
• 4. Be a Designer

How has the explosion of social media affected UX practices?

I am going to use traffic signs as a metaphor.
In Web 1.0 era it was a One Way Highway, where users only has one way to go. You just click on links and menu to search for the information provided by one source.
Us designers, only had to worry about building signs like stop, speed limit, road condition...We didnt need many signs to direct this traffic.

Now in Web2.0 era.. I could compare this place with an airport. Comes in and out to everywhere. Not only you receive information from multiple sources in one spot, you have ability to share these information with anyone or any group.
Us designers have to worry about building signs such as departure, arrival, flight information, gate number, restroom.. etc. etc.

What I am trying to get here is that users have to get themselves familiar with new user interface element such as ( RSS feed, social media icons) and new technology terms (twitter, flickr, ajax). Creating enjoyable experience in web 1.0 was hard, and i think it will be even harder to create unified enjoyrabled user experience in web 2.0. UX practice must change by observing and testing more users, and I think now days more company put more effort into the users. Share

User Experience - International Air Plane

13 hours of flight from LA to Seoul Korea using Asiana Air
2 Meals and 1 snack were served
Meals were excellent given the fact that it is only an airplane food. I had a steak dinner, ham & cheese sandwich, & seafood spaghetti.
Cabin crew were excellent ... wow... those ladies are so gorgeous.

A remote to control my own personal TV mounted in the back of headrest is a good idea. Infrasture was there.. but the content was horrible. They were playing the same movies 4 -5 times throughout the flight. The video games they provided was all outdated (all made in yr 1997).

The worst part of the flight was this fat guy sitting right next to me... his fat from his left thigh was constantly invading my personal space. To make things worse, he started drinking wine and his body temperature was rising every second..... ok... this is enough. 13 hours... imagine that. Share

Power to the People

So I have been creating a custom golf club tool for the project I have been involved in. I have to say this is a pretty complicated web application because there are so many variables to consider.

Granted, customizing one club shouldn't be that hard using a multiple page or using filed set & legend chunking tactics.
But what if the user wants to customize multiple clubs at once? For this B2B site I am involved in, one of the user story was to satisfy a customer who wants to order multiple clubs in one page.

Without further introduction, I will jump to the conclusion first.
Here is the re-design of the custom tool I have mocked up. This design originated from 6 usability tests and couple paper prototyping tests. I have not run a final usability testing with this module, but I am pretty confident that this interface could satisfy the user story.

So the BA group comes back to me and asks

• Why does the Duplicate Button reside outside of the table?


• People read from left to right. We need to move the Duplicate Button to the right so people can complete their task then 'duplicate' the configuration. Doesn't it sound more intuitive?

Not a bad reason to start up a quick discussion.


I believe that Duplicate Button will be more effective residing outside of the table on the left because

1. Duplicate Button is not a part of the club configuration. The button impacts the line item ( layout of the page ) not the content of the club.


2. It is on the left side to give more power to the people. Yes, people read left to right, and probably it is a right assumption that people will configure the club from left to right as well. But I wanted people to know that there is a Duplicate functionality even before they start customizing. This concept will grant the user with more power. Now they can Duplicate the configuration at any time of the process. They don't have to question themselves what they need to do to customize multiple clubs at once. As I am typing this blog on my word processor to copy and paste it onto the blog page, I have noticed that I am using the word processor because I know for the fact there is a Copy & Paste functionality. If I did not know this fact before I started typing on the word processor, I would have never used this method. By telling users what they can do in the beginning of the process, I believe, the user now have more control with this system.

Obviously, this module still needs more work. But I thought it was just interesting to observe that position of one button could change the way people perceive the whole picture.

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Efficiency of Paper Prototyping

Many people are skeptical about paper prototyping.
What it seems to be right on paper / sketch wouldn’t necessarily translate onto the monitor.
Some graphical elements could be missing on paper prototyping
making a mistake on paper prototyping is so much easier to fix and there’s almost no penalty.

Paper Prototyping is

1. Concept
2. Overall Interaction Flow
3. Capturing User’s Mental Mode
4. Fix / Upgrade interface on the go

Is not

1. User interface
2. Capturing user errors
3. Q&A session

What may looks stupid on the monitor could easily be sketched out and brought it to the life on the paper because it is still in the concept stage. A designer may be afraid to implement what could be the greatest idea on the Fireworks canvas because of the pattern he is used to. Break the traditional thinking process… throw the mouse away for couple minutes… get up and get out of the cub… couple of yellow post it could bring wonders to your interaction flow.

A test case to come in next update...

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Using search engine for a quick usability decision

Case Study:
Empty Cart Button

When:
A user will click on the empty cart button on a shopping cart page to empty out the shopping cart.

Problem:
BA group wants to use the word "Cancel Order" label on the button.
Clicking on the Cancel Order button will prompt a user with the warning box that contains "OK" and "Cancel" button. Now user has to determine and distinquish the definition between those two cancel buttons he has faced.

Solution:
Changing the label from "Cancel Order" to "Delete Order" to relieve the confusion.

Violation:
Jacob Nilsen's basic usability rule - "Users spend more time on other sites than on your site"
Google Search Results
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Number of Results Keyword
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
33,400 Delete Order
464,000 Cancel Order
1,210,000 Empty Cart
212,000 Clear Cart
1,600 Cancel Cart
---------------------------------------------------------------------------

Recommendation:
Use the word "Epmty Cart" instead of "Delete Order"

Result:
Waiting for the approval.... we will see how this turns out Share

Eye Tracking

So when you look at my page, what do you recognize first? yes... a dude smoking a cigar. As much as I cherish the study that was done by Jacob Nielsen about eye tracking, there is always an exception.

This is one of the reason why I like the presentation of 4 products shots on the homepage of shop.callawaygolf.com. Some ppl here at CG have suggested to change the arrangement of the homepage so that we could display more promo and events, but we have to think from the customers' point of view. What they really want to see is CG products, not a promotion that isnt really relevant to them. These 4 product image shots will capture visitor's attention right away as a navigation tool.

Wow.. what a great idea.. Product images as a navigation tool. Share