1. Prepare your testing protocol with spaces for participant feedback

Create a protocol template with numbered tasks and questions.  Ensure there is adequate space between each to record relevant answers and observations.

2. Record  the observations

Record the observations from each participant in a fresh copy of this document.  If changes to the protocol, ordering, or wording need to be made, ensure you make them as early in the testing process as possible.

3. Combine your observations

Once you have recorded observations from all of your participants, combine your results in a blank copy of your testing protocol.

Create a section above labelled “Participants” and assign each participant both a unique number and colour. Start by recording the observations from each participant under the appropriate numbered heading (shown below). Use the colour associated with that participant to record the observation. If a second  participant demonstrates the same behaviour or expresses the same sentiment, add a +1 to that observation in the second participant’s colour (this will make analysis easier later-on).

Once you have combined the results from 3 participants, review this list of combined observations and add subheadings to further combine and categorize the findings and observations.  Do this every few participants to make it easier to tally and analyze the results later-on.

In the example above both ‘Dave’ and ‘Holly’ demonstrated the same sentiment under 2) subheading Recent Posts.  +1 was added to the sentiment in each participant’s colour.  You will notice that this helps reduce visual clutter and makes analysis easier at the end.  You will also notice that the subheadings Readability  and  Navigation were added below 4).  Categorizing the feedback as you go along helps chunk the data and will make analysis easier at the end.

4) Tally the Results

Once you have combined the observations from all participants, you can now easily analyze the results adding up similar sentiments, and categorizing findings into a report.

Please write me and let me know if this technique worked for you, if you have a similar technique, or if you found it worked poorly.

Until recently, design seemed ill-considered in the tech industry.  Early PCs were cream-coloured boxes with an overwhelming array of buttons, switches, and dials that were unintuitively placed.  Now PCs are sleek, sexy, and every button is purposefully placed.  What changed?  In 1998, Apple started to put design first in all of their products.  From then until now, Apple created some of the biggest lust items in their industry, overtaking tech giants of the time in relatively short period of time.  Arguably, their success inspired design changes in both the computing and mobile phone industries.  Engineering-minded companies who were once very profitable have been forced to change their way of operating and put design first in order to stay competitive; as a result, this shift towards design has created some fierce competitors who are now starting to gain back ground.  The end result will be a variety of better consumer products.

Working for one such ‘Engineering-minded’ company, I was told by a team of developers AFTER launching a lackluster product “we were told to ignore UX.  We now realize that was a mistake.”  This statement was both vindicating and depressing.  Together, we had the chance to create an amazing product, but in the end it fell short.  Functionally, the product was great: it met all the marketing requirements, and implemented new and useful features.  However, the visually stunning and intuitive design we created for them was disregarded.  As a result, the product looked terrible, and demonstrated a poor user experience. Users were unimpressed.

This is why I’m making a case for design.  Design should come first.  If you put design first,  you are showing the end user that they are what’s most important to you, and you are designing for them.  You make a personal connection with the user this way, and they reciprocate by investing in your product financially, mentally, and emotionally.  If you allow a 3rd party to dictate your requirements (a seller of some sorts- whether it be a carrier, a retailer, a stakeholder, etc.), you are putting design and the end user last.  They WILL notice, and reciprocate in the same way: by putting your product last.

Design is powerful.  Please use it responsibly

In the professional environment, silliness or goofiness are seen as strange, unprofessional, and inappropriate. We are expected to be serious at all times, suppressing our true nature in order to adhere to the ‘societal norm’.  This is incentivized  by promotions, meetings, and to rub shoulders with others trying to climb the same totem pole.  The sad thing is that we not just accept this fate- we welcome it; we see it as a step towards personal growth and maturity.  Unfortunately it is quite the opposite- this sort of professional culture stomps out creativity and actually narrows our personal growth.

People like Everett Ruess and Christopher McCandless,  shed their societal shackles and managed to escape from the tiered pedestal system put in place before us.  They lived, they explored, they gained, they grew; they were treated like outcasts, they died alone.

I believe we have a responsibility to ourselves to deviate off of life’s path, to clash against the norm, and to do it knowing that it’s a good thing.

The XML code for the mockup can be found at BBB9780_OS60 . You’ll have to change the extension from .odt to .bmml, or open up the file and copy and paste the XML into Balsamiq since wordpress wouldn’t allow me to upload a .bmml file

1. Go to Applications -> Microsoft Office 2008 -> Additional Tools -> Remove Office
2. Run ‘Remove Office‘
   
3. Go through the removal tool.  Eventually it will prompt you to select which version of Office to uninstall.  Select the correct version.
   
4. Empty your trash and you’re Done.

Joey joined Research in Motion as Director if UX Research in the summer of 2009, just in time to kick off the Blackberry6 development effort. Prior to RIM, Joey spent 9 years at Microsoft spending most of his time in the User Experience organization for Windows finishing his career there as the UX Research manager for Windows 7. Originally from Canada, RIM has provided a homecoming for Joey who completed his graduate work at Carleton’s HCI lab.” -Mark Connolly

Joey Benedek had many interesting things to say, but I thought I’d reiterate some of the more interesting things for myself as well as my loyal reader (also myself).

Facets of Design

There are many facets to the design of a product, as both Joey Benedek and RIM realize:

• User research
• Interaction Design
• Visual / Auditory Design
• Industrial / ergonomic Design
• Branding

User research involves requirements gathering- what does the user need and how should their needs be addressed?  Interaction design focuses on creating a meaningful interaction between the interface and the user; again this involves user research.  Visual and auditory design partially cover candy UI, but also creating features that are pleasing and not annoying with repetition.  Industrial and ergonomic design focus on the form factor.  And finally, branding focuses on keeping that recognizable feel.  It’s all a lot to juggle when designing a product, and being equally vital in the design process, it is important that all of these design elements harmonize.

Menus – Efficiency vs. Aesthetics

• In his experience, text-based one-dimensional menus provide users with far more efficient use.  However, in my experience, this is only when users become proficient and memorize where menu elements are.  There is still a lot of overhead in processing all that text to begin with.
• In his experience, image-based multi-dimensional menus provide a better experience, but slow user efficiency

One solution to this problem is to used text-based menus with associated icons.  However, as Joey states, it is important not have the iconography overpower the text and distract the user.

Settings – Series vs. Parallel

• In series, or in sequential flow, is the way that settings have typically been done in the past.  Looking at any Windows version up to Vista you will notice that the computer settings are accessed through a very long list.  Again, someone can become proficient at navigating this list over time, but for the majority of users who access settings infrequently this creates a lot of overhead.  Another example on Windows and the Blackberry is wizards- wizards force the user to modify their settings one step at a time.  There is no flexibility of control.  Often users will get fed up and exit the wizard without setting anything pertinent up.
• In parallel, users have the option of setting up whatever they want, in what order they want, by selecting an according action.  For example, “Set up-email” or “Change Display Preferences.”  The best way categorize these settings is to do card sorting with users, getting them to label categories as verbs.

Don’t break design patterns

• If users have become accustomed to using your product in a certain way, and they enjoy it, don’t change it on them next revision.  This poses a new challenge for designers: How do we create the next iteration of design without breaking the thing that users are used to, enjoy, and identify with us.

Personas vs. Scenarios

• Knowing your target user is important, but the goal of developing personas is not  to directly use this information to evaluate the product, rather to understand the contexts of use.  Once you have developed your contexts of use (scenarios), use those to design and evaluate the product.

I had a pretty uninformed understanding of paper prototyping and usability testing back then, but regardless this video is a pretty good demonstration of what Paper Prototyping is, and how to conduct it in the final stages of your prototype design.

PS- I know this isn’t scientifically rigorous but it is neat.