Web Usability: Designing the user experience

Overview

There are dozens of books and web sites dedicated to user experience and web usability, but few of these provide the ‘big picture’. The aim of this course is to help delegates design better web sites by showing how the various user experience tools and techniques fit into real-world design and development processes. This web usability training course will give you hands-on practice in all the key areas of usability, from identifying your customers through to usability testing your web site with them.

Over the two-day course, delegates engage in a practical design activity that helps them discover the usability secrets behind web development. The activity covers the full design lifecycle, including business requirements, customer needs, page and site design, prototyping and usability testing.

“The training showed me how to put theory into practice in a way that will actually make a difference to our business.”
– Sam Glover, B&Q.

Printable pdf course description for this seminar

Suggested business case to convince your boss (MS Word format).

This web usability training seminar is aimed at

• Software developers who want to learn techniques for designing better web sites.
• Business analysts who want quick and effective tools for communicating requirements of web users.
• Interface designers who want to learn methods for testing and evaluating their web designs.
• Project managers who want a full lifecycle process for introducing usability into their web project.
• Marketing managers who want to find out about the business and brand benefits of user experience.
• Web site designers who want to understand the principles of human-centred design.

By attending our training course in Web Usability, you will learn how to

• Describe a proven, user centred design framework that supports end-to-end usability involvement in web projects (based on ISO 9241-210).
• Use personas to share information about customers and their tasks in an engaging and usable way.
• Develop cheap, throwaway prototypes to get quick and frequent feedback from your users.
• Specify usability metrics to make sure your web site is neither under- nor over-engineered.
• Get hands on practice with user experience techniques like personas, card sorting, contextual inquiry and heuristic evaluation.
• Learn about different methods for usability testing web sites and when to apply them.
• Network with other professionals carrying out user experience activities in different companies.

Seminar content

Introduction and Objectives

• Syndicate Activity: What is usability (product evaluation)?
• Definition of usability: The Usability Trinity
• The four principles of human centred design

Analyse the opportunity

• Appreciate that all web projects have a number of stakeholders who can help the project succeed or fail
• Understand why market segmentation isn’t enough to create great user experiences
• Learn how to create a user experience vision for your web site

Build the context of use

• Understand the "context of use"
• Learn techniques for building pictures of your customers and the environments in which they work
• Learn how to avoid the six common mistakes when developing personas
• How to use contextual inquiry to gain an understanding of customer requirements
• Learn what it is that customers actually want to do with your web site
• How to use red routes to build bulletproof user stories for Agile
• Syndicate activity: Build the context of use for Holly Hall Farm Organics

Create the user experience

• Track web projects to ensure they remain customer and business focused
• Learn metrics for specifying usability
• Learn techniques for structuring the site's functionality
• Appreciate that the user interface is more than screen design
• Learn basic techniques for screen layout
• Learn good design by looking at some good and bad examples
• Discover techniques for developing cheap, throwaway prototypes to get quick feedback from your users
• Syndicate activity: Holly Hall Farm Organics design exercise
• Learn techniques for testing the design with and without customers
• Apply usability techniques quick enough to apply to even the most deadline-driven projects
• Syndicate activity: Holly Hall Farm Organics evaluation exercise

Track real world usage and continuously improve the site

• Appreciate why you need to pay continuous attention to changes in the customer base, changes in the technical environment and changes in the tasks that customers want to complete
• Learn how to make usability happen in your organisation

What delegates say about our web usability training

• “Lots of practical things I can take away and use immediately.” – Frances Taylor, British Library.
• “Great tutor – effective in identifying the goals of each student and fulfilling them throughout the course. The course was also fun!” – Shelley Thomas, Betfair.
• “The mix of theory and practical tasks was fab. I'll definitely be using the techniques for personas and paper prototyping.” – Catriona Begg, Standard Life.
• “I now know how to include usability principles and testing in deadline-driven projects.” – Susie Bowden, Asda / Wal-Mart.
• “This course has given me real direction in what I should be doing as a usability analyst. The trainer was fantastic!” – Alice Barrett, B&Q.
• “I've learnt techniques to involve the design team earlier in the requirements gathering process.” – Ana Jakimovska, Which?
• “The real-life examples really bring the theory to life.” – Andrew Talaga, Vodafone.
• “A great balance between presentation and audience participation that really helped put the focus back into user-led design.” – Grant Neville, lastminute.com.
• “Practical and realistic methods for creating usable web sites.” – Henny Derbasani, T-Mobile.
• “As a programmer, I wondered if the course would be relevant to me. In fact, the course was really relevant and it was nice to think of the users for a change as well as how to code web pages.” – Victoria Boulton, FirstDirect.
• “A really good balance of theory and practice giving background and sources.” – Sonia Hudson, Virgin Media.
• “Anyone planning a web usability initiative should attend this seminar first.” – Glenn Sutherland, Department for Transport.

What do I get when I book this course?

• 2 day training course with a usability expert.
• Practical checklists, worksheets and extensive notes to take home.
• Free, follow-up refresher training.
• 24/7 support to help you apply your learning.
• A proper, air-conditioned learning environment.
• CPD-approved course attendance certificate.
• A 2-course lunch on both days and refreshments throughout the course.
• A money-back guarantee.

More details on what you get.

Duration

This web usability training lasts two days.

Free refresher training

Our usability training continues after you leave the seminar. People that attend "Web usability" are eligible for free refresher training. After the seminar, we'll send you a series of follow up articles highlighting different aspects of the training, specifically written to help you apply what you learnt. See an example lesson.

"Web Usability" in-house training

We can bring this course to you and run it for a fixed all-inclusive fee no matter where you are. All you have to do is provide the delegates and the meeting room.