UX

Getting buy-in to introduce usability testing

By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Getting buy-in to introduce usability testing

First, check out this video of Dr. House speaking to a patient who didn’t know how to use an inhaler. It’s a really good starting point in communicating the fact that there are times when users are just….dumb.

Instead of putting the blame on users and leaving it at that, there are times when it is more sensible and worthwhile to invest in finding the issues our users are facing and uncover root causes of their frustrations. Usability testing to the rescue.

If you ask any UX professional out there on what they think about usability testing, I’m guessing everyone will say stuff along the lines of – Awesome, Absolutely critical, Important, The Qualitative Input we got was priceless.

It’s a great idea, and the sad part is when it stays as an idea, and not part of the product development processes. As a realist, I’m a believer that every piece of investment must be justified and make economical sense, that includes usability testing.

So how do we get buy-in to have it introduced?
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Building the Minimum User Journey

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Large_Lego_store

Lets take a step back and imagine…you were just a small kid, and your dad brought you to this amazing Lego shop. And you, being that crazy Lego fanatic would just beg and beg your dad to let you buy some Lego.

Dad then went on to say: “Sure thing kiddo, I’ll let you pick any Lego sets.”

Your eyes widen in anticipation.

“But remember you only have $100 to spend on toys this year, not a penny more.”

Ok that’s not fun. $100 is a lot of money to a small kid, one things for sure it’s not enough to buy every Lego set in the store. What you would most likely do next is stress yourself out, think long and hard on which Lego set should you pick, is it worth the investment, will it be fun to play for the whole year, and go crazy.

 

That’s a tough call

Tough. Exactly the situation we face everyday in software projects, you would like to build everything but with project realities like budgeting constraints, resourcing, skills, technological limitations, release milestones and more….it’s basically impossible.

Deciding on what to build is tricky, prioritising that backlog on what features to build first is equally as bad, so rather than sitting back and admitting defeat, what could we do?
 

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Designing Interactions: Status

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

trafficlight

Photo courtesy of flickr user tasuki

Traffic lights are ubiquitous and can be found in almost any city in the world. Whether it’s a pedestrian crossing, road intersection or anywhere with competing flows in traffic, you will always see traffic lights.

The concept is simple:

Traffic lights alternate the right of way accorded to road users by displaying lights of a standard color (red, yellow/amber, and green) following a universal color code (and a precise sequence to enable comprehension by those who are color blind).

  • Illumination of the green light allows traffic to proceed in the direction denoted,
  • Illumination of the yellow light denoting, if safe to do so, prepare to stop short of the intersection, and
  • Illumination of the red signal prohibits any traffic from proceeding.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traffic_light

When it comes to designing software experiences this days, there is sometimes the need to display statuses against a record, usually coming in the form of a contrasting colour, self-explanatory icons, or even accompanied by text to better explain the status of the record.

Rather than re-inventing the wheel each time, why not look to the excellent design of traffic lights as a guiding principle?

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Design Templates for Windows 8 Apps

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials 11 Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Movie1

Having recently collaborated with Microsoft in accelerating Windows 8 App development, I’ve came up with these design templates to serve as reference in designing Windows 8 Apps, providing more clarity in how to convert a conceptualised design from a Photoshop file into a full-fledged Windows 8 Apps with the use of Blend for Visual Studio.

Download link and more information on these design templates after the break.

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A Rough Guide to Making Feature Decisions

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials 1 Comment Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

menu-design

I like relating product features into…food. Think about your product as a restaurant, and the dishes you’re offering as your features. To add a new dish to the restaurant menu, you might even need to consider everything from what dishes to sell, the name of the dish, the recipe of each dishes, how to present the dish, what cutlery to provide along with that dish, how it will be displayed in the menu and more.

Tricky, which sounds exactly like how tricky feature decisions are in product development.

During the past few months, work has been piling up and with deadlines looming and project milestones in the horizon, it’s been a challenging period, forcing everyone around me to work not only faster, but smarter.

It has also pushing everyone into making more snap decisions, which are basically decisions that are done swiftly without too much careful thought, mostly based on experience or intuition. There are many that say that snap decisions aren’t such a good idea, but I’ve found them to be very effective at times, if practiced correctly.

But there are also cases where we’ll be stuck in endless debates on what should be built, how should things work, and it all gets trickier when differing opinions cannot be aligned.

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Testing Differences: Quality Assurance & Usability

By Kok Chiann in Thoughts No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , ,

bug

So…is it a quality or usability bug? But wait…quality means usability as well no?

I was thinking a lot about the difference between the testing done by Quality Assurance/Testers and User Experience Designers, many have different perceptions and some might argue that its the same thing. It’s tough to draw the line sometimes but I personally would agree to disagree because they share similarities in some areas but are vastly different in objectives, approach, required expertise, and much more.

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UX Team of One Series: Chapter 1 – Getting things started

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials No Comments Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,

gettingstarted
Photo courtesy of flickr user Paul Bence

Remember the time when you landed a brand-new UX design role, project or job? There could be like a hundred features to build. It could be a legacy product that needs to be revamped, or a greenfield project that needs to be built from ground up. Everyone could be moving in different directions. Stakeholders have high expectations. Everything design related is in a mess.The previous designer left the company with a gaping void or… worst, developers were doing UI design. Add to the fact that requirements is in a disarray and features are being built and rebuilt again continuously. Decisions keep changing.

Sounds familiar? Sounds like the norm in many software companies out there. Oh and to add further salt to the wound, you’re the only user experience guy in the team.

Where on earth should you go from here?

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What Should I Do Next?

By Kok Chiann in Tutorials No Comments Tags: , , , , , ,

I’m pretty sure many of you have the experience of using a new application, where everything was butterflies and roses…up until you suddenly hit a dead end. You’re lost, you’re not sure how to get to the next step or to do what you wanted to do. Frustrating indeed. Being forced to have a glimpse of a hundred paged help document…just makes you feel like giving up.

whatnext1

Don’t worry, you’re definitely not alone in this.

Having a clear indicator to user on what they should and could do next is key, in order to provide a seamless and smooth user experience. Users need to be led and even guided on what to do next, and no, I do not mean standing beside them and showing them each step, its about crafting a user interface that does exactly that for you.

Lets step through methods to help achieve exactly that, after the break.

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