http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ A forum to help you put usability training into practice en-US Thu, 17 May 2012 02:31:00 +0000 http://bbpress.org/?v=1.0.2 q http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/search.php http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=44#post-65 Wed, 29 Sep 2010 14:14:54 +0000 David Travis 65@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p><strong>When</strong><br /> 8th November, 2010</p> <p><strong>Where</strong><br /> The Hatton, 51-53 Hatton Garden, London, EC1N 8HN. <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/pdf/Map_to_Hatton.pdf">Map and directions</a> (pdf).</p> <p><strong>Start and finish times</strong><br /> We will start at 9.30am, with tea, coffee, fruit juice and pastries available from 9.00, and we will finish by 5pm.</p> <p><strong>Dress code</strong><br /> There is no dress code: wear whatever makes you feel relaxed and comfortable.</p> <p><strong>Dietary requirements</strong><br /> We provide a delicious a 2-course meal at lunchtime. If you have any special dietary requirements, please <a href="mailto:david.travis@userfocus.co.uk">let me know</a> as soon as possible so we can cater for you.</p> <p><strong>Pre-seminar activities</strong><br /> Prior to the workshop, I would like you to think about your own goals and objectives for the training. Please download and complete a <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/pdf/traininggoals.doc">training goals questionnaire</a> (MS Word) to help you decide what you want to get out of the training. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=38#post-59 Thu, 03 Jun 2010 09:18:34 +0000 David Travis 59@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>We follow the guidance of the British Psychological Society and always use 'participant' in favour of 'subject'. 'Subject' could be take to mean you are 'subjecting' people to something and certainly implies they are lower status. 'Evaluator' isn't a good term, since it's easy to confuse this with 'Test administrator' which can make your test plan confusing to read. I've also seen 'user' in some test plans, which is neutral, if a little geekish. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=38#post-58 Tue, 01 Jun 2010 09:55:59 +0000 chikita 58@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>When referring to the people who take part in our usability tests, I tend to call them 'users' as I read somewhere that the term 'subjects' implies we are 'subjecting' them to something. A colleague says we should be using the term 'evaluator' as it more accurately reflects that we are trying to learn from them. Is there a consensus on a preferred term? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=37#post-57 Tue, 25 May 2010 11:13:24 +0000 David Travis 57@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Forget using a computer to do the recording -- it's just too much of a faff. You'll find yourself focusing on the recording technology rather than the participant.</p> <p>Purchase a really high-quality digital recorder, like the Olympus LS-10 PCM (costs about £220 on Amazon). You can drag and drop the recordings onto your computer by USB and the audio quality is outstanding -- it's like listening to a DAB radio broadcast. Your transcriber will love you for it.</p> <p>Then make your calls with a conference phone or with a phone with full-duplex hands free. Put the recorder next to the speaker and you're all set.</p> <p>It took me a long time to buy a digital recorder -- I thought the price tag wasn't worth it. I was so wrong. I find I use it almost every week, for phone interviews and site visits, even as a backup recorder for usability tests. You'll find that having a dedicated device like this, rather than using a computer to record audio, makes your life so much easier. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=37#post-56 Tue, 25 May 2010 09:36:37 +0000 James Colden 56@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I'm planning to do a number of telephone interviews to help develop personas. I plan to transcribe the interviews so I'll need a reasonably high quality recording. </p> <p>Can you recommend the best way to make high quality recordings of the phone calls? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=31#post-50 Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:59:44 +0000 David Travis 50@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I find that the best questions are those that reflect the reality of the job. So I'll give the candidate a print out of an email from a potential new client (names changed to protect the innocent) and ask candidates what they would do next. For example, how would he/she reply to the client: phone? Email? What's the next step: a face-to-face meeting? Some preliminary research? A short discussion with colleagues? What technical approach would he/she recommend for this project?</p> <p>Another old chestnut is to ask the candidate to design the "ideal" 404 'page not found' error message. This checks the candidate's design chops without needing him or her to design a full-blown wireframe. Or, "Describe something that's not computer related that you've recently had a bad user experience with and how it could be improved".</p> <p>For a nice simple question to warm up, try, "Who do you follow on Twitter for UX?" </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=31#post-49 Wed, 23 Dec 2009 19:56:11 +0000 chikita 49@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I'm about to interview someone for a UX role, but not coming from a user experience background, I'm not sure what questions to ask. Any suggestions? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=30#post-48 Thu, 29 Oct 2009 11:34:01 +0000 David Travis 48@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I'm glad the checklist is coming in useful. </p> <p>There's two ways to interpret the checklist. The best way is to use it as a list of design suggestions that you can pass back to the design team: for example, just collate all of the items that the site scored badly on. I think this is where you get most value from it.</p> <p>The other is to use it to make comparative measures. But in order to do this you need something to compare it against. We're currently working on an electronic version that will allow people to save results and compare their site against others, but the risk with this approach is that the reviews of the other sites you compare yours against may not have been done by people as diligent as you. So if you really need proper comparative data, I'd suggest doing another review against the market leader. So for example, if you're reviewing an online bookstore, I'd use Amazon as the comparison site. The downside is that you have to do another review, but the advantage is that the data are directly comparable. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=30#post-47 Mon, 26 Oct 2009 12:17:43 +0000 philSpencer 47@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Hi,</p> <p>I've been reviewing a website by working through the fantastic ExpertReviewCheckpoints.xls (<a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html)" rel="nofollow">http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html)</a>, which very usefully calculates a score in each of the categories.</p> <p>Without having time to do full benchmark reviews of competitors at the moment I'm wondering how best to interpret the figures.</p> <p>Is there any general data available to indicate what poor, average, and good scores are?</p> <p>Thanks. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=29#post-46 Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:04:50 +0000 Dina Isaak 46@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>My present job is to put together a follow-up process with Beta users of a certain browser. The questionnaires i am to write have to reveal not only the practical aspects of the browser, but also user experience: the first impression, what did they feel on first entry, what was the first impact, what kept them going/or what caused them to abandon the browser etc...<br /> I found plenty of material on usability questioning for web sites - but does anyone know where i can find articles and sample questionnaires for user testing browsers? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=27#post-44 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:35:09 +0000 stewartsear 44@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Thanks for your reply David. That's made it all much clearer </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=27#post-43 Tue, 06 Oct 2009 06:51:45 +0000 David Travis 43@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>The usability trinity is users, goals and context. The point is that you need to understand all three to design a usable product or web site. </p> <p>The can opener exercise attempts to demonstrate this by asking you to match the best can opener for each user. So the Magican can opener isn't a great solution for the pensioner, even though it meets the goal ('open a can') and understands the environment (a domestic kitchen) because it doesn't understand the user (who can't twist her hands). In contrast, this can opener works well for the parent (assuming that it doesn't create any sharp edges on the can). </p> <p>Similarly, the bulky can opener (or the electric can opener -- it depends on when you attended the course) won't work for the backpacker because it doesn't match his context (he needs something small) even though it opens cans and he can use it easily. Whereas this can opener does work well for the pensioner (as it doesn't require the twisting action).</p> <p>The point is that in designing and evaluating any product, it's not good enough to simply ask, "Can the person use it easily?" It needs to be a product that meets their unique goals in their unique context. As another example, when I'm driving I find my iPod Touch much harder to use than the first generation iPod that I own. That's because I don't get the tactile feedback from the iPod Touch that I get from the iPod with the physical scroll wheel. So even though most people would say the iPod Touch is streets ahead in terms of usability, this is only the case if the environment allows me to look at the screen for several seconds. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=27#post-42 Mon, 05 Oct 2009 13:22:06 +0000 stewartsear 42@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>During the course we did the product evaluation exercise with the can openers. I'm looking at my notes, and struggling to get my head around how the example relates to "The Usability Trinity". I have one example written down: User - Landlord, Environment - Needs can opener for rental property, Goal - Cheap can opener. I'm not sure how these apply to the other 3 users; Parent, Backpacker, Pensioner. The diagram has a speech bubble pointing between "Goals &amp; Environments" with the caption inside saying "e.g. Pensioner with the Magican opener", and I have a note saying "Ignores user (can't twist)". Is it not the Pensioners environment that means they cannot use their hands to twist the can opener? Getting a bit confused here! </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=26#post-41 Sat, 26 Sep 2009 18:45:53 +0000 Nitish 41@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I'm an Msc student doing my dissertation on usability testing using Morae. Maybe my research is not thorough enough but, so far I have not come across a lot of literature on measuring the usability qualities "Error Prevention &amp; Recovery" and "Learnability". The CIF format does not seem to consider these either. </p> <p>I was doing a usability test for a complex software that gives a lot of error messages with untrained users and it would be useful to benchmark the "Error prevention &amp; recovery" usability quality of the software. </p> <p>Would "Error recovery rate (No of error messages encountered/No of successful recoveries from/understanding of errors" be a valid and useful metric to benchmark in a commercial software development environment? </p> <p>How about "Learnability" - is there a way to measure ease of learning in a single test session with a participant? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=23#post-39 Sat, 12 Sep 2009 11:21:58 +0000 David Travis 39@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>The System Usability Scale (SUS) is a simple, ten-item attitude Likert scale giving a global view of subjective assessments of usability. It was developed by John Brooke at Digital Equipment Corporation in the UK in 1986 as a tool to be used in usability engineering of electronic office systems. You can <a href="http://www.usabilitynet.org/trump/documents/Suschapt.doc">download a Word document with the original survey instrument</a>. (Note that most practitioners these days replace the word “system” with “product” throughout and change the word “cumbersome” in Q8 to “awkward”).</p> <p>The SUS is widely used and there is a lot of comparative data available. The most accessible source is Bangor, A., Kortum, P. &amp; Miller, J. (2009). 'Determining what individual SUS scores mean: Adding an adjective rating scale'. <em>Journal of Usability Studies</em>, <strong>4</strong> (3) 114-123. This is available <a href="http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/jus/2009may/bangor1.html">free online</a>. The paper provides 'grades' for individual SUS scores like so:</p> <p>SUS SCORE 0-60 GRADE = F<br /> SUS SCORE 60-70 GRADE = D<br /> SUS SCORE 70-80 GRADE = C<br /> SUS SCORE 80-90 GRADE = B<br /> SUS SCORE 90-100 GRADE = A</p> <p>You might also want to tale a look at <a href="http://measuringuserexperience.com/Mini_UPA-Dumas-Tullis.ppt">Rating Scales: What the Research Says</a>, a PowerPoint presentation by Joe Dumas and Tom Tullis. There is a slide towards the end of the presentation showing a frequency distribution of SUS scores across 50 studies. The data is taken from <a href="http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a795414742~db=all~jumptype=rss">this paper</a> (sadly not available for free): Bangor, A., Kortum, P. T., &amp; Miller, J. T. (2008). 'An empirical evaluation of the System Usability Scale'. <em>International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction</em>, <strong>6</strong>, 574-594. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=23#post-37 Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:45:43 +0000 Max Cereda 37@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>We are developing a new GUI for industrial machines.<br /> we used the SUS, among other tools, to assess its usability.</p> <p>1] Do you have experience with SUS?</p> <p>2]I would like to frame the score we have achieved in the broader perspective of the everyday GUI usability [web sites, mobiles, appliances, etc].<br /> Do you know if SUS scores for the above are available and where?</p> <p>Max </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=22#post-36 Fri, 11 Sep 2009 07:39:32 +0000 David Travis 36@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>We've struggled with this. We used to have a search engine on the site, but it was hardly used. It would also flag up consultancy or training services when people were looking for articles. So instead, we've invested our time in (a) tagging articles (there's a tag cloud on the right of each article that links to other articles) and (b) including a set of mini-tabs with 'most popular', 'latest' etc. We've included a search within this forum because by it's nature it's less organised than our article pages.</p> <p>I'd like to hear what other people think about this. Does the Userfocus site need a search engine? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=22#post-35 Tue, 08 Sep 2009 15:00:29 +0000 stewartsear 35@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>There are some good articles on the site, would be useful IMO </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=18#post-34 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:36:21 +0000 David Travis 34@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>The best way is to speak to your users, for example during a site visit, and ask them why they use your software. What are the first 4-5 things they come up with, before they stall and start grasping for other uses? It's those 'top of mind' goals that are red routes. Here are some other ideas:</p> <ul> <li>If you have a call centre, spend a day listening into customer calls. Survey and classify the calls that come in.</li> <li>Look at what your competitors are doing. (But be careful, they might just have made it up too.)</li> </ul> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=20#post-33 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:27:38 +0000 David Travis 33@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>There are two schools of thought on this. In Pruitt and Adlin's book, <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Persona-Lifecycle-Throughout-Interactive-Technologies/dp/0125662513/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1251476619&amp;sr=1-1">The Persona Lifecycle: Keeping People in Mind Throughout Product Design</a>, they think it's OK to create made up personas. They point out that:</p> <ul> <li>Preconceptions exist. Assumption personas get these beliefs out in the open where they can be questioned.</li> <li>Assumption personas will highlight conflicting assumptions (“the elastic user”) and so may act as a catalyst for field research.</li> </ul> <p>I'm less sure. I think there are risks with this approach:</p> <ul> <li>One risk is that you end up with a stereotype, rather than an archetype. The team gets even more blinkered in its thinking.</li> <li>Another is that the design team loses the enthusiasm to develop personas as they already have one. Especially since real personas take time and money to develop.</li> </ul> <p>I've written at length on this issue in an article on our web site: <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/personas.html">How to create personas your design team will believe in</a>. I'll leave it to you to make your own decision! </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=16#post-32 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:20:57 +0000 David Travis 32@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Contextual inquiry (CI) can be carried out at any time in the development of a web site. In the early phases of design it provides insights for functionality and helps you understand users and their tasks; in the later phases of design it provides ideas for stuff that future iterations of the site should focus upon.</p> <p>You get lots of data from CI. You can use the data to create personas, develop red routes and test your assumptions about users and their goals. We didn't go into a lot of detail on data analysis on the Web Usability course, but we do have <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/training/ci.html">a course on Contextual Inquiry</a> where we talk a lot more about data analysis. Alternatively, a great resource is <a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Designing-Digital-Age-Human-centered-Products/dp/0470229101/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1251476271&amp;sr=8-1">Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-centered Products and Services</a> by Kim Goodwin. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=21#post-31 Fri, 28 Aug 2009 16:07:38 +0000 David Travis 31@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I've created a 'usability reading list' on Amazon with about a dozen books that I find useful. You can see the list here:</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/3VDV3CA4IAY5Z/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/registry/wishlist/3VDV3CA4IAY5Z/ref=cm_wl_rlist_go</a></p> <p>As regards mobile devices, I think the best book is by Scott Weiss, "Handheld Usability":</p> <p><a href="http://tinyurl.com/n6ouj5" rel="nofollow">http://tinyurl.com/n6ouj5</a></p> <p>It has lots of useful suggestions on methods and techniques and is particularly strong on paper prototyping for mobile devices. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=21#post-30 Thu, 27 Aug 2009 09:24:57 +0000 Jonnyrobb 30@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Hi guys, I thought it would be useful to start a thread on good books around User Experience and Usability. </p> <p>One that I've found enormously useful as a consultant is 'Communicating Design - Developing Web Site Documentation for Design and Planning' it essentially explains in detail the 10 most common User Needs, Strategy and Design documentaion deliverables including personas, usability test plans, concept models, sitemaps, wireframes etc.</p> <p>The good thing is it's not prescriptive, instead the author walks you through the thinking behind each. It even tells you what clients might challenge you on during presentations and how to counter such queries.</p> <p><a href="http://www.amazon.co.uk/Communicating-Design-Developing-Documentation-Planning/dp/0321392353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1251363887&amp;sr=8-1" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.co.uk/Communicating-Design-Developing-Documentation-Planning/dp/0321392353/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;s=books&amp;qid=1251363887&amp;sr=8-1</a> </p> <p>Out of interest has anyone read any good books on usability for mobile? It's something that I need to get into as it's already a hot topic! </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=20#post-29 Wed, 26 Aug 2009 19:03:57 +0000 alison 29@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>i've heard from a variety of people that you do not need to do research to create a set of personas. personally, i find this slightly concerning. </p> <p>in the instance where personas are purely 'made up', surely these are more character sketches than personas. </p> <p>as with many of these things, i guess it depends on the skill of the practitioner - i'd be interested in other people's thoughts as well as in stories of successes and/or failures related to persona implementation and use.</p> <p>alison </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=17#post-26 Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:10:29 +0000 Jane 26@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I agree. I'd find the community a good place to explore ideas and test out usability ideas. It's great to know it's moderated by an expert and will be a resource for accessing other's experience. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=18#post-25 Wed, 26 Aug 2009 10:08:09 +0000 Jane 25@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Any thoughts on how to identify the red routes in software. I work on software that's used in slightly different ways depending on the business process of the user and can be configured in various ways, so I'm not confident about specifying the red routes. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=17#post-24 Wed, 26 Aug 2009 09:09:13 +0000 michele.thorns 24@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>The community idea sounds great and I'm sure will be well used. Personally I attended one of David's usability courses last year and it was extremely beneficial. I also read the Userfocus usability newsletters but it would be great if we could also share our ideas and experiences (positiive and negative) as well as questions with other community members. I'm sure we have all done something "useful" which could be passed onto others. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=15#post-23 Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:08:49 +0000 David Travis 23@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I know what you mean about personas -- many clients seem loathe to pay for persona work since they think they know their customers. The truth is often a bit different.</p> <p>In my experience the 'easy sell' is usability testing. It's easy for people to understand the value they'll get from a usability test and the benefits are immediate. It also acts as a good springboard for future work since the usability test will show where the software or web site needs a bit more love. For example, if the usability test shows that finding stuff is a problem, then the next activity might be information architecture. If the problem is understanding content, then maybe it needs a copywriting makeover.</p> <p>This requires a more open-ended approach to selling UX as it acknowledges iterative design as a key component -- you can't know in advance exactly what's needed to improve the site's usability without involving user and testing prototypes. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=16#post-22 Tue, 18 Aug 2009 07:59:31 +0000 stewartsear 22@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Unfortunately, since being on the course in january, I've not had a chance to put any of the techniques I learnt into practice. I was just going over the course notes, and was wondering at what point during the process of designing a new website do you undertake a contextual inquiry, and how it fits in with other techniques e.g. personas etc.?</p> <p>thanks</p> <p>Stew </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=15#post-21 Wed, 12 Aug 2009 12:06:40 +0000 thomahawk 21@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>When approached by clients and asked to look at the UX of any of their websites. Has anyone got any a hard and fast rule what they feel is most important as a starting point.<br /> I feel that most clients are not interested in certain aspects. For example 1 client felt personas would not be of any help to them.</p> <p>When looking at trying to sell this as a procedure do you breakdown the proposal and allow them to cherry pick aspects of the UX process or include all as part of your core sales proposal.</p> <p>cheers </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=14#post-20 Tue, 11 Aug 2009 07:16:03 +0000 David Travis 20@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Although there are some data you can point to, I’m always a little concerned when managers ask me to justify user experience work with financial arguments. I wonder if they make the same demands of the programming team, people in marketing or staff in the human resources section? Insisting on a cost-benefit justification suggests that they are unconvinced of the need for user experience work on an intuitive or emotional level. It makes me think they just don’t “get it”. </p> <p>But if they really want data, I would be to point to the <a href="//www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/usabilitybenefits.html">known benefits of usability</a>, such as:</p> <ul> <li>Higher revenues through increased sales</li> <li>Increased user efficiency</li> <li>Reduced development costs</li> <li>Reduced support costs</li> </ul> <p>Then I would argue that you can make predictions of likely improvements only if you have some real data to go on. So I’d then run a <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/articles/dashboard.html">benchmark usability test</a> comparing the site to the competition to get accurate data on task performance that I could use to predict the cost-benefit of usability improvements. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=12#post-19 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:13:17 +0000 James Colden 19@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Thanks, this is just what I was after. </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=13#post-18 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 17:11:48 +0000 Harrison 18@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>Maybe a usability test would help you get an objective view as well? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=14#post-17 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:57:08 +0000 SusieB 17@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I've been asked to predict the effect of usability enhancements on conversion and hence potential sales improvement. </p> <p>I'm finding it a difficult task, the site is new and with no history to base estimates on, I feel like I'm just plucking figures out of the air. </p> <p>Does anyone have some good advice of where to start or any industry standards that could act as a benchmark? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=13#post-16 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 12:23:13 +0000 David Travis 16@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>There are two approaches I'd recommend. </p> <p>The first is a <strong>checklist-based evaluation</strong>. Take your set of guidelines and derive a specific, yes/no checklist tailored to your domain that you can use to ask questions of each screen in the site as you complete each task. One example of a checklist is our <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/resources/guidelines.html">247 web usability guidelines</a>. The benefit of checklists like these is that there is very little ambiguity. For example, Nielsen's heuristic, "Error prevention" can be hard to interpret sometimes whereas there is no ambiguity over the checklist item, "There is a clear distinction between "required" and "optional" fields on forms".</p> <p>The second approach is to carry out a <strong>cognitive walkthrough</strong>. The cognitive walkthrough is a formalised way of imagining people’s thoughts and actions when they use an interface for the first time. Walkthroughs identify problems that users will have when they first use an interface, without training, so this will overcome the "familiarity" issue you mentioned. You can read <a href="http://www.cc.gatech.edu/classes/cs3302/documents/cog.walk.html">how to carry out a cognitive walkthrough</a> elsewhere on the web and you can <a href="http://www.userfocus.co.uk/pdf/cogwalk.pdf">download a form to document the results</a> from our web site. </p>