http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ A forum to help you put usability training into practice en-US Thu, 17 May 2012 02:31:33 +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-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-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-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-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-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-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-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-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=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=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=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=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-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-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=12#post-13 Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:52:09 +0000 James Colden 13@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>We did an activity in the afternoon where we created our own guidelines and you mentioned another set of heuristics which I can't find in the notes. Where can I find out more about them? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=13#post-15 Mon, 10 Aug 2009 11:26:03 +0000 cjeffcott 15@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>I'm trying to do some heuristic analysis of our existing website, to both familarise myself with the process, and to have a more objective sense of what works and what doesn't.</p> <p>I'm not quite sure how to tackle this, though.</p> <p>I've read about the Nielsen heuristics, and the other ones based on the ISO standard, but I'm not quite sure how to apply these.</p> <p>A couple of resources that I found suggested that an approach is to identify particular tasks that people might like to carry out on the site, and then try to complete these tasks, and referring to the heuristics to see how the site measures up.</p> <p>However, I am very familiar with our website, and know how to carry out most tasks on it, so I'm finding it hard to look at it as though I've never seen it before.</p> <p>Is there a simple step by step process I could use to carry out this sort of analysis? </p> http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/topic.php?id=10#post-11 Sun, 02 Aug 2009 11:19:49 +0000 David Travis 11@http://www.userfocus.co.uk/forum/ <p>If you've attended our training courses, you'll know that I want you to apply what you learnt in your job.</p> <p>For most of our courses, we already provide refresher training -- a series of follow up emails to remind you what you learnt.</p> <p>But that doesn't help you apply the skills. People tell us that when they get back to work, they sometimes run up against problems applying the techniques and want help.</p> <p>That's where these forums come in. Aimed at people who have attended our courses, the purpose is to help you apply what you learnt.</p> <p>Maybe you forgot how to create red routes or personas. Perhaps you need some advice on running an upcoming usability test. Or you might want some advice on analysing your data.</p> <p>Fire away. </p>