Category Archives: user experience

community, design research, presentations, user experience

Reflections on Web Directions North

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Last week I traveled to Denver to participate in the annual Web Directions North conference. I’m a fan of web conferences, and this one was particularly enjoyable. From watching the sun set behind the Rockies while snacking on still-warm doughnuts to debating the future of SVG with new friends, this was a good week.

On Monday, Mark Trammell and I led a workshop on user research. We focused on helping the workshop participants understand what key challenges their organizations face and how different research methods could help address these challenges. The participants were engaged and thoughtful and really inspiring as I think about my own organization and the user research that I do as part of my daily life.

I also gave a talk about how three companies made significant changes to products and processes based on user research and customer feedback, and how they knew which findings and feedback to act on. I’m still collecting stories of how companies make smart choices about acting on user research findings, so contact me if you have a good story to share.

Many, many thanks to John Allsopp for putting on an awesome conference in a tricky economic environment, and to the friends and colleagues who contributed so much to making this such a great event.

empathy, user experience

On bikes and needs

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From Look at it Another Way by Indi Young

The people who designed the bike talk about what the bike can do, but the rider wants to find out what she can do. In the former vocabulary: “We give you 20 gears.” In the latter vocabulary: “I’ve decided to bike to work twice a week, but I fear the pain of getting up that steep hill on the way there.” If the bike company were smart, they’d be talking about making it easier to get up hills while commuting to work, or suggesting alternate routes or techniques so that you’ll arrive at the office without needing a shower and a nap.

community, user experience

How to make a good FAQ page

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From the excellent introduction by Karl Fogel to Version Control with Subversion:

No one ever called the tech support line and asked, “How can we maximize productivity?”. Rather, people asked highly specific questions, like, “How can we change the calendaring system to send reminders two days in advance instead of one?” and so on. But it’s a lot easier to make up imaginary Frequently Asked Questions than it is to discover the real ones. Compiling a true FAQ sheet requires a sustained, organized effort: over the lifetime of the software, incoming questions must be tracked, responses monitored, and all gathered into a coherent, searchable whole that reflects the collective experience of users in the wild. It calls for the patient, observant attitude of a field naturalist. No grand hypothesizing, no visionary pronouncements here‚Äîopen eyes and accurate note-taking are what’s needed most.

 

community, design research, research, user experience

If I had a spaceship I would land in Colorado

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In February I’ll be traveling to Denver for the next Web Directions conference. Web Directions is officiallly described as “a highly focused conference and workshops for web designers, developers, UX and ID designers, and other web professionals whose day to day job is building web sites and web applications. It features two dozen world class experts, with a razor sharp focus on practical techniques and technologies you can use right away to build even better sites.”

I’ll be giving a talk on building empathetic corporate cultures and co-leading a workshop with Mark Trammell on setting up a user research program.

Beyond usability: How to build a culture of customer empathy

When everyone at your organization cares deeply about the customer experience you will build better, more inventive, and more delightful products. So how do get everyone to really care about and understand not just the usability but the overall experience of your products? Though it takes time, an empathetic corporate culture is not impossible to create and nurture.
In this session Juliette Melton will share several case studies in how to build a culture of empathy at your organization, including best practices for running usability tests, sharing web usage statistics, and developing user personas.

Know Your Users: How to start tomorrow with guerrilla user testing

Right now, someone, somewhere, is using something you’ve built. Who are they? Are they having a good time? It’s not that hard to find out.
User testing doesn’t have to be difficult or expensive, and shouldn’t only happen at the end of the product development cycle. The best and most useful research is distributed throughout the product lifecycle and can be done within a stone’s throw of your office using inexpensive tools. At this workshop, Juliette Melton and Mark Trammell will show you how to build an effective user testing program from scratch and how to keep it going over time.

Who is this workshop for?

This workshop is for those who want to understand how to learn about user experiences, including project/product managers, designers, and usability professionals.

What will you learn?

  • A structured approach to building a user testing program
  • Web analytics basics
  • Surveying tips
  • How to include coworkers in your research
  • How to perform task analysis
  • Recruiting testing participants tips
  • Best practices when sharing research findings

(Wondering about the spaceship I would land in Colorado? Full lyrics here. Anyone who lived in Colorado as a kid will probably know it by heart.)