the user & the design process...some thoughts on user testing 10 user testing has to be an...

April 2014Parsons, The New School for Design Jane Pirone

The USER& The Design Process

April 2014Parsons, The New School for Design

User FriendlyUser Centered DesignUX (User Experience)User TestingUsabilityUI (User Interface)

why should we care so much about the USER?

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oh and what about participatory design, HCI, co-design, and agile dev etc?

April 2014Parsons, The New School for Design

The Rise of The USER

1983 - The Visual Display of Quantitative Information - Edward Tufte1988 - The Psychology of Everyday Things (now the “Design of Everyday Things”) - Donald Norman1990 - The Art of Human - Computer Interface Design & Computers As Theater - Brenda Laurel1990 - Computers As Theater - Brenda Laurel1991 - Programming as if People Mattered - Nathaniel Borenstein1993 - Usability Engineering - Jakob Nielsen1995 - About Face: The Essentials of User Interface Design (now About Face 3) - Alan Cooper 1996 - Bringing Design to Software - Terry Winograd2005 - Ambient Findability - Peter Morville2006 - Designing Interactions - Bill Moggridge

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putting the user at the center; prioritize user experience over everything else by always testing against and clarifying:

•the goals, objectives, motivations and intentions of the project•the users (primary, secondary) through personas•understand the needs and experience through use-case scenarios •the context (when, how, why, where the users are using it)•how you will receive feedback and participation•how you will measure the success of the user experience

it’s all in the process (and the team)... which is a consulting "rm’s secret sauce

April 2014Parsons, The New School for Design 6

Discovery & ResearchFacilitated Design Workshops

Product, Service and Brand Strategy

Trends & Market Research

Ethnographic Studies

Concept Ideation & Visualization

Iterative DesignUI/UX Design

Visual Design

Prototyping

User Testing

Specifications & Requirements

Release - Alpha, Beta, v1, v2, etcSoftware Development

Quality Assurance

Documentation & Guidelines

Evaluation

Maintenance

Standard CommercialDesign ProcessIntegrated Experience Design

Interdisciplinary & Collaborative Teams

01Discovery

02Design

03Deliver


CaseStudy: Not For Tourists

2011Parsons, The New School for Design

SOME thoughts on USER TESTING

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user testing has to be an integral part throughout a user-centered design process. one needs to strategically choose the most appropriate methods and tactics given the circumstances and situation of the project -- there is no one way -- time/cost vs bene"t -- do it early and often

you have to have a deep understanding of the project - its purpose, goals, users, stakeholders, etc to conduct useful user testing - meaning you’ve got to understand at each stage what you’re testing, what the context is, and what the fundamental goals and purpose of the project is and who its for.

at many points in the early development it provides an opportunity to challenge assumptions, reveal missed opportunities or implicit knowledge, clarify direction, resolve discord (especially in large team collaborations), provide insight for informed decision making.

keep your mind open; check your ego at the door (don’t be defensive or attached)

one should design as a system that yields constant & continuos feedback from the user - both qualitative and quantitative. understand the measurement criteria against the articulated goals and criteria of the enterprise

generally the best results come from observing behavior -- *want to see what they do, not hear them say what they do*


SOME user testing METHODS

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DIRECT OBSERVATIONwatch people use your prototype (presence of observers can bias)observe their behavior and reactions (confusion, frustration, etc - what they do is more revealing than what they say )try to simulate context of usemake sure there is an outcome or goal of use

Can add verbal interaction -- effective for revealing details of behavior - why did you do that?

Q&A/Interviewsstructured query of experiencecan provide answers to speci"c and standardized questions importance of crafting questions and understanding limits, biases and lack of objectivity- individual Q&A- group Q&A

SURVEYS & QUESTIONAIRES- can quantify feedback/opinions


SOME user testing METHODS

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Design Experiments Hypothesis testing - compare two or more conditions - collect data - very hypothesisPredict behavior - de"ne set of variables - investigate resulting relationships

Well designed tests can yield empirical and objective data that quanti"es behavior around a testable hypothesis

eyetrackingface recording

Heuristic Evaluations


Research Questions, User Pro"les, Scenarios

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Research Questionscritical to de"ne speci"cs of the project require’s attention, time and understandinghelps prevents #ailingas you become more knowledgeable from the process, you can re"ne

Multiple Research Methods for engaging in user researchEthnographic - ObservationDiscovery Phase

ITERATIVE...GIANT ongoing FEEDBACK LOOP.


Tactics & Methods for designing user experiences

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There are hundreds... IDEO...

Card Sortingyoutu.be/-89cj71-Vfg

Tools for Rapid Prototyping, Wireframing, Flows, etc• Visual !delity (sketched ↔ styled)

• Functional !delity (static ↔ interactive)

• Content !delity (lorem ipsum ↔ real content)

OmniGraf!eBalsamiq -- http://balsamiq.com/


CaseStudy: Datamyne

the user & the design process...some thoughts on user testing 10 user testing has to be an...

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