The case for usability

Copyright © 2014 Tevi Hirschhorn. All rights reserved.1
The Case for
Usability
And why you can’t afford NOT to make it
part of your process.

What is User
Experience?

User Experience Is…
"User experience" encompasses all aspects of the end-user's
interaction with the company, its services, and its products. The
first requirement for an exemplary user experience is to meet
the exact needs of the customer, without fuss or bother.
Next comes simplicity and elegance that produce products that
are a joy to own, and a joy to use. True user experience goes
beyond giving customers what they say they want, or providing
checklist features.
In order to achieve high-quality user experience in a company's
offerings there must be a seamless merging of the services of
multiple disciplines, including engineering, marketing,
graphical and industrial design, and interface design.
- Nielsen Norman

Roles
o User Experience (UX)
o Interaction Design (IxD)
o User Interface Design (UI)
o Usability Engineering

Roles
o User Experience Designer Role
• Very much like a Business Analyst, incorporating business
goals with user needs
• Creates designs to appeal to user emotions – persuasion,
empathy, trust
• Conducts user research and analysis
• Defines scope; produces deliverables for other members of
design and development team to guide production

Roles
o Interaction Designer Role
• Collaborates with UXD
• Designs user interactions in the form of storyboards and
prototypes
• Conducts user research and analysis

Roles
o User Interface Designer Role
• Takes deliverables from UXD and IxD
• Designs the look and feel of the UI
• Collaborates with developers
• May even do front-end development

Roles
o Usability Engineer Role
• Collaborates with UXD, IxD, UI
• Designs and creates usability test plans
• Conducts usability testing sessions
• Creates recommendations for consumption by all UX roles and
development

Tell me more
about
usability.
edit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/orinrobertjohn/2327852352

Tell me more about usability.
*because software doesn’t do anything

Amazing technology can be
rendered literally useless without
taking the users into account
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/go/208262218

User advocates understand the
people using the system
Photo credit: https://flic.kr/p/chRY5h

Great ideas can actually be harmful
if implemented in an unusable way

Gain insight into
what users
actually want
Photo credit: http://goo.gl/vt0zcT

Make sure Development is heading
down the correct path
Photo credit: https://flic.kr/p/dHCqsC

Don’t make Users work so hard to
use the system
Photo credit: http://goo.gl/w2bJ1u

Do you understand your
users?

Yea, but what’s the point?

Make More
Money!
…by achieving
measurable user goals.

Make More money?!
I LOVE money!
I love Money!
And fun hats!
https://www.flickr.com/photos/darthdowney/4394304836

Make More money by achieving
measurable user goals
o EXAMPLE: Call Center Software
• Decrease call time
• Decrease errors
• Increase sales
• Reduce inbound calls
• Reduce training time

o EXAMPLE: Retail website
• Increase product findability
• Reduce shopping cart errors
• Reduce registration process abandonment
• Reduce customer support requests

o EXAMPLE: Self checkout kiosk
• Reduce error rate
• Reduce checkout time
• Reduce abandonment
• Reduce customer support requests
• Reduce training time

Then let the Data
do the talking
“This is how much money
we’re leaving on the table.”
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/alancleaver/27

Humor break.

So where
does Usability
Engineering
come in?

Usability Engineering
o Determines the right path to take
o Validates design decisions
o Uses actual data to take to clients, developers, designers
o Works in an iterative process to constantly refine

Usability in the development process
Plan
Analysis
Design
Evaluation

Usability in the agile development process
Image credit: http://dpwhelan.com/blog/agile/parallel-tracks-for-agile-and-user-experience

Too close to home?
Cartoon credit: http://rodgersnotes.wordpress.com/2010/10/25/google-and-apple-versus-your-companys-application/

What’s it worth?
o Are you losing money due to accuracy/errors?
o What’s the cost of training?
o Missed opportunities/sales?
o How much is spent on customer support?
o Wasted time/money heading down the wrong
development path?

What’s Involved?
o Usability Engineering can be a full-time role
o Creating test plans with measurable business goals
o Recruiting and compensating participants
o Conducting iterative tests
o Setting up testing environment
o Creating recommendations based on findings
o Incorporating into development/design process

What if I don’t have a
Usability Engineer?
o At risk of constantly changing directions
o At risk of heading down the wrong path – wasting time
and money
o At risk of losing team alignment
o No data to present to clients the efficacy of a new
product
o No data to alleviate client fears (about change;
removing or adding features; training; etc.)

Don’t have the
budget?

Try
Guerilla
Usability
Testing!
Photo credit: https://www.flickr.com/photos/ucumari/7549364942

Why can’t I just ask
the client what they
want?

Clients don’t know
what they want.
“If I had asked customers what they wanted,
they would have said, ‘A faster horse!’”
- Henry Ford

Thank You!
Tevi Hirschhorn
www.tevster.com
www.twitter.com/tevih

The case for usability

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