2. Why bother?
You did rapid prototyping using Balsamiq
You used Agile during development
You are feature and code complete
You delivered the application on time
3. Consider the following…
Are people using your application?
Are people using your application the way you intended?
Are people using your application differently?
Do they like it?
7. The user is not like me
The moment you accept that the easier you can observe
Be humble
8. Task Observations
Preset scenarios that involve the user going through one
story or key action
Thinking out loud is encouraged
Observer should refrain from helping the user in the actions
Video recording is recommended
On screen
User
9. Example
Task 1 – Marking points on the EUR price curve
Task 2 – Marking points on the GBP price curve
Based on rating scale of (1 – 5, hard to easy)
10
9
8
7
6
EUR Pricing
5
GBP Pricing
4
3
2
1
0
1
2
3
4
5
10. Same task but different score
Users mentioned that they found the second stage harder
because they couldn’t navigate back to the main selection
area
11. Eye heatmaps
Using sophisticated tools such as eye tracking cameras you
can create heatmaps of what people are looking at in an
application
15. Surveys
General questions about the user and how they interact with
the system
System usability scale
Simple list of likert scaled questions
16. 1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
I think that I would like to use this system frequently.
I found the system unnecessarily complex.
I thought the system was easy to use.
I think that I would need the support of a technical person to
be able to use this system.
I found the various functions in this system were well
integrated.
I thought there was too much inconsistency in this system.
I would imagine that most people would learn to use this
system very quickly.
I found the system very cumbersome to use.
I felt very confident using the system.
I needed to learn a lot of things before I could get going with
this system.
18. Watch out for “bad” questions
Leading questions
Questions with yes/no responses
19. “Would you use this application?”
For web applications to general public this is a good question
For internal application for regulatory purposes, maybe not
Answer would be YES
What is a better question?
20. “What would make you stop using
this application?”
May find out information about what is important to users
People were generally worried about the calculations
accuracy
People were worried about who did what (auditing)
21. Example: Walmart
Trying to compete with Target in the area of store layout
Clean and tidy (Target) vs. Packed aisles (Walmart)
Walmart surveyed their customers
“Would you like Walmart aisles to be less cluttered?”
22. People said
Yes that’s a great idea, less clutter in the aisles is good!
23. Walmart reacted
15% of inventory was removed from the aisles
Removed pallets of items like juice boxes in the centers of
aisles.
Reduced displays at the ends of aisles
Shortened shelves
25. Cause of error
Walmart came up with the answer first, then asked
customers to agree to it.
You should react to what customers do rather than what they
say
Ie. How often do you work out?
27. Logs
What people are searching for?
How often?
Uncover relationships in the data searched for and your
application
Add hooks to your applications so that you can track uses
when different views are invoked
Taking the ideas of tracking web clicks to the desktop
application world
28. Heuristic evaluation
This can be done during the rapid prototyping stage as well
Using a few evaluators who are familiar with heuristic
evaluation to go through an rate an application on certain
criteria
Considered cheaper and as effective as user testing
This is not a graphical design evaluation
29. Nielsen’s Heuristics
Jakob Nielsen’s list of heuristics is one of the most used set
for evaluating user interfaces
There are 10 heuristics
Each heuristic is measured on a numeric scale with
1 – Low
10 – High priority, must fix
31. Nielsen’s Heuristics (2/10)
Match between system and real
world
System should use users’s language with words, phrases
and concepts
“Item” versus “songs” in an album
32. Nielsen’s Heuristics (3/10)
User control and freedom
Making errors is a good way for users to discover features of
the application
There should be affordances to let users fail without fear:
undo, redo, exit without saving
33. Nielsen’s Heuristics (4/10)
Consistency and standards
Follow platform conventions
Users should not have to worry if words mean different things
in different situations (ie. “close” vs. “exit”)
40. Graphed as a matrix
Rows are the different evaluators
Columns are the heuristic measures
Data sorted to isolate easy problems together to highlight
hard problems
41. Result of Measuring UX
Knowing your users better
Continuous feedback and improvement cycles
Driving change that is measurable
Leading businesses to make decisions on key areas rather
than just speculation
42. Next steps?
If there is interest, gather as a group and go through design
exercises
Similar set up as the Human Computer Interaction course
from Coursera
Skills
Rapid prototyping (Balsamiq)
Heuristic evaluation
Presentation