Welcome to the Scottish Usability Professionals

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Welcome to the Scottish Usability Professionals
Association(SUPA)www.scottishupa.org.uk
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What is SUPA?

• Local (Scottish) chapter of the UPA
• Monthly events and networking
• Membership of UPA gives free entry to these and
  UPA events in London (UK UPA) and elsewhere in
  the UK
• Many other benefits to UPA membership
• Free entry to UPA meetings in UK
• Quarterly magazine UX
• Discount to annual conference

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Future SUPA events

• Building the Usability Profession 3rd December
  2008
• Speaker Tom McEwan, Senior Lecturer, Centre for
  Interaction Design, Napier University
• Venue Microsoft Scotland, Waverley Gate, 2-4
  Waterloo Place, Edinburgh, EH1 3EG
• Time 1830
• Entrance free to UPA members and 10 for
  non-members (5 for student non-members).
• Please register in advance at http//www.scottishu
  pa.org.uk/

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Other Future events

• Monthly UK UPA events (London) and occasional
  regional talks
• UPA International Conference Turin, Italy, 5
  7 December 2008
• Future talks your ideas welcome!

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User Centred Design

• Jim Williams
• Web Analyst
• weeworld.com

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(No Transcript)
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What is Usability
The effectiveness, efficiency and satisfaction
with which specified users achieve specified
goals in particular environments ISO 13407
User Centred Design Process for Interactive
Systems

• Effectiveness Can they reach their goals
• find what they are looking for
• do what they want to do?
• Efficiency How fast
• number of errors
• amount of effort
• number of steps?
• Satisfaction Was it a good/bad experience?
• Do it again?
• Recommend to others?

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What is UCD?

• User-centered design (UCD) is an approach to
  design that grounds the process in information
  about the people who will use the product. UCD
  processes focus on users through the planning,
  design and development of a product.

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ISO 13407

• There is an international standard that is the
  basis for many UCD methodologies.
• This standard (ISO 13407 Human-centred design
  process) defines a general process for including
  human-centered activities throughout a
  development life-cycle, but does not specify
  exact methods.

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UCD

• In this model, once the need to use a human
  centered design process has been identified, four
  activities form the main cycle of work
• Specify the context of useIdentify the people
  who will use the product, what they will use it
  for, and under what conditions they will use it.
• Specify requirementsIdentify any business
  requirements or user goals that must be met for
  the product to be successful.
• Create design solutionsThis part of the process
  may be done in stages, building from a rough
  concept to a complete design.
• Evaluate designsThe most important part of this
  process is that evaluation - ideally through
  usability testing with actual users - is as
  integral as quality testing is to good software
  development.
• The process ends - and the product can be
  released - once the requirements are met.

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Gulf of Execution
We need to use this architecture Lets use this
new cool technology Our database only accepts
these characters
Designers Model
Users Mental Model
Businesss Model
I want to buy this product I want to register
for updates I need to find this information
The Gulf of Execution
We sell these products Our company is
structured this way People should know about the
company history
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Gulf of Execution
We need to use this architecture Lets use this
new cool technology Our database only accepts
these characters
Designers Model
Users Mental Model
Task Analysis Usability Methods
Businesss Model
I want to buy this product I want to register
for updates I need to find this information
The Gulf of Execution
We sell these products Our company is
structured this way People should know about the
company history
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A common approach to Web design

• Developers define the system based on
  functionality and business wishes (without
  looking at users)
• The front end team puts an interface on
• As launch approaches
• Site demo given to client / management, or
• Site is reviewed with end users for usefulness
  (maybe)
• Fix the problems or release it anyway?

The cost of a complete web site overhaul is
roughly 30 times that of incorporating testing
early on(Forrester Research Why Most Web Sites
Fail)
Cost of Design Change
0
Project scoping Design Build
Test Implementation
Life Cycle Phase
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A Typical UCD Methodology

• Analysis Phase
• Meet with key stakeholders to set vision
• Include usability tasks in the project plan
• Assemble a multidisciplinary team to ensure
  complete expertise
• Develop usability goals and objectives
• Conduct field studies
• Look at competitive products
• Create user profiles
• Develop a task analysis
• Document user scenarios
• Document user performance requirements
• Design Phase
• Begin to brainstorm design concepts and metaphors
  
• Develop screen flow and navigation model
• Do walkthroughs of design concepts
• Begin design with paper and pencil
• Create low-fidelity prototypes
• Conduct usability testing on low-fidelity
  prototypes
• Create high-fidelity detailed design

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Financial persona - Jane

• Retail manager moving to larger home
• Personal detail
• Jane (30) is the manager of a shoe shop in the
  Lake District, earning 23,000. Recently married,
  she would like to borrow up to 80 of the value
  of any new home they find.
• Purpose of visit
• Jane and her husband are looking to move from
  their Cumbrian village to a home in Carlisle,
  their nearest town.They are researching mortgage
  providers so that they can make an immediate
  offer on any home that they find in their search.
  Carlisle is a popular place to live, and the
  advantage of making a cash offer will give them a
  good deal of negotiating power when they do come
  to make an offer.They have so far identified two
  other organisations as likely providers, and are
  systematically comparing organisations to get the
  best deal.
• Attributes
• Technically, Jane is very able. Neither she nor
  her partner require assistance in using sites.
  Their market awareness is very high, and they are
  very well-versed in the mortgage application
  process.
• Tasks and information needed
• What mortgages and rates Britannia has to
  offerBenefits of choosing Britannia over other
  providersCost of mortgage over time how long
  until it is paid offWill apply online.
• How we can help this person
• Show breadth of mortgage products on
  offerProvide clear calls to action to apply
  onlineQuick and simple online quotation they
  will be doing this process on many sites.

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Usability Testing

• Expert/Heuristic Review
• Greater speed less cost
• User Testing
• User profiles
• User Scenarios

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Other early activities

• Card sorting
• Paper prototyping

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Usability Testing

• Getting Empirical evidence throughout design
  process
• Time required for preparing, recruitment,
  analysis
• Tactical testing quick and dirty?

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UCD Agile

• Time - Rapid Development Sprint
• (2 week sprints v 4 weeks for testing)
• Multi-disciplinary teams
• How to fit into scrum
• How to fit into iterations
• How to accommodate project slippage
• Introduces delay
• Interrupts project rhythm

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Background info URLs

• http//www.stcsig.org/usability/topics/articles/uc
  d20_web_devel.html
• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User-centered_design

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Some other articles on Agile

• http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agile_software_develo
  pment many articles on web about agile
  usability e.g http//www.agilemodeling.com/essays
  /agileUsability.htmhttp//usability.typepad.com/c
  onfusability/2006/04/agile_usability.htmlHYPERLIN
  K "http//www.jonathanboutelle.com/mt/archives/200
  5/08/usability_testi_1.html"www.jonathanboutelle.c
  om/mt/archives/2005/08/usability_testi_1.html  
   

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Fyi background info agile

• Agile Mindset
• Agile is a software development movement that
  aims to cut fat from the industry's trademark
  bulky timescales and bloated specifications. Its
  been devised by 'developers' or 'programmers' and
  as such has so far been pretty thin on procedural
  detail for the user experience designers. In
  fact, some of the specific methodologies within
  the Agile family make absolutely no mention of
  'experience design' at all. Most advocate lines
  of code being written from the very beginning of
  a project. Almost all state that you work through
  a list of requirements until you have the minimum
  amount of functionality to release a product.
  However, few go into any detail about how you get
  to the point of having requirements in the first
  place.
• So, this is where a project team used to working
  from the very start of a project (determining
  what it is that needs building) can go wrong.
  Trying to lay lines of code before you have some
  idea about why or for what purpose is like taking
  a journey to a foreign city you've never been to
  before, without looking at a map first. You may
  hit the right continent if you have some vague
  sense of direction, however, all roads do not
  lead to Rome.
• But there's more to Agile than laying lines of
  code as soon as possible. Its a mindset which can
  rid the shackles of rigid 'design first'
  processes that pride themselves on quality but
  have done more than their fair share of creating
  the software industry's bad reputation by
  delivering late or not to specification or not
  within budget (or a combination of any and all of
  these). The Agile Manifesto is a set of
  fundamental tenets to remind Aglie practitioners
  to "Get On With It". And really, thats what it
  boils down to, regardless of which role you
  fulfill in the team.
• In my recent experience of working on a project
  that was very much at 'seed' stage when we began
  trying to work out which of the many
  manifestations it could take on, I found that an
  Agile mindset was an effective mechanism for
  ensuring that rediculously tight deadlines would
  be met. Being Agile means that the perfectionist
  that lays within most experience designers has to
  be persuaded that it's OK to get it right the
  second or even third time. Taking a 'sketch
  approach' to design where the first versions are
  a best guess based on the knowledge available at
  that time, abates deliberation for fear of
  getting it wrong. Watefall processes are frought
  with fear of the bad specification. Once coded, a
  design is set in stone, not for revision.
  Technical folk usually get very cranky when you
  sheepishly sidle up to them with "You know that
  section here... the one that took you weeks to
  code, tweak and get just right... well... um...
  we er, need to um, change it... y'know, just a
  little bit..." ducks for cover. However, when
  the project team all agree up front that
  everything is subject to change, it loosens up
  that feeling of foreboding which has a
  side-effect of making people check thrice before
  committing to a specification. Naturally,
  changing things takes time, but when things take
  less time to design in the first place, you have
  more time to iterate until it is right.
• A coding practice known as Refactoring can
  liberate us all from what Alan Cooper refers to
  as scar tissue, a phenomenon where code that has
  to be changed leaves a 'scar' that makes the
  foundations of the program unsound. It can be
  argued that working in an object oriented fashion
  should enable components of a system to be
  rebuilt with no impact on the remaining body of
  code, therefore should be the method of choice
  when following an Agile development process.
• The Agile shift in thinking about experience
  design is not just about being iterative. Its
  fundamentally about designing in an
  object-oriented fashion too. Components need to
  be designed individually in order that they can
  be built individually in a staggered project
  timeline. Some components will be a few degrees
  more defined than others at any one time and this
  is hard to reconcile at first. Its uncomfortable
  thinking that you have to design a mid section
  before a start section etc. Some might say you
  can't possibly do it and expect to get it right.
  And there's the crux of the mindset right there.
  You don't expect to get it right the first time.
  You expect to get it right the second or third
  time around, when you have had time to design the
  start section.
• Agile works, but the idea of laying lines of code
  from the outset of a project, does not seem like
  a great idea to me, for reasons stated earlier. I
  think this is where a production process can
  learn from User Centred Design's 'understand' or
  'discovery' phase to flesh out business
  requirements, user requirements and the
  competitive marketplace. I would still advocate
  that the body of work that is done in this
  period, is managed using an Agile methodology
  like SCRUM though, as it still works to 'gee the
  team along' even when they're not laying lines of
  code. The rhythm set by being iterative, combined
  with an disparaging attitude to excessive
  documentation and ecouraging face to face
  dialogue, is a very effective framework to ensure
  maximum efficiency within the team.
• It does take a significant 'opening of the mind'
  to allow ourselves to really work in this way,
  when everything we've known to date says we're
  going to get burned if we do. But it's inevitable
  that you get burned the first time you try new
  things. We must persevere, because unless the
  software and web industry embraces a total shift
  toward delivering on time, to spec and on budget,
  clients will continue to lose faith in its
  ability to get itself together. This will affect
  its monetary value in very real terms. If the
  tech sector's stock price collapses, as the
  survivors the dotcom crash know only too well, it
  will really, really hurt.

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(No Transcript)
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Usability activities during design
Requirements Design Build
Test
Implement
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User Profile

• Researching in early stages with users should
  capture information about the target audience and
  if any of that has design implications