UX project guidelines
plan
For on-site or construction UX designers
Russ Engel Caroline Chandler
Peach press
A Guide to UX Design Projects: For UX Designers Live or in Development Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler
New Riders 1249 Eighth Street Berkeley, CA 94710 (510) 524-2178 (510) 524-2221 (fax) Find us online: www.newriders.com To report bugs, send a note to[email protected]New Riders is a division of Peachpit, part of Pearson Education. Copyright © 2009 Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler Acquisition Editor: Michael J. Nolan Project Editor: Becca Freed Production Editor: Tracey Croom Development Editor: Linda Laflamme Copy Editor: Leslie Tilley Proofreader: Suzie Nasol Composer: Danielle Foster Indexer: Design: Danielle Co . Mimi Heft Cover Production: Andreas deDanaan Interior Design: Mimi Heft
Notice of Rights All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. For information on obtaining reprint and excerpt permission, please contact[email protected]
Disclaimer The information in this book is distributed "as is" without warranty of any kind. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this book, neither the author nor Peachpit shall be liable to any person or entity for any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused, directly or indirectly, by the instructions contained herein. book. or the computer hardware and software products described therein.
Trademarks Many names used by manufacturers and sellers to distinguish their products are claimed as trademarks. If these names appear in this book and Peachpit is aware of the trademark claim, these names will appear as requested by the trademark owner. All other product and service names identified in this book are for editorial use only and for the benefit of those companies, and no trademark infringement is intended. No such use or use of any trade name is intended to convey endorsement or other affiliation with this book. ISBN-13 978-0-321-60737-9 ISBN-10 0-321-60737-6 987654321 Printed and bound in the USA.
UX Design Project Guidelines Tribute If Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler were wizards, the league would hunt them down to reveal their best-kept secrets. Fortunately it isn't. Russ and Carolyn have collected smart wisdom previously known only to the most experienced UX project leaders and codified it for all to see. Now you can learn the secrets you need to execute great UX projects. Jared M. Spool, CEO and Founding Director, User Interface Engineering
Is there a book that tells you everything you need to know about UX design? No, is there a book that gets you most of the way? There are. Carolyn and Russ provide a solid foundation for project planning and management. This is an essential primer for anyone immersed in competitor methodologies, endless conferences, and all the changing parts of UX design. Dan Brown, author of Communicative Design
This book is a great introduction to designing great products for real people. But it covers more than design, it includes everything related to design: managing projects, collaborating with people and sharing ideas. A great SUV. Donna Spencer, author of Card Sorting: Designing Usable Categories
This is a practical, accessible and deeply human guide to a very human activity: working with people to do great things for others. Steve Portigal, Portigal Consulting
If you've heard of author Wil Wheaton, you'll understand why I admire Russ Unger so much. Russ' experience and guidance has been instrumental in the construction and design of the Monolith Press and he has been one of the most valuable collaborators I have ever worked with. Wil Wheaton, author of Dancing Barefoot, Just Geeks and Happiest Days of Our Lives
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Thanks Russ Unger This book would never have been possible without the support of my family, friends, colleagues, and the many people who were complete strangers to me before I typed the first keys. Willingly and self-consciously married to a self-improvement-hungry geek, my beautiful wife Nicolle managed to double her parenting responsibilities for much of this book. Our daughters, Sydney and Avery, often coaxed our nearly comatose father out of bed to dance, sing and play Spore. I subconsciously thought that writing a book with a newborn at home wouldn't be a challenge. I figured it out pretty quickly. Nicolle comes to my rescue time and time again, allowing me to focus on this project. He is my most trusted hero; in the midst of chaos, he keeps our house in order. It is the center of our world here and it frees us all very easily. Nicolle, Sydney and Avery managed to make me look like a good parent and for that I am grateful. I live in a house with three girls and I can't imagine loving any of them less than I should. Caroline kept me on track. Sometimes the work never seems to begin or end. He always kept things moving, exploring ideas and guiding us in the right direction. The collaboration was great and I learned a lot from it! This is definitely a good UX yin to my UX yang. Michael Nolan is the Acquisitions editor and was the perfect guide. Michael was honest and kind and really helped make things run smoothly. Rebecca Freed was a juggernaut throughout, managing every aspect of the book, keeping us focused and often emailing each other late, late at night. Unfortunately, he often listens to me almost immediately! Linda Laflamme was the development editor, and once I got used to the red doom pen, it was clear that she was leading me in the right direction, no matter how much I tried to drown her in broken thoughts and ramblings - the most common sentences . Leslie Tilley puts the finishing touches on the proposal; Tracey Croom combines graphics, design and production elements; and a real book emerges. Steve "Doc" Baty read every chapter before arriving at the Peachpit office. I would often send funds to Steve around 2am.
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He will submit comments at 5 in the morning, which is not easy. Mind you, Steve is in Australia, but he's still impressive. It's hard to believe that this book would have hit the shelves without Steve's consistent helpfulness and quick turnaround. Brad Simpson (www.i-rradiate.com) takes all the graphics I throw at him and turns them into beautiful, printable images while juggling his own life, two teenagers, and a busy work schedule. Brad could have easily left at any time, but he was a true friend, interested in the project and willing to support me. I'm not sure there are enough steak dinners out there to pay for the effort, but I'll work hard for it. Thanks to Brad for taking the many vacations and late nights to support this effort. Mark Brooks has repeatedly found me panicking when trying to communicate visuals that are beyond my time and/or capabilities. Mark stepped in and saved the day on more than one occasion, and I can't thank you enough for that. Marc was brilliant, generous and the kind of person I aspired to be. Jonathan Ashton wrote an entire chapter on SEO for us. After speaking with Jonathan for 5 minutes, I knew he was the right person for the job. His chapters alone are a great reason to buy the book, it was great to have him on board. Yono Kane came in at the last minute, last minute. Jono was a web developer, interaction and prototype designer at Yahoo and his support and help in building Chapter 12 was invaluable. Lou Rosenfeld really helped move this forward. In addition to co-authoring the acclaimed "The Polar Bear Book" (O'Reilly's Information Architecture for the World Wide Web), Lou is smart, friendly, approachable, and always willing to help others in our field. You'd be hard pressed to find someone as generous with himself as Lou. Christina Wodtke helped me with introductions and connections. Without Christina, I'm not sure where we'd be today, but I probably wouldn't be "publishing." In addition to being a "must-read author," she is also a constant source of advice and information. Many in the field of UX design attribute much of what they know to Christina's tireless efforts to expand our horizons through constant innovation. Thanksgiving
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Will Evans and Todd Zaki Warfel have generously provided high-quality deliverables that you can use as templates for your own. They are true brothers who donate their time and talents without question or concern, and often at one point or another. They are great members of our UX community, you want to get to know them and work with them, and I've been lucky enough to be friends with them. I certainly cannot express my gratitude to these two men. David Armano, Chris Miller, Kurt Karlenzig, Livia Labate, Matthew Milan, Michael Leis, Mario Bourque, Troy Lucht, Ross Kimbarovsky (and the crowdSPRING gang) and Wil Wheaton have been good friends and true supporters and loyalists. I've been lucky enough to have these names together in a list of people I know and am a huge fan of everything they do. Your support is an invaluable benefit to everything I do. I would like to thank these wonderful people for their generous contributions of commentary, anecdotes, and access to their resources: Tonia M. Bartz (www.toniambartz.com), Chapter 7; Steve “Doc” Baty, (www.meld.com .au), Chapters 3, 11, 14 and A Brief Guide to Meetings; Mark Brooks (www.markpbrooks.com), Chapters 3 and 11; Leah Buley (www. .adaptivepath.com), Chapter 11; Dave Carlson (www.deech.com), Chapter 11; Will Evans (www.semanticfoundry.com), Chapters 7, 10 and 11; Christopher Fahey (www.behaviordesign.com ), Chapter 14; Nick Finck (www.nickfinck.com ) , Chapter 10; Jesse James Garrett (www.adaptivepath.com), Chapter 10; Austin Govella (www.grafini.com), Chapter 11; Jon Hadden (www.jonhadden.com), Chapter 12; Whitney Hess (www. whitneyhess .com), Chapter 11; Andrew Hinton (www.inkblurt.com), Chapter 10; Gabby Hon (www.staywiththegroup.com), Chapters 3 and 11; Kaleem Khan (www.uxjournal.com), “A Brief Guide to Meetings"; Ross Kimbarovsky (www.crowdspring.com), Chapter 14; Livia Labate (www.livlab.com), Chapter 7; Michael Leis (www.michaelleis.com), Chapter 11; Troy Lucht (www.ascendrealtysolutions.com) com), Chapter 14; James Melzer (www.jamesmelzer.com), Chapter 10; Matthew Milan (www.normativethinking.com), Chapter 7; Chris Miller (www.hundredfathom.com/blog), “A Brief Guide to Meetings ”, Maciej Piwowarczyk (www.linkedin.com/pub/3/a74 /a66), Chapter 11; Stephanie Sansoucie (www.linkedin.com/in/smsansoucie), Chapter 11; Kit Seeborg (www.seeborg.com), Chapters 3, 11 and "A Brief Guide to Meetings"; Josh Seiden (www.joshuaseiden.com), Chapter 7; Jonathan Snook (www.snook.ca), Chapter 12; Joe Sokohl (www.sokohl.com), Chapter 12 and “A Brief Guide to Meetings”; Samantha Soma (www. sisoma.com), “A Brief Guide to
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Conference,” Donna Spencer (www.maadmob.net), Chapter 7; Jared M. Spool (www.uie.com), Chapter 7; Keith Tatum (www.slingthought.com), Chapter 12; Todd Zaki Warfel (www. messagefirst.com), Chapters 7, 12, and 14. I would also like to thank Andrew Boyd, Dan Brown, Tim Bruns, Christian Crumlish, Bill DeRouchey, Brian Duttlinger, Jean Marc Favreau, Hugh Forrest at SXSW, Peter Ina, Alec Kalner , Jonathan Knoll, Christine Mortensen, Steve Portigal, Dirk M. Shaw, and Paula Thornton, and all at Manifest Digital and Draftfcb. Losing someone is inevitable and I hope you don't take it to heart. "crowd" won There are a lot of people on , and I'm trying to keep track of everyone. Let me know if I'm missing you and I'll make it up! Finally, it is important to note that without organizations such as the Institute for Information Architecture, the Interaction Design Association, etc. ., It would be impossible to connect with many of the people mentioned. If you're curious about the world of UX design, explore these organizations, join and get involved!
Carolyn Chandler Many of us have dreamed of writing a book at some point in our lives. Without Russ, I don't know if I would have had the motivation to jump in and do this. Their energy and enthusiasm helped us find the right people at the right time, and from the Peachpit team to UX industry leaders, everyone has a huge impact on what you see on these pages. It is truly one of the biggest connectors in our field, trying to bring people together day and night. Also, I think she tweets more in a day than me since I joined Twitter. Russ is grateful to the many people who have helped us tremendously. I won't repeat all those names except for Steve Baty, who read all our chapters with whatever vulgarity we could throw at him, and still managed to sound enthusiastic. John Geletka also provided thoughtful commentary and interesting discussions, with sparks and perspectives spanning many disciplines. And of course, the Peachpit team; I'll never forget getting Linda Laflamme's first chapter. It's not very pretty (though it subtly suggests it). she patiently
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He guided me through editing and helped me refine my process, which would have been better suited to a single technical article than a full book. Now, I even find myself adding transitions to informal chats with colleagues! Speaking of which... Kristen Mortensen aka Morty is my partner in crime when it comes to visuals. The diagrams and charts you see in my chapters are the result of her hard work and I know how hard she works because she and I work on many of the same client projects while trying to meet chapter deadlines. Morty is one of those visual designers who is strong in visual design and interaction design and enjoys working with everyone on a project to bring concepts to life. Her integrity and commitment to quality make her a pleasure to work with and an honor to work with. A big thank you also to everyone at Manifest Digital who has been so supportive over the last few months. Jim Jacoby brings a special combination of business knowledge and UX perspective, along with his signature Zen calm, to get me through some stressful times. Jason Ulaszek is one of the most passionate people I know in UX with an endless knowledge of tools and techniques; I don't know where he makes room for everything! Additionally, Brett Gilbert and Jen O'Brien provide valuable insight into some of the many roles that come with working with UX designers. I would also like to thank the members of the Manifest UX team for their inspiration and patience with my constant progress reports on "the book": Brian Henkel, Chris Ina, Haley Ebeling, Jenn Berzansky, Meredith Payne, and Santiago Lu His. It's always a pleasure working with you. Every day I thank you for your humor and insight. To the rest of the Interaction Design Society, thank you for sharing your experiences and being an active member of my beloved UX community. My special thanks go to Janna Hicks DeVylder and Nick Iozzo, who have been instrumental in growing the Chicago chapter and continue to find new ways to grow a vibrant network of smart people. Last but not least, I would like to thank my family, friends and Anthony who patiently endured my disappearance and continued to check in to make sure I was alive. You have a lot of rain checks to cash and I look forward to spending time with you!
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short introduction
.................. .. fifteen
Chapter 1:
The UXD way. ....................... 1 What is User Experience Design? ....... ................. 3 General definitions . .................. 3 Don't forget the tangibles.. . ............... 4 Our approach .. .................. .. ...... 5
About UX designers. ....................... 6 Where UX designers live .. ....... ....... ..... .. ............ 8 Chapter 2 : .
Ecosystem projects. ....................... 9 Determine the location type. .................. 10 Brand image. .................. .. 11 Marketing Activities. .................. 14 Source of contents. .................. .. Task-based applications. .................. 18 e-commerce websites . .................. .. learning apps. .................. 20 social network application .................. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .twenty
Choose your hat. .................. 21 Information Architect.. Interaction Design .................. ....... ........... 23 Research user.. .................. .. Other roles you may play or need. ........... 26 Creating a User Defense Network. ............ 32 ..
Know the company culture. ................................. 33 History. .................. .. .. .. 34 Hierarchy. .................. .. . . . . 36 Logistics. .................. .. ...... 37
Putting it all together................................................... ..... 38 Chapter 3: Sentences ..
For consultants and freelancers. ....... 39 sentences. ....... proposal. ............ 41 ..
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cover. .................. .. . . . . 42 Revision history. .................. 4 .......... Project summary. Project .................. 44 approaching. ............ range. .................. .. 47 Cases. .................. .. 47 Deliverables. .................. .. ... 48 Title and rights. ............ 49 Additional costs .................. 50 unit prices.. ............ ...... .. 51 Payment schedule. .................. confirmation .. .. Logout. ............ 53 ..
statement of work. .................. 54 Chapter 4: Projects .
goals and priorities. ....... 56 Reinforce project goals. .................. 57 ..
How can UX designers help? .................. 60 ..
Understand the focus of the project. ........... 62 Approaching the waterfall. ....... ............ . ............ .................. method. .................................. It affects me; .................. 66 Chapter 5: Business
Required . .................. 67 Find out the current status. ............... 70 Heuristic analysis .. .............................. ....
Gather ideas from stakeholders. .................. 74 Summary of Responsibilities. .................. 75 Calling the right stakeholders. .................. 76 Make a meeting plan. .................. 78 Sales: Meeting Requirements. ....... 78 Run meetings effectively. ................................. 80 Convergence requirements .. ............ ...... 82 ...................
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Chapter 6: Users
research. ....................... 85 Basic steps in user research. ....... ....... 86 Define your user groups. ....................... 86 Creating a property list. ....................... 87 Prioritization and definitions. .................. 89 ..
Selection of research techniques. ....... ....................... 91 How much research activity can I include? ....... ............... 93 User interviews. .................. .. 95 Background investigation. ................................... research .. . .................. .. . . . . 101 focus groups. .................. .. 104 kinds of cards. .................. .. 107 Usability testing. .................. .................
After research. .................. 111 Chapter 7: People.
.................. what is 112 people ................ ? ................................................ ................................................ ................................................ ............. 113 Why create roles? .................. 113 Find information about people. .................. 114 Creating a role. .................. ................. 114
Minimum content requirements. .................. 117 Optional content. ................................................
Advanced people. .................. 122 Final Thoughts on Humans .. ....... ....... 125 Chapter 8: Users
Design and SEO experience. ... 126 Introduction to SEO. .................. 127 Why is SEO important? .................. key resources .. ............ 129 ..
Website technology, design and infrastructure. ....... ....... ....... ........... 130 Content Management System. ....... ....... .................. 134
What: Eleven (and present) and future kings. ....... ....... 135 Naming conventions and combat terminology. ....... ....... 136 Metadata, titles and keywords. ............ 136 ..
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Part your hair. .................. .. 137 Use a site map. .................. .. 138 Keep your content up to date. .................. Other Content Matters .. ....... . .................. 138 .................. 138
Link popularity explained. .................. 139 Normal distribution of link popularity. ........... 139 Footer Links .. .................. .. 140 Content Linking. .................. ................. 141
reproduction system. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………… …………………………………………………………………………………… .141 White Hats Against Black Hats. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………… ………………………………………………………………………….141 Spamming with targeted keywords. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………… …………………………………………………… 142 pages Clone and Gateway. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………… ……………………………………………………………… 142 Spam connection. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… ………… ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… 143
Some final thoughts. ....... ....... 143 Chapter 9: Transition:
From definition to design. ....... 144 Design and visualization features. ............ 146 ..
Basic script flow. .................. 147 ..
Facilitate the prioritization process. .................. 150 Maintain good tension. .................. .................. 156 Managing conflicts when prioritizing. ............ 158 ..
Plan your events and documents. ....... ....... .......
Shipping maps and flow. .................. 165 What is a sitemap? .................. 166 What is workflow? .................. 166 Tools of the Trade ................. ............ ...... 167 Sitemaps and Workflow Basics. ............... 168 pages. .................. .. ....... 168 Folding pages. .................. .. ... 169 Points of decision. .................. .. 169 Links and arrows. .................. 170 conditions .................. ............ ...... .. .. 170
Common mistakes. .................. 171 Careless connection. .................. ................. 171
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Misaligned and irregularly placed objects. .................. 172 Text in wrong position. .................. missing page number .. .................. 173 Simple sitemap. .................. 174 ..................
Advanced Sitemap. .................. 175 Break the Sitemap Pattern. .................. 177 Workflow .. .................. will flow ....... ........... is taken to a new level. ............... 181 Process .. .................. .. 181 roads. .................. .. ... 182 Chapter 11: Wireframes
and annotations. .................. 185 What is a wireframe? ................................................ ............... 186 What are annotations .. . ................................................ ............................................... 187 Who uses Wireframes? ............ 188 ..
Create Wireframes. ............ of 189 .. Trade . ................................................ 18
Start simple: design a basic wireframe. .................. 191 Getting Started. .................. .. Wireframes and annotations. ............ 193 ..
Exercise: Draw a home page wireframe. ............... 195 Requirements. .................. .. 195 Result: Designing the home page wireframe. ...... ....... .................. .. 200 Follow-up design exercise: Which design is correct? .................. 201
One final note on cable performance. . . . . . . . . . . . ......
....................... 204 What is prototyping? .................. 205 How many originals do I need .. ....... 205 Paper originalization ................ .. 206 Digital Prototype .. ....... ....... ....... .................. 209 Additional tools for the construction of prototypes. .................. 214 ..
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Work with developers. ............ 217 ..
Original example. ....................... 217 What Happens After Prototyping .. ....... ....... 219 Chapter 13: Planning
Test with users. ....... 220 Exploring concepts .. ....... ....... 221 tips for exploring visual design models. .................. 224 ..
Usability testing. .................. 225 Select method. ............... 227 Research design. ............... 229 Recruitment and logistics .. .................. 233 Discussion writing guide. .................. 239 Promotion .. .................. .. 242 Analysis and presentation of results. ....................... 243 Creating a sentence .. ....... ....... 245 Chapter 14: Transition: Transition
From design to development and more. .. 247 This is the end............................................. ................................................ ...... 248 Visual Design, Development and Quality Assurance. 248 Testing design with users (again). ....... ....... …broadcast! ....... 251 personal strengths .. .................. 252 Supported. .................. .. . . . . 252 Internet Opinion. ............ ..................
post-publishing activity. ................................. 253 Post-publication analysis. ................................................ ................................. 254 with users -Boot design test (again, again). ....... ................. 255
You are done? ................................. 255 How to start over…… .......... .. 255 Index ..
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Introduction Why We Wrote This Book Welcome to the UX Design Project Guide. Somewhere, there's a UX design student losing sleep over what it's like to work on a real project at his new company. Across town, a visual designer with extensive project experience was eager to take on new responsibilities in defining the user experience for his website. The two were at different stages of life, but had a similar need: to understand how to integrate UX practices into a live project context. The goal of this book is to provide you with the necessary tools and framework to use UX tools and techniques in your workforce. As you will see in many of these chapters, we are not trying to be all things to all people, but we are trying to give you the basic information and knowledge you need to perform many tasks. Assigned as User Experience Designer. In addition to our own examples, we provide you with examples that help you identify ways to promote your core material and allow you to combine information and create content that is newer, better, and even more suitable for your own purposes. We hope we have made it clear that this is an approach well suited to UX design projects. We just keep trying to learn and improve (whatever we do) with each iteration. That's why, in a way, we're in this space. A few words from Russ As a mentor at the Information Architecture Institute (www.iainstitute.org), I've noticed a pattern among the people I work with: Most struggle to find work or don't meet the expectations of future employers Employers Some are well-educated but they are not always able to adequately and practically apply their UX design skills in a project-based environment. This same theme resonated in many of the conversations I had at the 2008 Information Architecture Summit (www.iasummit.org).
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The idea for this book began to take shape and answered many of these common questions. I can't remember if it was Carolyn or me who sent the first email, but I know that in her I found a helpful and capable co-writer who helped me develop the ideas that would eventually become this corner of the book. A quote from Carolyn I've been in the fortunate position of building and managing UX teams over the years. I say "lucky" because I've found that UX designers generally have a good balance of traits that make their work very interesting, combining right-brain intuition and left-brain logic. When I interviewed to form these teams, one thing stood out to me: a relevant educational background, such as human factors or communication design, is a good indication that someone is committed to the field of UX design, but it's not Numbers. indicator of whether a person is a good fit for a team or project. Equally important, if not more important, is that person's ability to have a counselor mindset. This means a positive attitude, a drive to understand and include others throughout the project, and most importantly, a focus on making a real impact on users and customers. This mindset means taking the time to understand the perspectives of other actors in the project, making a case, and making compromises where necessary. Building this mindset takes experience and hard work, but having an open mind, a solid foundation, and a good set of questions (and the courage to ask them) can go a long way. This book may not have all the "answers", but it will give you the questions to ask to help you find them.
Who should read this User Experience Design Project Guide provides a broad introductory overview of user experience design within a project. Anyone interested in UX design should find something useful here. We place particular emphasis on the following groups: Students taking UX design courses (such as human-computer interaction or interaction design) who wish to supplement their course with information on how to apply what they have learned in real-world situations where communication and collaboration is necessary Less.
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Professionals who want to deepen their knowledge of key UX design tools and techniques and improve their team's communication about the roles involved. Chapter 3 is also specifically aimed at freelancers who need to create their own proposals. A UX design team leader was looking for a book to help his team integrate project best practices with their UX design activities. Any project team leader is interested in learning more about how UX design fits into their projects, what the value is, and what to expect from a UX designer. If you need it...
then you must read...
Define UX design and understand what attracts people to the field.
Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD
Ask important questions before starting a project (or at least before you start working on it)
Chapter 2: The Project Ecosystem Chapter 3: Tips for Consultants and Freelancers
Kick it off with productive meetings, clear goals, and easy-to-understand approval points
Electronic Chapters: A Quick Guide to Meetings Chapter 4: Project Objectives and Approach
Well-defined and easily prioritized project requirements from stakeholders and business users.
Chapter 5: Business Requirements Chapter 6: User Research Chapter 9: Transition: From Definition to Design
Understand your users and represent their needs throughout your work
Chapter 6: User Research Chapter 7: People Chapter 13: User Design Testing
Choose and use tools and techniques that allow you to quickly convey visual ideas to project teams
Chapter 10: Sitemap and Workflow Chapter 11: Wireframes and Annotations Chapter 12: Prototyping
Make sure your website is easily findable and searchable by users and search engines
Chapter 8: User Experience Design and Search Engine Optimization
Once development begins, communicate with the project team and refine your design
Chapter 14: Transition: From Design to Development and Beyond
Be sure to visit www.projectuxd.com to read the additional "Quick Guide to the Conference" chapter and download additional materials such as templates.
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Note on Methodology There are various approaches and methodologies. We are not advocating one method over another. The goal of this book is to focus on steps common to most projects: defining project requirements, designing experiences, and developing and implementing solutions. The degree of overlap between these steps will vary greatly depending on the project approach you use (see Chapter 4 for more details). For the most part, our framework is a flexible linear approach that starts with definition steps, but at each step we leverage facilitation and design techniques where they are most useful.
This book is not an encyclopedia of all technologies. The UX field is full of creative people who are always trying new ways to solve design problems. Including all of these methods here would make for a longer book that would quickly become outdated. What we have included here are the most commonly used technical, practical aspects of UX design. We've tried to provide enough information to pique your interest and allow you to communicate activities with other project members, including basic procedures for each technique and additional references to books or websites that will help you once you've chosen your path. apply it. Your guide to becoming a project manager. Good project management, including setting and tracking project goals, schedules, and budgets, is key to the success of any project. We won't go into detail about how to become a project manager or how to choose a particular project approach. We discuss the skills UX designers bring to projects that enable effective project execution, such as facilitation and communication, as well as the ability to articulate and maintain focus on project goals. These skills will help you become a partner in project management. The only or perfect process or method. We don't have all the answers and nobody knows today. The field of UX design is relatively new and we are all trying to improve our status quo. You may find trials and errors, enhancements and improvements, and feedback
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Advice from others will help you tailor the process to meet your needs. When you find something that works for you, share it! Let us know!
How to use this book There are many great resources for UX designers. We've covered a wide range of topics here, but we've provided references that allow you to explore topics at a deeper level, depending on how much time you want to spend. To help you understand how long each referral typically takes, we've broken them down into three broad categories:
Navigation reports for surfboard instructions are shorter features (usually online) that take 5-30 minutes to read.
Snorkels These so-called snorkels are longer online articles, white papers, or short books that take anywhere from an hour to a weekend to read.
Deep Diving Helmet Calls is a long book that could take more than a weekend to read; it walks you through the subject in detail.
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The Tao of UXD Curiosity meets passion and empathy It's important not to stop questioning. Curiosity exists for a reason. One cannot help but wonder as he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, life, and the wondrous structure of reality. Just try to understand a little bit of this mystery every day. Albert Einstein
Curiosity is nature's first school of education. smiling plane tree
Passion and purpose go hand in hand. When you discover your purpose, you usually find that it is something you are very passionate about. Steve Pavlina
A great human gift is our ability to empathize. Meryl Streep
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In short, this chapter is for you and others who are drawn to the field of user experience design (or UX design for short).
If you're reading this sentence, you're a weird person. You want to know how things work, from doorknobs to airplanes to what's around your neck. More than anything, you want to know what excites people. You can't see things in black and white; there are tons of shades of gray to explore! Sure, he's always volunteered to play Devil's Advocate, sometimes driving his peers a little crazy, but he can't help but see the other side of the coin. You're lucky! The field of UX design attracts curious people who are happy to use many shades of gray. We look for patterns and thrive on organization and structure. We connect the dots. We tirelessly chase the next piece of the puzzle, and when it's solved, we find ways to make it even better! We can be analog or digital. We have pencils and paper, white boards and dry erase markers, post-it notes and markers at home. We speak Visio and Graffle and live in a world of boxes and arrows connected to our multiple computer screens. We're not just curious. We are full of passion! We are passionate about generating ideas and facilitating conversations. We are passionate about creating things that have an impact on the people who use them and the people who create them. Surprisingly, we take great pride when we create something so good that people don't realize how good it is. Of course we have empathy. When we have a bad experience, we can feel it deep in the core of our being. Even worse, we immediately try to find a solution to the problem. We know what it's like to get an unexpected response to a seemingly simple request, and we don't like it! We don't want users like us to have to live with the confusion and feelings of inadequacy that usually accompany a bad experience. 2
Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD
When you combine an almost constant childlike curiosity with an unrivaled passion for "doing what we do" and a sense of how others feel, you end up with a vibrant community of professionals who love to talk, ask questions, share solutions and make error. all in the name of justice. Welcome to the user experience design community.
What is User Experience Design? There are many definitions of UX design. After all, this is a field that thrives on defining things. It's true that sometimes we don't "definite the damned" very well when it comes to the parts of the whole, but at least we know what the whole is. In this book, we will focus on two definitions in particular: a broad definition of user experience design and a definition that we will use in the context of this book.
Broadly defined, UX design is the creation and synchronization of elements that affect a user's experience with a particular company, with the goal of influencing their perception and behavior.
These elements include things users can touch (such as physical products and packaging), hear (merchandising and audio signatures) and even smell (the aroma of freshly baked bread in a sandwich shop). It includes things that users can interact with outside of the physical, such as digital interfaces (websites and mobile phone apps) and physical people (customer service representatives, vendors, and friends and family). One of the most exciting developments in recent years has been the ability to fuse elements that affect these different senses into richer, more complete experiences. Smell and sight are still the distant future, but beyond that, products continue to blur traditional boundaries.
What is User Experience Design?
3
Don't Forget the Tangible While we focus on the digital aspects of the user experience, these types of interactions don't just happen in a vacuum. When designing digital products, be sure to consider tangible experience outcomes. The user interface is important, and the physical product (screen, keyboard, and other input devices) can also affect how users interact with a design. Chapter 6 provides techniques to help you understand context effects. Also, don't forget the other touch points a product or company has with the people it interacts with. After all, a company's brand is influenced by many factors, and the brand experience is not limited to computer or mobile screens. The best website design can't make up for a reputation for poor customer service or the satisfaction that comes with well-designed packaging when your product is delivered.
Figure 1.1 The modern classroom experience combines analog and digital.
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Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD
Tangible experiences such as classroom learning are increasingly influenced by digital applications. Similarly, experiences that were once personal, such as choosing which home karaoke machine to buy, are increasingly enhanced by social interaction.
Figure 1.2 Online reviews have a strong influence on consumers.
Our Approach As you can see, the scope of UX design is vast and growing. For the purposes of this book, we will focus on projects that focus on the design of digital experiences, particularly interactive media such as websites and software applications. To be successful, UX design for these products must consider the project's business goals, the needs of the product's users, and any constraints that affect the viability of the product's functionality (such as technical constraints or project budget constraints). . or time frame).
What is User Experience Design?
5
Free samples of new nutrition bar offered at Marathon
a doorknob
Pack a pair of shoes.
Figure 1.3 This book focuses on the digital aspects of user experience design.
The tangible function of SMS
customer service number
personal
Social
Our approach Read online product reviews Search the online archive View targeted ads
Digital Customer Service Live Chat
About UX Designers While curiosity, enthusiasm, and empathy are common characteristics of UX designers, they also desire balance. We're looking for a balance, especially between logic and emotion, like Spock and Kirk or Data and Data in that episode where his emotion chip overloads his positronic relay. did you understand. To create truly memorable and rewarding experiences, UX designers need to understand how to create a functional, logical structure for the experience, and they need to understand the elements that are important to creating an emotional connection with the product's users. The exact balance may vary by product. An ad campaign for children's toys has a different balance than an app that tracks patient information in a hospital. Products designed without understanding the needs of both are likely to miss opportunities for truly memorable experiences and opportunities for the company behind the product to benefit from them. Note For more on emotional design, see Donald Norman's Emotional Design: Why We Love (or Hate) Everyday Things (Basic Books, 2005).
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Chapter 1: The Tao of UXD
Achieving this balance requires a high degree of empathy—the ability to immerse yourself in the world of potential product users to understand their needs and motivations. UX designers conduct research to develop this understanding (see Chapter 6) and create tools such as personas (see Chapter 7) to help other project team members focus. Remember, emotions are only part of the bigger picture. Use your side of reason to pull you back from the brink and keep you focused on the task at hand. In most cases, you will use a budget based on the time and materials required to complete the project. You have to understand that sometimes you need to fish or cut bait.
Where UX Designers Live You are not alone. Take a look around and you'll find plenty of organizations and communities where you can grow as a UX designer. In addition to providing mailing lists, online resources, and lots of really smart people, many of these organizations sponsor events or conferences that can help you broaden your horizons and narrow your specialty at the same time. Several companies host events designed to provide continuing education, such as User Interface Engineering's Web Application Summit and UI Conference, Adaptive Path's UX Intensive, and Nielsen Norman Group's Usability Week. There are also a growing number of "Uncommons" in various cities; these are created by a group of motivated individuals, independent of any particular company or association.
Where UX designers live
7
Some professional organizations also sponsor annual conferences. Table 1.1 provides a brief list of some of the more well-known organizations, their websites, and the events they hold. Table 1.1
Sample user experience organization
organize
Website
Main meeting (usually held)
Interaction Design Association (IxDA)
www.ixda.org
Interactive (early February)
Information Architecture Institute (IAI)
www.iainstitute.org
IDEA Conference (September/October)
American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T)
www.asis.org
IA Summit (March)
ACM Special Interest Group on Human-Computer Interaction (SIGCHI)
www.sigchi.org
CHI (early April)
Association of Usability Professionals
www.usabilityprofessionals.org
Earnings per share (June)
let's start! You've come this far. Now is the time to understand why you chose this book in the first place. Turn the page for an in-depth look at how UX design exists in the world of projects. But don't stop there: this book is your guide to getting started. It has many examples to help you with many of the activities you will be assigned. We also try to provide more examples to help you expand and find the best way to create deliverables that are useful for your team and customers. Maintain your curiosity, enthusiasm and empathy! Challenge yourself to find new ways to inspire others to create the ideal user experience. Of course, that's before you start improving it.
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Project Ecosystem Design Project Requirements, Roles and Culture Starting a new project? or are you in the middle? Regardless, take some time to consider the dynamics and context of the project — issues that affect you and the rest of the project team. Which websites or apps are involved? What roles and skills are required? What is corporate culture? Answering these questions will help you define your project and ultimately identify the tools and skills you need to succeed. Caroline Chandler
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rice
Each project has its own unique challenges. If you're designing a website or app, many of these challenges will involve specific features and functionality, such as creating a way for users to share photos online with friends and family, or reorganizing information on an intranet to make it easier finding the content. find and share. However, all projects have a larger context around these specific design goals that you need to understand and incorporate into your planning. This context is the "ecosystem" of the project, including the environment you'll be working in (company culture), the general type of work everyone will be involved with (such as the type of website you're designing), and the people you'll interact with (including their roles and responsibilities). If you take the time to understand the project ecosystem, you will gain knowledge that will help you throughout the project. You can communicate your responsibilities and ideas more effectively, and you can help other team members anticipate project needs they may not have considered. To help you, this chapter identifies the different types of projects you can work on, the roles you can play, the people you can rely on, and how their involvement varies by site or application type that you are planning. Finally, the chapter discusses some elements of your company's culture that may affect how you work during a project. NOTE Depending on how your client company structures its projects, a particular project may involve the design of more than one site or application. For simplicity, this book assumes that a project involves the design of only one type of site. If you have multiple sites, review each site individually to ensure you are playing the right role on the project team.
Identifying Site Types Although there is no black-and-white distinction between one site type and another, some relative differences in site focus and functionality can be identified. Knowing these similarities and differences can help you set design goals for yourself. These are the general problems that need to be addressed
Features that are addressed in the website's visual and interaction design (e.g., "interpret the company's business model") or need to be represented (e.g., "demonstrate the company's responsiveness to customers").
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Consolidate the main objectives of the project (see Chapter 4). Find out which departments or business units can (or should)
Participate in business requirements gathering (see Chapter 5). Determine the best way to integrate user research (see Chapter 6). Ask questions about the systems and technologies that may be involved.
Your site may be closely related to one of four types:
Brand Identity: A persistent online platform that facilitates the relationship between a company and its general audience (anyone interested in its product or service). Marketing Campaign - A targeted website or application designed to elicit a specific and measurable response from a specific or general audience within a limited period of time Content Source - A repository of information, possibly consisting of multiple types of media compositions (articles, documents ) videos, photos, tutorials) task-based applications designed to inform, engage, or entertain users: a tool or collection of tools designed to enable users to perform a set of basic tasks or workflows
The following sections take a closer look at each of these types, discussing their characteristics and their impact on the challenges you face during your website or app design process. We will also look at the most common cross-cutting projects (e-commerce, e-learning and social networking) that have more than one type of function.
Brand Image What do you think of when someone says the word brand? Often the first thing that comes to mind is a company logo, such as the Nike logo or the Coca-Cola logo. However, a company's brand is more than its logo. It is a set of impressions that a particular person has about a company.
Specify the location type
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Dirk Knemeyer in his article "Brand Experience and the Web" gives some excellent definitions of the brand: inside each of us. The science of branding is about designing and influencing people's minds, in other words, creating brands.
Navigation To learn more about the difference between a customer's experience of a company's brand and a company's efforts to create it, read Dirk Knemeyer's explanation of "Brand Experience and the Web": www.digital-web.com /articles/brand_experience_and_the_web. For a great discussion of how a website's UX design can affect a person's brand experience, read Steve Baty's article "Brand Experience in UX Design": www.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000111.php.
Businesses can do a lot to influence their brand associations, from running memorable advertising campaigns to expressing brand attributes (such as "responsiveness" or "value") through the functionality and design of their website. All of a company's websites can have some impact on the company's brand, either directly (by introducing a website that customers can visit) or indirectly (by providing customers with essential services that customers trust, such as customer service). However, the branding website is more focused on displaying the company's brand information and value. They provide channels for direct interaction with customers and extensive online channels for those interested in learning more about a company or its products. Brand presence sites are typically the company's main .com or .org sites, such as GE.com, or for larger, more distributed companies, the main sites for business units of various sizes, such as GEhealthcare.com. Different product lines often have their own unique brand images online. For example, Pepsico.com has a brand image, while Pepsi.com has its own unique image.
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If you're working on a branded website, you're likely designing for a variety of user groups, including existing and potential customers, investors, partners, media (such as news organizations and prominent bloggers), and job titles. asking
Brand presence website The company's main website (company.com, company.org, company.net, etc.) Website of the company's primary business unit (usually a single website)
specific industry, region or large number of products) websites of well-known sub-brands within the company
Brand Identity Design Goals Typically, the most important design goal in a brand identity project is to convey the company's brand values and message.
Either explicitly (perhaps a statement about the importance of responding to customer needs) or through the overall experience of visiting the website (such as making sure it works well and offers unique features that encourage customers to contact the company). Provides quick and easy access to company information. You want
Answer the question "What does the company do?" and "How can I contact someone for more information?" Present or explain the company's business model and value proposition:
"What can the company do for me?" and "How does the company do it?". Attract a core set of user groups and guide them to relevant interactions.
mode, function or content. Help companies achieve goals related to key metrics such as
The number of unique visitors. This is often part of an overall marketing strategy. Later, in the Pick Your Hat section, you'll learn about the various roles that can go into designing a brand presence website. Now, let's see
Specify the location type
13
Among other types of sites you can work on, including those closely related to brand presence sites: campaign sites.
Campaigns Campaign sites are similar to brand exposure sites in that both focus on engaging users by influencing their experience of how your company's brand is perceived. However, campaign sites are often evaluated on their ability to achieve very specific actions within a defined focus, such as within a specific time frame or target audience targeting. They serve not as a channel to generate interest, but as an engine to generate it. From an online perspective, this usually means that they align with your overall marketing strategy and can be run alongside other marketing campaigns using different channels, such as radio or TV ads, print ads, and other promotions.
Shared Campaign Sites A landing page that promotes a specific offer. This page is accessed via
An advertising banner from another page. A small website (or microsite) that promotes a specific event. A game or tool created to create excitement.
Transport.
The main purpose of a campaign site is to create a narrow campaign, usually targeting a specific set of metrics. Focus is often limited by one or more of the following: Time: For example, activities that focus on events such as
conferences) or seasons (such as the holiday shopping season) user groups such as events for teenagers or teachers a product, collection of products and/or a specific use of the product for
For example, a website highlights kitchen appliances by showing a virtual kitchen with a matching oven, dishwasher and stove.
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A campaign that combines these strategies would be a spring yard sales campaign, combining time and product kits. See Figure 2.1 for an example showing a combination of product sets and user groups. A campaign site can be as simple as a banner ad that links to a company's .com home page, or it can be a microsite, a small site that is often differentiated from the obvious branding on a .com site to provide personalized marketing based on a or more key points. field experience. "Small" is relevant here: some microsites have only one page, while others have many, but in any case, a microsite is smaller and more focused than a company's main brand website.
Figure 2.1 Texas Instruments uses this education-focused microsite http://timathrocks.com/index.php to present information about the company's graphing computers. This suite of products is intended primarily for use by high school and college students in algebra classes. The microsite maintains a general connection to the Texas Instruments brand, but is purposefully differentiated to appeal to a younger audience and organize content and functionality around their needs.
Campaign Design Goals For the person or team responsible for designing and implementing a campaign website, the most important design goals are usually the following: Create interest and excitement, usually by providing clear and direct information.
A specific value proposition (the value the product or service brings to the user, such as being able to qualify for a quick loan) or some type of incentive (special offers, contest entry or entertainment such as online games).
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15
involvement of a large group of users in certain illegal acts,
Examples include clicking on a specific point on a brand's website, signing up for a newsletter or applying for a loan. When a user does this, it's called a transition. Help businesses achieve goals set against key metrics such as volume
The number of unique visitors. This is often part of an overall marketing strategy.
Digging Deeper To learn more about designing pages to support your marketing campaigns, check out Landing Page Optimization: The Ultimate Guide to Conversion Testing and Tuning, by Tim Ash (Sybex, 2008).
Content Feed Content websites contain repositories of information, which may contain various types of media (articles, documents, videos, photos, tutorials) designed to inform, interact and/or entertain users.
A source website for public content A corporate intranet An online library or resource center for members of an organization A website or area of a website dedicated to providing news or information
Latest Posts (larger business blogs may fall into this category) Customer Service Center
Of course, all websites and apps have some content, but some websites put a lot of emphasis on the presentation and structure of their content. Emphasis can occur because the site has so much content that is inherently challenging, or because certain types of content are highly relevant; for example, they can support critical decisions or keep users coming back to the site often.
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The main goal of a content streaming site is to increase user awareness and self-sufficiency by providing relevant content, like an intranet. They also usually encourage some kind of action, such as sharing information or purchasing a product after viewing a product description. Streaming Design Goals Streaming sites typically need to do one or more of the following: Present content that primarily attracts first-time and repeat visitors to the site. Show the company's thought leadership, for example,
Provides access to the thoughts and perspectives of the CEO or other subject matter experts within the company. Supporting key decisions in user groups. Increase the company's business knowledge and uncover ideas
They were probably buried in separate compartments. This may be part of a broader goal of identifying more opportunities for innovation. Support users who search for information in different ways. For example,
Some people don't yet know what specific product they need (and are more likely to browse), while others may know exactly what they're looking for (and are more likely to use the search field).
Browse To learn more about the different ways people seek information, read Donna Spencer's Four Modes of Seeking Information and How to Design for Them: http://boxesandarrows.com/view/four_modes_of_seeking_information_and_how_to_design_for_them
When it comes to UX design, some of the most common tasks in a content flow project are: Creating taxonomy structures that fit users' mental models Determining how to integrate organic content development systems
(eg functions such as tagging and filtering) Design effective search tools to identify site types
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Task-based applications Task-based applications can range from a simple calculator integrated into a mortgage website to a full system that handles multiple key workflows. If your project involves the latter, more roles will be involved and an extensive requirements gathering process will likely be required (see Chapter 5 for more on this process).
Common task-based applications A software application that supports the creation of specific types of tasks.
Items such as spreadsheets or printed parts, tools or web applications that support critical workflows on your computer
Sites where companies (such as a ticket management application for an IT support team or a customer tracking application for a call center) allow access to and management of personal data
(like Flickr)
The main goal of a task-based application is to allow users to perform a set of tasks that suit their needs and ultimately the customer's business goals. Task-based application design goals Most task-based applications should allow users to do something that they cannot do elsewhere, or if they can,
Make it better ("better" can mean more effective, more efficient, more satisfying, or more convenient) Support first-time users with accessible instructions and visual priorities.
Critical task assignments allow intermediate and advanced users to access shortcut functions
and deeper functions to reduce user load and make full use of system resources
(eg reuse data instead of requiring duplicate entries)
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Plan and implement with care for the degree of change required
One of the biggest challenges in designing task-based applications is controlling "function upgrades". As a project evolves, it's not uncommon for big ideas to emerge in later stages of design or even during development. UX design is great for avoiding feature escalation because user models (like personas) can be used to identify high-value features and maintain focus throughout the project. If a great idea comes along late in the process and meets the needs of a high-priority user group and aligns with the site's business goals, your team can make a case for a change in direction. If an idea doesn't make it, it's probably not worth the delay and cost.
E-commerce sites An e-commerce site can contain elements of all four types of elements, as a site primarily used for e-commerce must have its own brand identity, provide content (usually product specifications or product instructions), and facilitates tasks (search, compare, write a review, pay). Marketing activities are also often closely linked to these sites and may involve multiple marketing teams within the organization. Other common design goals for e-commerce sites are to explain the site model (if it's not standard). they love online shopping
This interpretation, as it is constantly being redesigned, will help set expectations (e.g. eBay, Amazon, and Craigslist all have very different models). Support user decision making from learning to testing.
From comparison to purchase, with useful content and features. Redeem points on cross-sell and up-sell experiences
possible and present them in a way that attracts attention without being obtrusive. Build from point of purchase to
trading locations. Communication should not only take place within the website, but also through other channels, such as integration with delivery tracking systems and email communication about order status. Specify the location type
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E-learning applications E-learning applications fall somewhere between content sources and task-based applications. Content must be created for courses, often requiring teams to add special learning and subject-specific (SPE) roles for the topics covered. The product is task-based, as users typically follow the flow of a lesson and may also need to track progress or explore related topics. Some practical courses may also require the completion of assignments. A common design goal is to build an understanding of the fundamentals needed to begin the course.
and who is it for. Deliver content in scheduled, manageable chunks
they understand. Engage students in activities that simulate hands-on learning. Communicate performance and progress and make recommendations where appropriate
Next steps in the continuing education process, such as more advanced courses.
Social Networking Apps Social networking apps are primarily task-based apps because users need to be able to find and add friends, manage their profiles, connect, post, and search. However, they also contain challenges related to content sources, notably the need for an organic framework to manage potentially very large volumes of user-generated content. If the website actually has its own identity, it will also have the characteristics of a branded website.
Snorkeling Whether you're developing a social networking application or trying to integrate social networking features into another type of website, this book will help you get going: Designing for Social Networking, by Joshua Porter (New Riders, 2008).
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A common design goal for social media apps is to bring potential users to the purpose and value of the network. Facilitate meaningful interactions between support and supported users
It is supported by provided features such as image sharing, video sharing and discussions. It protects the integrity of the site by ensuring that people within the network understand it
Learn how to control your information and react to inappropriate behavior. Leverage and showcase the power of the community to introduce features
Features only available to active members, such as features and popular comments. Determining the types of websites or apps you might use during your project is just the first step. Next, you need to consider the different roles that are often required and how their involvement may vary depending on the type of project.
Choose your hat When you become a UX designer on a project, you often end up having to fill multiple roles. Whether or not they are formally defined within your client organization, the roles you play will depend on the type of project and the composition of the rest of the team, as well as the client's experience with each. It's good to know which roles you're already good at and which ones you think you can learn on the job. It is also useful to find out what other people might expect from the tasks covered by these roles. With this understanding, you can present yourself more clearly from the beginning of the project. What is the most common role of a UX designer? Each client company you work for may have a different title for these roles (or no name at all if it's not an official position in the organization). Typically, you'll encounter the big three: Information Architects, Interaction Designers, and User Researchers. Note Few companies have the size or budget to assign these common roles to different people. Remember role names when defining projects, but talk about needs and responsibilities when talking to clients, otherwise they might think you're building a really big team! This focus on responsibilities rather than titles will also help you stay sane: playing several of these roles doesn't necessarily mean you're doing the work of many people, as responsibilities come from different parts of the project.. .
choose your hat
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Information Architects Information architects are responsible for creating models for information structures and using them to design user-friendly navigation and content categorization. During site and application design, shared responsibilities include creating detailed site maps (discussed in Chapter 10) and ensuring that information categories and subcategories are clear and accessible. Understanding expectations In the world of UX, the roles of information architects and interaction designers are differentiated (discussed below). However, there is little common distinction between these two roles in a given company, at least when it comes to the necessity of a particular project. For example, you might end up with a group called Information Architects because that's the buzzword for the role, whether it actually fits your responsibilities or not. Need to fix the project team if the title they gave you doesn't match the leadership role you're taking on? If it's a short-term project (eg four months or less) and you have a title that's widely accepted in the organization, with clear responsibilities listed, then it's probably not worth the potential confusion you've entered to deal with. Change. However, if there are no widely accepted titles and you believe that both roles are likely to be played by different people, it is worth making the distinction early in the project when planning engagement and communication. your responsibility. Essentially, for more task-based applications, it makes sense to emphasize the interaction designer role, and for more content-based projects, it makes sense to emphasize the information architect role. But it can make a lot of sense to use terms that are familiar to the client organization and make sure the team understands how you define the roles in relation to the responsibilities you undertake. This definition is what you need to specify in your statement of work (see Chapter 3). The responsibilities of an information architect can also be confused with those of a content strategist (see "Other roles" below). If these roles are
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Represented by different people on the project team, be sure to discuss at the beginning of the project how you will work together.
Interaction Designers Interaction designers are responsible for defining the behavior of a website or application based on user actions. This includes site flow across multiple views and interactions within specific views. When designing a website or application, common activities are creating workflows that show interactions between pages or elements on a website (see Chapter 10) and creating diagrams that show page interactions, such as dynamic menus and expandable content areas (See Chapter 10) 10) 11). Find out what to expect if you're working on a small team or project, but aren't very focused on building new task-based features (for example, if you're working on a branded website with a few main categories of content, a contact form and a newsletter registry) Interaction designers may be primarily responsible for documenting project requirements (see Chapter 5). If you're working as an interaction designer on a project with a high level of new functionality, you'll likely have a separate person on the team responsible for describing the detailed requirements (for example, a business analyst or a product manager). . A UX designer's skills can greatly assist in the process of gathering and refining functional requirements, while documents such as functional specifications and use cases are influenced by experience design. Be sure to sit down with the person responsible for the requirements to discuss how best to work together.
User Researcher A user researcher is responsible for providing information about end-user needs based on information generated or validated by the person's user research. There are many types of activities that fall under the umbrella of user research and can occur at various points in the project timeline. (See Chapter 6 for descriptions of common techniques such as user interviews, surveys, and usability testing.)
choose your hat
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Understanding expectations A client company's interest in user research can vary widely, depending on how seriously the project team or project sponsor places it. The fact that you discuss UX design with the project sponsor before the project even begins shows that someone on the client team knows that ensuring user needs are represented is a priority. But as those who have worked on computer-based projects know, introducing research can also cause project team members anxiety, fearing that user research will get in the way. , will increase risk (what if we spot a problem and need to make a major change to fix it?), or negate the value of a particular idea that has gained a lot of momentum. Business stakeholders and project teams may have different expectations for user research, so be sure to clarify the role expectations of these two groups. Customers may also want information from user researchers based on website analytics: tools and reports that convey website usage patterns, such as frequently visited pages and common points where users leave the website. Some of the most common analytics tools are from Google (www.google.com/analytics), WebTrends (www.webtrends.com) and Omniture (www.omniture.com/en/products/web_analytics). You may find yourself in all three roles: information architect, interaction designer, and user researcher. Can you balance all three or are you chewing off more than you can handle? This depends in part on the size and timing of the project, but the type of project also affects the likelihood that each role will be involved. Table 2.1 describes how the role of a UX designer varies by project type.
Navigation Need support with your UX design? Information from these articles can help: "User Experience is Imperative" by Mir Haynes: www.hesketh.com/publications/user_experience.pdf "Ten Dollars a Day to Promote UX Design" by Louis Rosenfeld: http ://louisrosenfeld . com/home/blog_archive/000131.html
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Table 2.1
Common UX Design Role Responsibilities
information architect
Brand
Marketing activities
content source
task based application
Medium engagement.
Smaller sites, such as a single landing page, have low engagement. Moderate commitment if you work with larger microsites.
Commitment is high. Content sources require an information architecture that strikes the right balance between structure and flexibility, giving users a solid foundation on which to build and allowing for planned growth.
Moderate to high dedication, mostly focused on building the navigation framework, unless references to larger contexts are required in some workflows.
Small sites have low engagement and large microsites or advergames (online advertising games designed to create fun and excitement) have medium to high engagement.
Moderate to high involvement.
Commitment is high. This type of project typically requires the heaviest work, as interaction design deliverables such as workflows and user schematics are key to the visual communication requirements.
Since campaigns are often temporary, user engagement is often low. A more permanent solution could use research similar to a branded exhibition site. It's also common to use analytics tools to render two or more variations of a particular page to see which is driving the most conversions. This is called A/B testing.
Field research, such as background research, can help teams understand how different users are currently using information.
The higher the content challenge, the more the project acts as a source of content.
Interactive design
Medium engagement. The higher the number of tasks, the more the project behaves like a task-based application.
Involvement of user researchers will vary depending on budget and user access. Common techniques for each type of project are listed below. See Chapter 6 for more information on these techniques.
Research efforts can focus on understanding the needs of priority user groups (through surveys or interviews) or design studies that test the effectiveness of specific visual designs in conveying the right brand message.
Search, tagging, and filtering capabilities cross the boundaries between information architecture and interaction design. Content sources can also have workflows that include content creation and management.
Card sorting is a great way to understand how users group information and common patterns and mental models.
Field research, such as contextual research, may be performed to understand what tasks users are currently completing. However, the most common and well-understood technique for user involvement in task-based application design is usability testing.
Once the framework is created, usability testing can validate the structure.
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Other Roles You May or Should Play Various roles are not typically included in the UX designer role, but their responsibilities often overlap with the UX designer role, especially if you're working on a project that no one else is playing. Role. And you have skills to bring to the table. Some of the more common overlapping roles include: Brand Strategist/Director Business Analyst Content Strategist Copywriter Visual Designer Front-End Developer
The following sections look at each of these roles in more detail and consider how they differ depending on the type of website being designed. Brand Strategists and Brand Stewards Brand Strategists are responsible for building relationships with key markets through the definition and consistent presentation of a company's brand elements, which can include anything from brand values (such as "responsiveness") to guidelines of copy and based on treatments, colors and The logo design specification sends a message. This role typically involves creating or representing brand guidelines and understanding how to apply them to different projects. It can also involve understanding or defining the target audience that is important to the project you are working on. In most cases, you'll likely work with a brand strategist, but they won't take responsibility. The brand manager does not necessarily have to set the guidelines, but is responsible for ensuring they are followed correctly throughout the project. This responsibility can be assigned to the UX designer or visual designer of the project. If the company's characteristics, values and guidelines are clearly defined and the website is expected to follow these principles, then your role as a project brand manager will primarily be to ensure that the results meet these guidelines. Your contacts outside the project are likely to be
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A member of the marketing department who may consult or review, but is not part of the full-time team. If the site is designed to extend the brand in some way, such as by targeting new markets, the role of the brand manager may be more active. The situation becomes even more complicated when a completely new brand identity is created or when a company makes significant changes to its brand for effective rebranding. For example, CellularOne completely rebranded as Cingular, a huge undertaking for an established company. In this case, you need to have a lot of experience in branding or have a clear and close relationship with people in the company. Key questions to help you understand what to expect from your brand persona include: Have brand guidelines been developed? If so, must the project strictly adhere to these regulations? who is responsible for creating or maintaining the brand message;
The look and tone of the content (eg casual or professional)? Will it target new audiences not previously reached?
brand definition? If so, who is responsible for ensuring that brand guidelines remain relevant to these audiences? Will there be a naming or renaming event? If so, how should I plan
involved? (For example, creating a name for a new tool that will be heavily promoted.) For projects that do not have a large potential impact on the client's brand perception, such as developing an internal application, brand manager involvement can be as simple as as an occasional record to ensure the brand is done well. Business Analyst The Business Analyst (sometimes referred to as a Business Systems Analyst in IT projects) is responsible for identifying key business stakeholders, leading the requirements gathering process (see Chapter 5), and acting as an intermediary between business and technical stakeholders . . equipment. He is also the primary owner of detailed requirements documents, such as functional specifications and use cases, if necessary.
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The business analyst or product manager role may not exist in your project, or it may be one of the most important roles in the entire design process. Task-based applications and content sources often have such capabilities; branded projects and marketing campaigns may not. Task-based applications are more likely to require this role. The more features and complexity of a project, the greater the need for dedicated staff and functional documentation. Although business analysts are not typically considered members of the UX team, small UX teams are often asked to fill the role, so it's important to understand where these responsibilities lie. Business analysts drive the fulfillment of business requirements, acting as liaisons between technical teams and key business stakeholders. If there is a business analyst on the project, that person and the interaction designer usually go hand in hand. If it's the same role, the person in charge may have to deal with a lot of documents! To understand what to expect in this area, ask who will be responsible for defining the project scope, facilitating requirements discussions, and documenting the requirements for the entire project. For small projects or projects that don't have many features, project managers sometimes take on these responsibilities. Either way, if it's not you, you'll still know who you need to be in close contact with to keep your deliveries in sync. Content Strategist Content Strategists are responsible for understanding business and user needs for content across media (articles, documents, photos and videos), identifying gaps in existing content, and facilitating workflow and content development . new content. Content related efforts are often underestimated. A client may have great content in one medium (such as a printed brochure or video), but that content may not be appropriate for the project they are working on. Additionally, there are sometimes unspoken expectations that people within the client organization will create content - and those expectations can surprise those people when it comes time to populate your product with descriptions, news, and help topics! If the high quality content is
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key business drivers in your project, make sure you know who is responsible for: Setting content guidelines for new products (type of content,
ton, quantity). Evaluate the adequacy of existing content
Guidelines. New content development. This will vary depending on the type of project as a whole. For
A task-based application that can include transcripts of instructions, error messages, and help topics. For content sources, you can include articles, news, and blog posts. Serves as liaison between stakeholders and technical teams for communication
Limitations and Capabilities of Content Management Systems. Defines the different content types, along with the metadata for each content (
information that ultimately makes searching and cross-referencing more efficient). Content migration planning, which includes creating templates.
Target different types of content and ensure content is properly tagged and uploaded as it moves through the site's content management system. (This is another area where the effort required is often underestimated.) Copywriters Copywriters are responsible for writing the copy that makes up the overall experience on a website. In some cases, this copy remains unchanged almost every day. It usually includes a website and a page introduction or page description. Contributors may also be involved in the ongoing creation of dynamic content, such as copy for news or marketing campaigns. Copywriting is one of the gray areas that UX designers often encounter, especially when creating wireframes (see Chapter 11). Initially, you can put a sample text as a placeholder for your copy, such as a site description or page description, but eventually someone will have to fill it in with the final text that the user will see, as many projects don't have an expert writer for, this Tasks can be assigned to you by default. It is unlikely that you will be asked to write about a well-known domain on the website or a marketing campaign of a brand; in these cases
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Every word can be scrutinized. However, if you're developing a task-based application that requires short explanatory messages, error messages, or other information that doesn't necessarily belong in an explicit content group, you might end up inheriting this write task (or it's default deployment By). ). Ask in advance if a partner is available, and if you can't find one, ask again when you wireframe. If the work is yours, be sure to include it when planning your activities during the project. Caution: this is a responsibility that is often overlooked or underestimated. Visual Designer A visual designer is responsible for the elements of a website or application that users see. This work involves designing a look that creates an emotional connection with the user in accordance with the brand's guidelines. For example, banking websites often need to appear stable, reliable and accessible. Visual design can provide this assurance through visual elements such as color and imagery. This promise will be kept (or broken) through the interaction design of the website and other points of contact with the business, such as the call center. Let's be honest: Many people call themselves visual designers, web designers, or graphic designers, and many websites have poor or acceptable visual design. There is a big difference between creating an effective, immersive and emotional visual design and being successful. Sometimes success is enough to achieve project goals, but other times it can lead to frustration and project delays when project sponsors are unhappy or early adopters are not committed to the design. On the other hand, it's also easy to focus so much on influencing the visual design that the usability of the design suffers. If you're asked for this role and aren't confident in your ability to make the right customer impact, take a visual look at the company's current website and a website or product that customers value to gauge your comfort level. Degree. Visual designers often play a very important role in brand awareness projects and marketing campaigns, primarily responsible for effectively communicating a company's brand.
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For content source projects, they can focus on creating content templates (for example, article templates) that can be applied to multiple pages. For task-based applications, they can provide style guides that can be applied to common interaction elements such as navigation areas and tools (requiring a high degree of collaboration with the interaction designer). Front-end Developer Front-end developers are responsible for creating the technical framework behind page layout and flow, as well as interactive elements within the website, such as drop-down menus, expandable content areas, and interaction with media elements such as video . This work often uses technologies such as XHTML, CSS, Flash, JavaScript, Ajax and Silverlight. Front-end development focuses on website elements directly related to what users see, rather than the support systems that provide the underlying platform (such as databases, content management systems, and the code needed to build the functionality behind the complex functionality ). If you or a member of your team takes on the role of front-end developer, it's important to work closely with the rest of the development team to understand expectations and responsibilities. Other important considerations include the support systems they must integrate with, the method used to generate HTML, the need for flexibility in page structure to accommodate custom "skins", and expectations for technologies such as Flash. If you are designing a prototype (see Chapter 12), ask who will develop the prototype and what level of functionality is expected. Prototypes that simply communicate functionality can be created quickly in applications like Flash, but full-featured prototypes that need to capture actual data (for example, the account information a user just entered into a form) should be done carefully . .Collaborate with backend development team members. Worried about taking on all these roles? Unless you're working on a very small project or a very small company, chances are you won't be dealing with all of these things. The key is to understand what roles you are able and willing to take on as needed for the specific project you are working on. Otherwise, you can get the support you need within the project team by networking with the client company or referring others to fill the need. Let's take a moment to talk about ways you can do this.
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Build a user support network For those areas you're not sure you can or don't want to tackle, it's time to start asking for help. There are three main approaches: If necessary, adding additional team members is recommended.
It's clear. Train in key areas where there are gaps if there are new responsibilities
These skills are manageable and you have time to focus on them. Create a support network within the company to help you in critical moments.
Let's take a closer look at how to build a support network. There are likely to be some key resources from other parts of the company that can help you succeed. You need to figure out how much time you can trust these people with, as asking a stranger for time can be a difficult request for a project that is primarily owned by one department. If you don't want to ask them for a lot of time upfront, just ask if you can work (or consult) with them to ensure the best possible outcome for the core responsibilities of the role. Once you've made some connections, you'll have a better idea of how much interaction you might need and whether you should make more formal demands on your time. Every company has a different structure and different department names, but here are some common places to look for a partner: For a brand strategist role, ask the marketing department if there's one there.
A department that can serve as your point of contact. This can also be a resource for visual designers and content strategists. Visual design and content strategy associates are also available at the address
Program or product management or R&D, operations or corporate strategy, where you can often find business analysts and product managers. IT or Engineering is usually the best choice for the front end
Developers and others who can help you access and obtain information about Website Analytics Tools.
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If you've recently been hired at a new company and want to work across multiple departments, one of the best things you can do early on is to identify key people who could be partners and schedule interviews with them to understand their roles. and experience. It starts with a network you can often rely on long-term and gives you a chance to explain your responsibilities (and UX design in general). You can also ask a good question at the end of the interview: "Who else do you think I should talk to?" The answer may help you find someone who may not have been obvious to your primary project manager or customer contact. If you've been in a band for a while, you can still start a stand-up show like this. In this case, it's best to tie it to a specific milestone (like starting a new project) or a corporate goal with some urgency behind it to ensure high engagement. Make sure your manager knows what you're doing so it doesn't seem like you're being overlooked. Good communication is key to understanding role expectations and building trust. Another key to gaining trust within a company is understanding its culture, the often unspoken expectations of how the company operates, e.g. acceptable work logistics (eg work from home);
Understanding corporate culture is a bit like putting Alka-Seltzer in a glass: you can't see it, but it works a certain way. — Hans Magnus Enzensberger
A company's culture may not be consistent across its regions, business units, or divisions, but you can often identify key characteristics that affect you and the projects you work on. Here are some things to keep in mind when evaluating projects and navigating potentially difficult political situations.
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History We all know that those who cannot remember the past are doomed to repeat it, and project work is no exception. Understanding how a project or team got to its current requirements state can help you understand the challenges you may face during the project. Let's discuss some questions you can ask to understand the history that may affect your project. While some of the answers to these questions may seem daunting, remember that something triggered the need to include you in the project, so a project can have a sketchy history and still be successful. You may be the key to success! However, if many of the issues discussed below seem to apply and you don't feel like you can help with them, that could be a red flag. In this case, consider an overall assessment of project success. What are examples of previous works that appear to have been considered?
It worked? What seems to make it so successful? What were the projects that seemed to fail (or be particularly painful) in the past and why did they fail? Asking these questions (either directly or in a more subtle conversational style) can help you understand a few things: how respondents define success, the potential risks of your project, and any biases or expectations that will carry over into your project. and effective methods. The company collaborated with the designer and released it at the same time
Project or team? If so, try to find out what doesn't seem to be working and how customers expect your approach differently. If you can ask this question to more than one person in the company, it will help you learn a lot about unspoken expectations. If you get two completely different answers, this probably means that the designer's responsibilities are not clearly defined, and you may need to make sure that there is a lot of communication about their responsibilities throughout the project. Has the project team worked on the project (or related material)?
Something that seems unfinished for an unusually long time?
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If so, this could be an indication that key customer stakeholders were not on the same page or engaged at the right time, leading to multiple dead ends, changes in direction, or wasted time due to multiple iterations. It can also mean that without a clear leader, no one can say no (or at least prioritize effectively) to maintain focus on business goals. If you can influence project communications, creating an engagement guide can help move the project forward. If the company created the plan without prior involvement
User experience designer? This can be a mixed blessing. On the one hand, you're dealing with a team that understands the design needs and tries to fill the gaps. On the other hand, you may receive a design that you feel does not meet the UX goals of the project. This can be a difficult situation. It's often best to approach the creators of these designs in the tone of a respected mentor or helpful advisor, first highlighting the strengths of the design and then discussing the UX goals and how they can best be achieved using different approaches. Creators are likely to be important members of your support network, so it's important not to break bridges here, but to redefine your role together to maintain enthusiasm. Does the lead sponsor or project manager seem particularly anxious?
About the project? This can happen for a number of reasons, especially if some of the factors above are at play. Anxiety can also be due to market anxiety, which will help you understand. For example, has the company's share price fallen? Have any particular competitors made impressive strides lately? Does the business operate under a red number? Again, these conditions don't necessarily mean you shouldn't take on the project; after all, it's the kind of situation that would normally fund a project in the first place. However, if you are seriously concerned that the company will not be able to pay your bills, then you need to weigh that risk.
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The Hierarchy Geert Hofstede has an excellent model for describing cultural differences, which he calls "cultural dimensions," which often affect the way people interact and communicate. One of them is the concept of power distance, which is the extent to which members of society (in our case a company) understand and accept the distance between people of different levels of power. For example, if members of a company's executive team are perceived as particularly powerful and potentially difficult to reach, the company may have high power distance and its employees may be more concerned about hierarchy. If a company encourages a democratic exchange of ideas and challenging visions, its power distance can be relatively small.
Power distance is “…the degree to which less powerful members of organizations and institutions (such as families) accept and expect that power will be distributed unequally. This represents inequality (more versus less) but is defined from the bottom up rather than the top up Shows the degree of inequality in society is recognized by followers and leaders Geert Hofstede Cultural Dimensions www.geert-hofstede.com
Neither of these extremes can be considered good or bad in and of themselves, although in the US, most workers seem to prefer a small power distance in their workplaces. It is worth noting that this is not necessarily an indicator of how successful a company is. Apple has relatively high power distance (given the aura surrounding Steve Jobs), while Google, as part of its culture, has relatively low power distance, but both companies are known as thought leaders. An important thing to note is that the power distance within the client company will affect the success of navigating political waters during the project. This aspect is especially important at key points in the project: during requirements gathering (discussed in Chapter 5) and at key milestones such as closure (discussed in Chapter 4). If you work for a company with a lot of power distance, bring extra
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Take the time to understand reporting relationships, such as interviews and stakeholder reviews, before scheduling meetings, and consider involving more mid-level people in your communication process.
Logistics In addition to the broader cultural aspects mentioned above, it is also useful to understand some elements of a more logistical nature so that you can better integrate into current working methods or introduce changes carefully. For example, it is useful to know the general progress expected within the company, including key release dates or timelines that will affect the project (the progress of building a software application on an annual release schedule may differ from the progress of a microsite that supports seasonal campaigns, for example) . Is your team working overtime to meet looming deadlines? It's also good to know what to expect when working remotely in relation to the workplace. If you expect to spend a lot of time at the site, you will need to plan your trip and setting up resources there. If remote work is accepted (or encouraged, which is common when working with multinational companies), it is important to understand communication methods and tools. For example, is it acceptable to use instant messaging apps? What web conferencing tools do you use? Are there methods of engaging international stakeholders that have proven effective in the past? It is also interesting to learn about a company's "paper culture". Some companies prefer electronic media for the most part, in which case a good projector and stable ethernet connection is all that matters. Others are very paper-centric, so you'll need to make sure you bring enough copy to the meeting to be effective. You may be able to change the project culture if you believe another approach is more effective. But it's good to know that you're asking people to make changes so you can make the transition and possibly understand why a particular approach isn't working as expected.
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Putting it all together Now that you've explored the project domain, you should better understand the project ecosystem: the environment in which you work (company culture), the general type of work that everyone will be involved with (e.g. as the type of the website you're designing ) and the people you'll be interacting with (including their roles and responsibilities). This information will be valuable when you describe your role in the project and are ready to get down to business. If you're a freelancer or subcontractor, it will form the basis of writing a proposal that covers your work on the project (see the next chapter, discussing UX proposals). If you worked as part of a larger team and were not directly involved in writing the proposal, you can bring your new ideas back to the beginning of the project at your first team meeting. For a basic guide to running a good meeting, see the online chapter "A Quick Guide to Meetings" or Chapter 4, "Aiming the Project" if you want to jump straight to the types of questions to ask when starting a project . and methods.
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3
Advice for consultants and freelancers A guide for entrepreneurs who also have their own business Managing projects and client expectations can be difficult enough, but if you don't have the right agreements in place, you could be failing at everything you do. projects undertaken. Proposals and statements of work are critical to protecting your business and yourself from financial and legal trouble. After agreeing on a project and shaking hands, be sure to take the time to draft an agreement detailing the terms of your relationship and your client's payment schedule. Lars Unger
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Suggestions There's an old saying "what happens when you do something good" and it's often said about any project that lands: moments of feeling good and happy are quickly replaced by "ah! Time to write the sentence!” The biggest challenge of writing a sentence is writing the first sentence. If you've never written one yourself, it's almost impossible to know where to start, and this chapter should come in handy. Each type of project you come across will have a different style, which will keep you on your toes when creating your proposal. Fortunately, all suggestions have a common core that can be reused in a project. (See Chapter 2 for a detailed discussion of project types.) When should you write a proposal? always. Why should I write a sentence? Throughout the history of working on a project, the ones that have put people in the most uncomfortable positions are projects where there is no agreement between the client and the supplier. When you first connect with a prospect and things seem to be going well, you may be tempted to skip this step. Even if you have a clear understanding of your client's needs and can articulate them in a way they understand, you're not ready to go to work. In fact, this is exactly the time to slow down and take a breath. Instead of starting a business, spend time defining your business relationships and rules of engagement with new clients. Jean Marc Favreau of the law firm Peer, Gan & Gisler, LLP in Washington, D.C.: Sponsors and their clients often think they are brainstorming early in their relationship when in fact they are just lying. on hold. While it's nearly impossible to be prepared for every eventuality, a fully written contract is your best defense and the smartest way to ensure you don't end up arguing in court later about the terms of your relationship The way. The more clearly you can pre-determine the terms and parameters of your relationship with your client in a written contract, the less likely you will be to fight over the obligations of both parties in the future.
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New projects and new people are exciting. People usually don't want to "kill the deal" by throwing a proposal into the mix, but as with any relationship, the honeymoon feeling will eventually wear off. Both partners in the relationship may break their commitments. Customer may not provide you with timely access to Content. (I know that's pretty much unheard of, but believe it or not, it happens! Here's the irony, in case you missed it.) Work is busy enough to leave with a bag. Businesses are also realizing that they are taking on a risk by working with third-party vendors, especially those that are very small businesses or independent contractors. A well-written proposal will give the client a sense of stability and protection, which can help alleviate many of the concerns that may arise. Proposals also allow you to set terms that protect both parties when certain conditions change. If the client does not give you timely access to their resources, your schedule may be delayed; they must understand their obligation to the success of the project. If the client loses money and cancels the project and you don't have a proposal or other form of contract, you run the risk of not getting paid for work already done. The bottom line should be clear: always write a sentence.
Creating a Proposal Once the project is complete, it's time to develop the proposal. The sooner a proposal is approved and signed, the sooner you can start working and, more importantly, start getting paid for your work. The key elements of a good proposal are: Title page Revision history Project overview Project approach
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Scope of Work Deliverables Title and Title Additional Costs and Fees Payment Schedule Project Price Confirmation and Approval
Let's delve into each part of the sentence.
Title Page A title page is a single page that introduces a document. Title pages are an interesting beast - in terms of style and information, there are several ways to create them. How you do it is up to you. A typical title page contains the following information: Client Company Name Client Company Logo (if you have access to it) Project Title Document Type (Proposal) Proposal Version Date Submitted Your Company Name Proposal Author Project Number Cost Confidentiality
For your first proposal, include everything except the client company logo, the cost and the (possible) project reference number. Why not include these elements on the cover?
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Your customers know who they are. Applying for a license to use a company logo is probably not worth the time and effort, nor the potential upset if you accidentally use it. Costs are best placed after you identify the individual project elements in the text, and cost information can guide payment plans well. You must remember the project reference number. Many companies will not use one at all, however, some government agencies are known to rely on this particular element and if it is not on your title page, your proposal may be rejected.
Figure 3.1 Example Proposal Title Page
In Figure 3.1, the client's (imaginary) logo is used. It is best not to display a client company's logo without permission or where the relationship has not yet been established.
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Revision History The revision history is the part of a proposal that specifies how many times you have updated a proposal since the original version. In general, it's a good idea to provide the version number, date, author, and any comments related to the version, such as what changed, to give the reader some context about the change (Table 3.1). Table 3.1 Overview
Example SECTION revision history table
describe
processing
date
Original file
European Union
8-in-09
I assume
Updated to reflect software requirements
European Union
11-in-09
1,0 1,1
Sometimes a client approves a proposal and then asks you to make additional changes. If you choose to continue using the client and make these changes, you should take the opportunity to upgrade your documentation from version 1.x to version 2.0. Essentially, when the client approves the proposal and both parties agree to the terms, you can start working. Therefore, when additional revisions are requested, you should consider them very carefully. This ensures that your costs continue to be justified and that it is clear who is on both sides of the modification and at what stage the project will restart (if necessary). You must also always provide an adequate explanation of why a revision constitutes an entirely new version in the revision history.
Project Overview The Overview section is a description in your own words of the project you will be working on. This description should give your customer a clear idea of your vision for the product and explain what they can expect to find in the rest of the proposal. Here's an example of how the overview starts: [Client Company Name] wants to create a new web presence. This website provides customers of [Customer Company Name] with the ability to search for and purchase products online, as well as other services and benefits offered through the Company. The goal of an online presence is to...
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You need to be able to give a strong overview in a paragraph or two, providing very high-level details about what the client expects from you. Ideally finish the overview with a strong explanation of your proposal and proposed approach to completing the project: The proposal will detail [your company name]'s proposal and approach to designing and developing [client company's] web presence ]” on the web. Given the [deadline] deadline, it is recommended that...
Project Focus Project focus will vary depending on the type of project you are working on. This is your opportunity to determine with the client how you intend to complete the project with them. You have the opportunity to define your rules of engagement and set expectations for future work. Many people and companies use a very similar approach, but with different names or clever acronyms that match their overall branding. Once upon a time, a mythical methodology for pitching to (potential) clients was created and featured in many proposals. This process is called the PURITE Process™ (pronounced "purity"), and as I've shared with you, a wonderful being is a little dead inside, so read carefully. The name of the process is a bit extreme and the process is clearly somewhat incomplete. A post-launch analysis of this approach is omitted (overlooked), but of course all customers should be included. Without further ado, here's the PURITE approach: [YOUR COMPANY NAME] has established a standard process for successful projects with our clients. While each of these phases may not apply to [Project Name], the overall process is defined as follows: The PURITE™ process is [Your Company Name]'s internal approach to ensuring the overall success of all programs. With PURITE, [YOUR COMPANY NAME] has a proven set of guidelines and works closely with customers and users/audiences to reliably maintain and exceed delivery expectations. P - ready. We spend a portion of our time learning about your industry and competitors and how they operate so that you are as informed as possible before you start gathering requirements. you understand We work closely with your subject matter experts and/or users to define the requirements to properly build your project.
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R - Performance. Through the rendering phase, we create and develop all parts of the project/product. In our experience, each stage of development requires a lot of focused, top-down effort, but also open and timely communication with your team. It also requires to... I – Iterate. The iterative phase is repeated throughout the life cycle of the project. We move as quickly as possible to bring projects to life, which often requires building multiple iterations on fast timelines. This requires the direct and timely involvement of you and your specialist resources. The end result is a product that you define and help create. T-test. We test every project throughout the performance phase; however, we also need an extra pair of eyes, from our own testing team and your defined user/audience group, for on-target testing. This extra round of testing helps ensure that as few items as possible are completed that have been rigorously tested at multiple levels. E - activation. Once we have successfully completed the above five phases and received your opt-out approval, we will activate and deploy the solution. The PURITE™ process doesn't end there. After the project is completed, we regularly communicate with the client. We will continue to evaluate your satisfaction, understand changing goals or program improvements, and help you determine how best to develop your program in the future.
You are welcome to use as much or as little of the Content as is applicable or useful to you. The author of the myth that created the process also doesn't care if you give credit or not. The process definition can be as detailed as above or as simple as: Design, Define, Develop, Scale Plan Overall Strategy Define Detailed Project Requirements Develop, Test, Improve, and Circulate work products obtained after developing, testing, and edition
Once you've defined your process, you have the opportunity to detail the various efforts that will take place at each stage of your approach and what each of those efforts means to you and your client. Proposal highlights will vary in length depending on the project, the process, and the activities performed at each step of the process. However, try to keep it to two to three pages maximum and
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Be sure to include only deliverables that you will be able to deliver to the client to avoid further documentation updates or project re-billing.
Scope of Work The Scope of Work section is where you define the breakdown of work for the project. That is, you determine which elements of the project you are responsible for and which elements the client is responsible for. Read it again. Think about it. Let that sink in and get started. These are the ins and outs. It is the part of the proposal where you tell the customer in writing that we will do this and you will do that. Later, when the client signs your proposal, they will agree to the agreement and have a hard copy in case there is a misunderstanding. The goal here is to clearly define who will handle which aspects of the project and which aspects of the project are included in your proposal and your estimated price. That should be reason enough if you can't find another really compelling reason to write a proposal. Here is a very brief example of the scope of work: [Client Company Name] contact us to provide all services required for the construction of [Project Type]. [YOUR COMPANY NAME] will only focus on the [UX design aspect] of the [CLIENT COMPANY NAME] website. [Client Company Name] will provide detailed feedback on all aspects of [Project Type] based on the project plan. [Client Company Name] will provide the necessary elements for use in the project, including fonts, colors, branding templates, etc.
Assumptions The assumptions section of a proposal is a great place to articulate what your client needs to ensure their success without leaving room for debate. That is, these are the things you assume and communicate to the client that they can access or deliver to make the project successful.
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The assumptions you make in this section are actually expectations. Assuming it's kinder. You can have as many project plans as you want, but if neither you nor the client commit to achieving milestones and goals, then both will face certain project failure. Generally, these assumptions are expectations of resources and assets and timely (translation: quick, immediate) access to both. Here's an example of how to write a case: Let's say [Customer Company Name] needs to provide the following assets and resources. Failure to provide these assets and resources in a timely and complete manner may result in failure or delay in the delivery of this project. The following assets and resources are expected to be acquired: Immediate access to all necessary employees of [Customer Company Name]. Direct access to all required components of [project] in its current state, including source files (if available). Necessary content including but not limited to copy, images, audio, etc. For any aspect of [item].
Deliverables Deliverables are work products that you will create and deliver to the customer. This section is your opportunity to detail to the client what kind of work product they can expect from you during the project. It is recommended that you treat status reporting separately towards the end of the project, but feel free to add it to this part of the project. Provide a description of any work product you may have included, even if the work product was not produced. This might seem like overkill or potentially open the "I read [delivery type] in the sentence, but I don't see it here" can of worms, but a little word, okay, can make all the difference. Deliverables [YOUR COMPANY NAME] provides various deliverables throughout the project. For [Customer Company Name], we identified the following deliverables:
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Creative Brief The Creative Brief is the first step in a project. This document will help us create a quick and efficient high-level overview of the project. The purpose of the creative brief is to clarify the user's goals and needs and to identify any special resources and/or constraints associated with the project. ETC…
Ownership and Rights It is important to consider the extent to which you allow customers to use the work product you create. These rights can be defined in many different ways, but most of your work will fall into two categories: Works for hire Works licensed
Work-for-hire items (referred to in legal circles as "works-for-hire") are considered to be created and copyrighted by the party paying for the work, not the party responsible for performing the actual work. This means that when you work on a project for contract work, you have absolutely no rights to that project and anything you create in relation to that project is the property of the client. This situation is unmanageable for many companies and individuals: it often means that there are no "maintenance" jobs to follow (their extra income), because the client may decide to maintain the project themselves after the project is complete. . Don't be swayed by customer ordered items, it's not unusual. This is quite typical of employer-employee relations when you place the subject of employment for work in the context of full-time employment with the company. This is also an opportunity to look at their pricing models - many plans charge slightly higher prices to compensate for potential future lost revenue. Remember, it all comes down to your relationship with your customers and how you choose to do business. Time and experience will help you make the right choices for the type of work you do and the pricing model you choose. A licensed work item allows you to retain copyright in the work, but grant other parties the right to copy and/or distribute the work. You can include any number of clauses in your license agreement. more likely to generate a sentence
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When you retain ownership of all source materials for your work and provide only limited-purpose work products to your clients (such as PDF files instead of Word, Visio, Axure, OmniGraffle or other original and editable documents), YOU LICENSE YOUR WORK). You can license your work in many different ways, including licensing your work without modification, for non-commercial use, or in any other way that may be appropriate for your situation. Creative Commons (http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses) provides an easy-to-follow explanation of the different types of licenses available to you, but these represent only a small subset of the licensing landscape. If you have very detailed and specific needs, it is best to contact a copyright attorney to help you formulate the best solution.
Additional costs and charges It is important to inform your client if the price you will quote for the project takes into account external sources. For example, some projects may require the purchase of image libraries from vendors. You can purchase images (with appropriate usage rights) and include them in your price, or you can clearly identify image purchases as an additional cost that will be passed on to your clients. You can also offer services that you want customers to know about - this is a great opportunity to promote them. Here is an example of how to explain how additional costs and fees will be handled: Additional Costs and Fees If external resources (such as content, images, fonts, etc.) are required, they should be identified, approved and invoiced to [ Customer Company Name]. In addition, [your company name] is able to provide hosting services to our customers with minimal overhead. We offer hosting services, including configurable web-based email, starting at $25 per month with a $25 setup fee. If [Customer Company Name] wishes to purchase a maintenance package, [Your Company Name] will try to create a mutually acceptable and mutually beneficial package.
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Project Pricing Once you have documented the details of how you will perform the project work, it is best to communicate the cost to the client. How you arrive at a price is largely up to you, but here's a tip: estimate how long you think the project will take to complete, including a certain number of revisions, allow a reasonable amount of time for project management, this it could be 25%, then figure out the hourly rate you want to charge and calculate it. There are several types that can help you with this, such as applying difficulty to each part of the project to help you find the cost range to offer your client. In most cases, experience will be the key to help you estimate your project correctly in terms of time and material. How do you determine your billing rate? Research what others are charging by targeting contractor salary and rate surveys to compare. For example, organizations such as the Information Architecture Institute (www.iainstitute.org), AIGA (www.aiga.com), Coroflot (www.coroflot.com), and talent agency Aquent (www.aquent.com) are developing and undertake rate research. You can get an idea of what you might be charged based on your own experience, what others are charging in the market, and what you think is fair. Remember: You can reduce the interest rate at any time. Once you see the numbers on the page, it will be hard to ask your customers to pay you more! There are many different ways to structure the price of an object. Depending on the nature of your project, you may want or need to provide multiple estimates to allow for multiple pricing options. For example, let's say you offer a customer two options: a static HTML website and a content management system (CMS) website that will allow dynamic content (which the customer can manage without dedicated resources). Here's how to write a project estimate: Project Estimates [Your Company Name] has recommended multiple estimates for [Client Company Name] in order to provide the best possible options for your current and/or future needs. [Your Company Name] assumes that all content will be provided by [Customer Company Name]. If [Your Company Name] needs to provide content services, estimates will need to be redefined.
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Estimates for [YOUR COMPANY NAME] allow for cost and demand flexibility. Estimates are as follows: Estimate 1 [YOUR COMPANY NAME] ESTIMATES [PROJECT] FOR [CLIENT COMPANY NAME] NO INTERACTIVE CONTENT...
Remember, there's really no wrong way to gather project estimates, unless you're putting yourself in a negative cash flow position!
Payment Schedule There is a myth that all freelance projects are paid 50% in advance before the work begins and 50% when the project is completed. This myth must be dispelled immediately! This is not the way to do business or ensure constant and timely income while working. You don't want to put yourself in the position of having to make change after change for a customer just because you want to get the project done and get paid instead of going through the change order process. You can invoice projects in a number of ways: from invoices sent within a predetermined time period to payments based on milestones. A smarter approach is to steer your project into a recurring payment schedule with regular, itemized invoices. This approach should also give the client a clear understanding of what has been done on the project and what remains to be done. The following is an example of a payment method for placing your work: Payment Schedule [YOUR COMPANY NAME] A typical payment schedule is to receive a retainer fee of XX% of the project's estimated total price prior to launch. [YOUR COMPANY NAME] must submit invoices by the 1st and 15th of each month. Full payment is due within 14 days. Upon completion of the project, [Your Company Name] is required to deliver all work products to [Customer Company Name]. Upon satisfactory approval of the materials, [Your Company Name] will refund any remaining overpayment or [Your Company Name] will issue a final invoice for amounts not covered by the advance. NOTE: If [Project] is on hold for more than 14 days with no work in progress, [Your Company Name] will be required to submit a final invoice for any charges not included in the down payment and will be prioritized if the project opens again.
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Although not required, it can be helpful to include notes about what to do with an item if it has been put on hold for a long time. This layout can help keep your project on track and moving forward, and give you focus in your client discussions. If you're not going to be doing extra work for them for a long time, you'll want to keep looking for work to fill the gap.
Confirmation and Approval While it is important to make sure your proposal is on track, it is not enough. The proposal doesn't mean much until the right people at your client company approve and sign off. It is critical to ensure that everyone has a clear understanding of what will happen and what is expected of each party. It's also important to protect yourself from the "repetition highway" and reduce the risk of customers engaging you in "feature transitions"—constant demands for "one more thing to add." The signature is very simple and straightforward. Once you have created the proposal document, you will provide your client with a confirmation and a signature that will approve the agreement between your two companies. Always prepare two copies, one for each party, and make sure both copies are signed. Here is an example of an acknowledgment you could use: Acknowledgment [Customer Company Name] fully acknowledges and agrees to the offer. This proposal must be signed and dated by an authorized representative of [Client Company Name] to be effective. Alternatively, a signed purchase order referred to in this proposal will constitute acceptance in lieu of such signed document (but only if the terms pre-printed on such purchase order are deemed invalid). This proposal constitutes the entire agreement between the parties regarding the subject matter of this proposal. This proposal incorporates and supersedes all prior agreements, discussions, negotiations, commitments, writings or understandings, whether oral or written. This includes, without limitation, any statement contained in any literature, brochure or other descriptive or promotional written material and constitutes the complete and exclusive statement of the terms of the agreement between the parties. Each party acknowledges and agrees that, in executing this proposal, it has not relied on and expressly disclaims any reliance on any statement or representation not contained herein or in the Agreement.
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Accepted by authorized representative: [your company name]
[Customer Company Name]
pass by: ________________________________
pass by: ________________________________
Name: _____________________________
Name:_____________________________
Title: _______________________________
Title: ______________________________
date: ________________________________
date: ________________________________
Make all checks payable to: [YOUR COMPANY NAME]
Statement of Work The Statement of Work (SOW) is a high-level definition of the project's goals, and you should be able to fit it into a two- to three-page document (not including the cover page). SOWs are usually written before we go into detailed requirements, although depending on the needs of the client and the project, you may choose to create a hybrid document that best suits your needs. In general, the SOW should be used to build consensus as early as possible between your team and the customer's stakeholders. The SOW will define project inputs and outputs, as well as assumptions and constraints. At this point, it's not uncommon for clients to ask you to provide a "guess number" for the work you'll be performing for them. It might be a little dangerous to answer that question at this point. It is recommended that you try to avoid details or compromises without defining them. It's impossible to know how much a project will cost if you haven't written a proposal and/or requirements document. That said, you need to use judgment at this point. If you are working on a project, say a basic website, and you have successfully completed many similar projects in the past and/or worked with the same client in the past, then you have some leeway. Remember, it's better to play it safe than have an embarrassing situation later in the project. The job description should be approximately two to three pages long and contain at least the following:
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Front Page Revision History Project Reference Number Project Summary Start Date Completion Date Rates/Prices Explanation of Project Activities and Deliverables Detailed Cost and Payment Schedule Confirmation and Approval
Are these items known? Must: You can compose the SOW with a shortened version of the proposal. You have now learned how to gather two types of documentation that will allow you to identify the work you have done for your client. These documents should form the basis of any project work you do for any client and will provide you and your client with a set of clearly defined project roadmaps.
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Project Goals and Focus Knowing the Stars to Get You Started One of the keys to a good project is starting the team with clear goals and an easily understood focus. Ideally, the project lead will determine this for you, but if they don't, how do you know? This chapter describes how to formulate project goals and provides some questions to help you solidify those goals. We'll also discuss some common project approaches (or methodologies) and how they affect the way you work. Caroline Chandler
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You are at the beginning of the project, with the whole team for the first time. The project manager hands out some materials and gives you an overview of the project. By the end of the meeting, you should ideally have the following information:
Why is this project important to the company? How will stakeholders determine if the project is successful? What approach or methodology will the project follow? What are the key dates or milestones for key points such as acquisition
Approval by business stakeholders? All these questions relate to what the stakeholders expect from the project: what the project will achieve and how they will be involved in it. The first two questions are about the goals of the project and the last two questions are about the focus of the project. A project objective is a statement of the project's measurable goals. Let's talk about goals in more detail.
Consolidate Project Goals Goals are an important lens of focus that you will use throughout your project. They must be derived from the overall business strategy of the client company, so project objectives must be aligned with strategic initiatives within the company. For example, if there is a strategic move to attract a new potential customer base (called a market), the website or app you create can provide that market with online access to products and services related to it. .The project objectives will then focus on entering and conquering this market. A clear purpose resonates throughout the work. Helps you ask the right questions when gathering insights from business stakeholders Design user research and focus analysis on results
Based on a comprehensive list of project requirements Prioritize project requirements based on their value to the business
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Create effective interaction plans Manage design change requests once development begins Focus efforts during implementation activities such as training and communication
communicating with users before and during the launch of a new website or app) to determine whether it meets the needs of the client company, once
Project Initiation When you start a new project, you likely have project goals from the project sponsor (the business stakeholder directly responsible for the project's success) and a set of project-related requests from various business stakeholders and customers or other it can all be a bit confusing (Figure 4.1). Your goal is to articulate this into a powerful statement that you can use as a measure of project success.
Requirements related to the project
The company's strategic goals are unclear
the user needs ideas that are interesting
indefinite goal
User complaints What stakeholders think
Figure 4.1 Confused goals, ideas and needs
A fixed goal is easy to understand. Avoid using internal terms. clearly. Avoid ambiguous statements; instead, use similar wording
It will come in handy when prioritizing your requirements. counted. Make a specific statement that you can create an independent
Measure success. When you set a vague goal and make it clear and measurable, it becomes a firm goal that you can base your decisions on.
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Figure 4.2 Solidification target
Strategic goals of the company's work
You will hear many statements that could be considered objective. Analyzing confusing questions like the one below will help you solidify your goals and communicate more effectively with your project team. business advocate
Second
"Our goal is to be the market leader in industry x."
This is a company-wide goal, but too broad for a specific project. Companies need to take several initiatives to make this happen; any website or app can help, but it's unlikely to handle the full load unless the entire company commits to it and it turns out to be a huge success. business advocate
Second
"Our goal is to excite our customer base."
This is better because the website or app can affect this, but it's still very blurry. Why is it important to create excitement? How does this enthusiasm translate into meeting business needs? How do you know if you are successful? business advocate
Second
"Our goal is to increase traffic to our website."
Now we are there. This is easy to measure, but focuses too much on intermediate steps. Let's say you're driving more traffic – if people don't take the action you want once they get there, it probably won't help.
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Vague goals can give you insight into your customers' desires and broader goals. From these, you can develop stronger project goals, such as increasing online sales revenue by 10%. Increase online advertising revenue by 20%. Increase the number of existing and potential customers among our customers
Database on at least 20,000. Provide highly rated and highly referenced content to our core users.
(Note that it took some work to decide how to measure "high quality" and "high reference," but these figures are based on.)
Each of these can be measured and affected by your project. They can also be closely related to your design and the functionality you provide. For example, it is very common to offer an online newsletter as a way to achieve the goal of growing your customer database: to send a newsletter, you need to capture your customers' email addresses and add them to your database . Goals can also create new requirements. For example, if you measure success by the average rating of the articles on your site, you'll need a feature that allows users to give ratings. In this way, goals help you focus your efforts on gathering ideas for your website, which can then be turned into project requirements. If there are multiple goals, be sure to create a prioritized list with your corporate sponsor and project team. During the planning process, goals sometimes conflict and the team needs to know what to prioritize. The final list of prioritized goals should come from your project sponsor, but you can be a key part of the conversation. Let's talk about how.
How can UX designers help? You can use your facilitation skills if you find that project goals are not clear at the beginning of the project. Help the project team understand the business context of the project by organizing workshops with key stakeholders (see the next chapter for more information on how to identify the right stakeholders). During this session, which usually lasts two to four hours, your goal is to gain insight into your strengths, weaknesses, and weaknesses, and
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opportunities and threats. Known as SWOT analysis, it is a common business analysis technique and a way of analyzing a company's position in the market. You can also use this time to talk about your company's competition. Understanding Strengths and Weaknesses SWOT Analysis SWOT analysis is the company's current strengths and weaknesses in relation to the project. Strengths and weaknesses can include internal processes and external perceptions, which often influence each other. For example, a company with a large research and development (R&D) department may have access to a large number of published original research (an advantage), but may not have anyone available to help publish that content. general user. , leading to the perception that the company is "too academic" (weakness). Identifying TO opportunities and threats is the future part of SWOT. Given the factors that differentiate your company from your competitors, what steps can you take in the future to create new positions or strengthen current ones? What conditions threaten these plans? For example, the R&D company may decide to hire writers to publish more accessible featured articles (opportunities) on their original research, but if the current site's toolset lacks strong content management capabilities, the publishing process may be very slow. This can give competitors the opportunity to react (threats) more quickly. Competitors Comparison Who are the company's main competitors? Who are the competitors of the website being developed? It may be different, especially for larger companies or new websites. Are there sites that are not direct competitors but represent interesting models that are worth considering? You can learn a lot by looking at other e-commerce sites to see if and how they sell what you sell. Bring It Together SWOT and competitor discussions are good topics to discuss at the same time because they influence each other. hard to talk
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Face future threats without knowing who your competitors are, while new competitors may come to mind as soon as you start talking about future opportunities. Once you have a good understanding of your company's competitors and SWOT, your project goals and the overall alignment of your project to your company's strategy should be easier to define and the priorities between them should be clear. Consolidating project goals helps you understand what the project is going to accomplish. Next, let's talk about project performance expectations. Knowing project methodology will help you collaborate effectively and get the right people at the right time.
Knowing the Project Approach Knowing the overall project approach or approach is an important part of understanding when and how you engage and how you should involve others, such as the project team and business stakeholders. Sometimes it seems that there are as many project methods as there are projects. How to choose the right approach for a project is a broad topic in itself. The approach you choose can depend on many factors, including the structure and location of the project team, the technology used in the project, and the extent to which collaboration is part of the company culture. For the purposes of this book, we assume that you are involved in a project where the focus is primarily determined by those responsible for the success of the project, such as the sponsor and the project manager. In this case, your main goal will be to understand the approach and help it work for your business stakeholders and users. Here we'll focus on the two most common approaches and a third that shows possible variations you might encounter in your project. The important thing to keep in mind is that most approaches involve the same steps: planning the overall strategy, approach and structure of the team. Define project requirements. Design and translate interaction and visual concepts into details
Determination. Develop, test and improve solutions.
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Implement solutions through messaging, training and scheduled releases. Escalate the project with suggestions for improvement.
The names of these steps may vary, as will the extent to which they overlap and how the information is documented. But the general activities at each step are common to most projects and the three models presented here.
Waterfall Method The waterfall method involves viewing the steps of a project as separate and independent phases, with approval for one phase required before the next phase can begin. For example, the planning phase does not really begin until the requirements are approved by the business stakeholders, who sign one or more requirements documents at the end of the definition phase. You agree with
plan
You agree with
You agree with
Define, design, develop, implement, expand
Figure 4.3 Example of a cascading approach where each stage "falls" into the next stage
The problem with the pure waterfall approach is that it assumes that each stage can be completed with minimal changes to the previous stage. Therefore, if you have new requirements during the design phase (which is quite common), you will have to propose changes to the documents approved at the end of the definition phase, which can disrupt plans and schedules.
Agile Methods Because change is continuous, project teams are constantly looking for ways to be more agile than the waterfall model. Many methods take a more fluid approach, with some steps happening side by side; for example, agile or rapid development methods could be used to release a version of a website in a quick, iterative way. Agile methods usually focus more on rapid collaboration and less on detailed documentation and formal approvals. Learn about the project approach
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Repeat 1
develop
Repeat 2
develop
Repeat 3
develop
Implementation Planning Implementation Planning Planning Implementation Definition
definition
defines approval
plan
Expand the startup extension
Figure 4.4 Example of flexible method
A true agile approach (for example, following the best practices developed by members of the Agile Alliance) requires small teams whose members are physically adjacent to each other and pay little attention to defining formal roles among team members. Working in this way allows for a high degree of collaboration, reducing the need for extensive documentation between the design, development and testing phases. Team members can ask questions, edit answers with other team members during quick whiteboard sessions, and implement solutions without delaying detailed documentation and approvals. When one of several iterations is released, stakeholders review a complete working system and consider the resulting data when planning the next iteration. (A iteration is a preview version of a particular website or application.) It's beautiful when agile methods work as designed. However, in most companies and most consultancies, teams rarely take a purely agile approach. This is in part because companies are increasingly using distributed teams and remote workers, making it difficult to maintain the high levels of collaboration needed to take full advantage of pure agile methods.
Modified approach Most projects try to have the best of both worlds, using enough structure and documentation to reduce the risks of distributed teams and team member turnover, but enough collaboration and iteration to accommodate relatively agile ways of changing . For example, a project may follow the waterfall model but include overlapping phases, so there are critical points where one team collaborates with another. this allows
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Possible surface changes earlier in each phase. This may also include early releases with shorter iteration cycles (such as beta releases for specific user groups). Feedback from this release may be incorporated before the new website is fully implemented. plan
definition
Development and Planning
plan
definition
Development Development Beta
Expand the startup extension
Figure 4.5 The modified beta cascade diagram
Note the smaller iterations in the design phase in Figure 4.5. This is one of the biggest values you bring to the team as a UX designer. Tools like wireframing (Chapter 11) and prototyping (Chapter 12) allow you to gather feedback on iterative ideas quickly before spending significant development time. A modified waterfall approach, shown in Figure 4.5, is one of the most commonly used and thus forms the framework of this book. However, many of the topics covered here will apply to your project regardless of the details of your approach, as the fundamental activities behind them, such as definition and design, will still be necessary.
Digging Deeper If your project uses agile methods, you will have unique requirements when gathering requirements, such as writing "user stories" as a way to capture requirements. We recommend Applied User Stories: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn (Addison-Wesley Professional, 2004).
Learn about the project approach
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How does mindfulness affect me? Knowing your approach can help you understand many things: what questions to ask and when to ask them. For example, if you are
When using a pure waterfall approach, you will need to put more effort into ensuring that the requirements captured in the definition phase contain all the information needed in the design phase. (We discuss these requirements in the next chapter.) Expectations of what and how project team members will work together
The closeness of cooperation. For example, agile methods require very close collaboration. A waterfall approach can involve individual work most of the time, with touchpoints once or several times a week. the level of detail required in your documentation and
formulations. The documents presented at the point of approval should be formal, almost like a legal contract. Typically, you'll need more formal documentation with a waterfall approach, requiring approval before proceeding to the next stage. However, when you use agile methods, you may also have some formal approval documents, for example, that capture information at important decision points, such as when preparing a particular iteration for full release and deployment. Important milestones related to stakeholder approval
developed in different groups. The approach will identify what different audiences need to contribute at different points in the project, including stakeholder approval at closeout and potential user feedback during beta release. Now that you have identified the project goals and understood the project methodology, in the next chapter we will begin the main task of the Define phase: requirements gathering.
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Business Needs Understand the problem before you create a solution By the time the project team meets, they've probably heard or come up with a lot of ideas about what to do. There may already be a list of features provided by some key company members (your business stakeholders), along with their thoughts on which features are most important. These are elements of the business requirements of the project and are a good place to start. To ensure you have a complete solution at the end of the project, you need to create and clarify requirements from multiple perspectives. In this chapter, we will focus on gathering and detailing the needs of your business stakeholders. Caroline Chandler
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do
Chapter 4 introduces confusing objectives and discusses some ways to help yourself and your project team resolve them. In the early stages of a project, you may also have a relatively chaotic set of requests. These can be stakeholder ideas, user complaints or user requests. To make these useful and traceable elements in your project, you need to incorporate these ideas into the requirements. Requirements are statements that define what a website or application should do. Ideally, business requirements provide insight into the overall requirements to be addressed, represent and integrate requirements provided by different stakeholders, and provide design direction without being too specific
Implementation Serves as a separate unit of work for prioritization and tracking purposes
Here's an example idea for a feature on an e-commerce site. At the beginning of the definition phase, you may have the same thought from many different business operators: "Customers can track their orders online." This is a good basis for the requirements, but it is confusing. Start asking questions about the specifics of the requirement, such as why it is important to the business that customers can track their
online ordering? For example, is it necessary to reduce the number of calls to customer service? Does the company have the ability to track packages online?
If not, new requirements for the monitoring function will need to be documented or the company may need to work with a third party. How accurate should tracking be? what kind of information
Should it be included in the tracking details? For example, should the website provide up-to-date delivery time estimates? Asking these kinds of questions will help you merge confusing thoughts into strong needs. It will also make it clear that the same statement can mean different things to different people.
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For example, an interested party may have the idea that tracking a package involves receiving a confirmation email with a tracking number that can be entered on UPS.com or another website so that the interested customer can see the number monitoring. Arrived. Ideas Another stakeholder may believe that the company should track packages further and invest in developing the ability of customers to track packages via GPS, using an online map to see the exact location in real time. As you can imagine, there is a significant difference in user experience and approach here! It is important to outline these differences early in the project. Otherwise, you end up developing a solution that bypasses the intent of the business stakeholders and possibly the project goals. This leads to unhappy shareholders and wastes time and money if functionality needs to be redesigned. Therefore, clear and detailed requirements are a key part of your overall project. Creating a comprehensive list of project requirements involves the following steps: 1. Know the current state of the site or its competitors. 2. Gather the needs and ideas of business stakeholders, as well as current and potential users. (See Chapter 6 for details on working with users.) 3. Consolidate ideas into requirements. 4. Prioritize requirements based on project goals. (See Chapter 9 for tips on prioritization.)
Business and user project requirements require corporate strategy
Figure 5.1 merges information from business stakeholders into business requirements and information from user research into user requirements. Then use the project objectives to establish priorities and create a comprehensive list of project requirements.
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First, let's talk about understanding the current state of your site so you can understand the context of the ideas generated during the requirements gathering process.
Knowing the current state When looking at the specifications of the website or app you're designing, it's important to know the current state of the site (if you're redesigning an existing site) or better understand key competitors. (if you are designing a new website or app). You can learn a lot about the current situation through stakeholder interviews (more on that in a few pages). You can also gain a lot of knowledge yourself, which can serve as a solid foundation for stakeholder interviews and user research work. A good way to get background information and generate ideas that might become requirements is to perform a heuristic analysis.
By any other name... the word heuristic means rule of thumb or best practice. Heuristic analysis already means reviewing a product against a set of rules (heuristics) for available designs, typically performed by UX designers. A user-friendly website will follow most or all of the heuristics you use in your analysis. You may also have heard of this technique called heuristic evaluation, expert review, or a combination of these terms.
Heuristic Analysis Heuristic analysis is a technique that can be used to evaluate the usability of an existing design against best practices in the field of user experience. You can perform this type of analysis on your current website when starting a redesign project, or analyze competitor websites for opportunities to provide a better user experience than other companies. The result is a document that describes the strengths and weaknesses of the site, including suggestions for improvement. Once it's done, you'll have one
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An understanding of the site being analyzed and a list of ideas to help meet new site requirements. For example, a common heuristic from Jakob Nielsen's list of ten heuristics looks like this (see the full list on Jakob Nielsen's website at www.useit.com/papers/heuristic/heuristic_list.html):
Visibility of system status. The system should always inform the user of what is happening through appropriate feedback within a reasonable time.
There are many instances on the site where this heuristic cannot be followed. For example, suppose a user clicks a "Download" button but does not receive a message that their file is being downloaded. Although the download has already started, the system does not notify the user that the file is being downloaded. So the user might click the button again, thinking they missed it the first time...and then click again...this could lead to multiple downloads, which could cause site performance issues and users. Now there are many downloads without knowing it. During a heuristic analysis, you can flag it as a problem area, describe it, and evaluate its impact. You can also share ideas that can solve problems, which can be added to the wishlist. Why do heuristic analysis? Performing this type of analysis is a relatively quick and inexpensive way to gain design feedback. Heuristic analysis can provide a general understanding of design quality and help identify potential design issues. Please note that this activity is not directly related to end users and should not replace actual user research. For example, perhaps only 50% of heuristic findings can be verified by further research. However, the analysis allowed the team to address potential areas of concern well. If you're redesigning an existing product or website, it can also be used to identify obvious quick fixes that can be improved immediately while the redesign work continues in the background.
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What should I do? The specific heuristics you use may vary from project to project, but the process for performing the analysis generally remains the same: 1. Gather basic knowledge about the product and the project. Make sure you understand your site's goals, a list of the main user groups that need support, information about the types of environments your users might be working in, and a basic understanding of any expertise your users might have. I have. (For example, your analysis will be different for a website built for general consumers versus a website built for pharmacists.) If you need help with the latter, visiting various competing websites or apps can help. understand commonly used terminology and areas of interest. 2. Select the heuristic to use. There are many heuristics available. In addition to Jakob Nielsen's list, many UX designers refer to Bruce Tognazzini's list of design principles: www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html. Once you're familiar with your site's themes, you may want to add a few of your own, especially if you're looking at multiple sites. Make sure you keep your list to a manageable size (eg 8-12); too many heuristics can make the technique difficult for you and your readers. 3. Walk through priority areas of the site, identifying areas where heuristic tracking is good or lacking. Each observation you make must include the following information: General observations. A brief statement summarizing the findings. Ideally these will be numbered so you can quickly refer to them when traveling with people in the report. A brief description. A paragraph or two describing the context of the observation, for example, the point in a particular process where you noticed a problem. Impact assessment. For problematic comments, this score can be high, medium, or low, or it can be a record of positive discovery if you're sharing something the site does well. Typically, a high-impact issue is one that you think will prevent many users from completing a particular task or
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Permanent loss of information (for example, a problem that causes users to lose changes to a document they are working on). Medium impact problems are those that cause frustration and errors, but not irreversible problems. Low-impact issues are small issues that may cause some confusion, but usually don't lead to wasted time or frustration. Suggestions These are next steps or ideas you share as possible solutions to problems you discover. Figure 5.2 shows an example of these elements together as they might appear in your heuristic analysis. Note #4 The search function does not seem to return all possible results.
very expected
A sample test of the search function returned mixed results. Searches using names in relatively new journals with less covered topics occasionally returned no results. The main search also seems to only return links to new stories, not videos. Recommendation 1. Make sure newly added content is indexed and searchable before or shortly after it's published. 2. Consider displaying related content when displaying search results, such as stories in similar categories or similar tags, so that browsing users have more clues to follow. 3. Consider a universal search that displays results organized by category. 4. Use the search term log to understand the most frequently searched items. This can also provide information about items that are difficult for users to find.
Figure 5.2 Sample Observations in the Heuristic Analysis Report
4. Present your findings to the project team and key stakeholders. Guide them through your observations and suggestions. Discuss why you graded what you did. (This is also a good time for ready tips on how to validate your findings using one of the techniques discussed in Chapter 6.) How can heuristic analysis help with requirements gathering? Once you've completed your heuristic analysis, you'll have a deeper understanding of the current state of the site (or its competitors) and a list of ideas to help you gather requirements. You'll also have some ideas on how to structure the topics to cover during the requirements gathering session, which leads us to the next step in the process.
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Gather information from stakeholders As we saw in the example at the beginning of this chapter, if you don't understand the context of an idea like "customers can track their orders online," you run the risk of losing expectations among stakeholders. difference. Interested parties, such as our friends who wish to track packages via GPS. One of the most common project mistakes is to take a feature and call it a requirement without first understanding the problem and expectations for the solution. So why is the claims collection process often cut short? Gathering ideas and merging them into requirements can take a long time. It's easy to underestimate the number of questions you need to ask to describe the requirements in order to prioritize them. If processes are poorly structured or participation is lacking, there can be significant turnover that can affect the entire project. (Rotations are time wasted in extra meetings and work iterations due to lack of communication and participation. These are different from more productive work iterations, which are part of designing and testing effective solutions in an effort to find the best solution.). So how do you cultivate a well-balanced requirements process that focuses on business needs while avoiding excessive time-wasting? Here are some steps for an effective process: 1. Summarize roles and responsibilities. Ensure project team members understand their roles in requirements gathering. 2. Bring the right stakeholders into the right groups to ensure the best use of time during needs-focused meetings or interviews. 3. Create a meeting plan, which includes topics to be discussed and questions to be asked during the meeting. 4. Conduct meetings effectively to brainstorm ideas and get clarification. Research ideas to dig deeper into the needs behind each idea. When your meeting is over, don't forget to thank the stakeholders and update them on progress after going through the list of consolidated priorities. Let's consider each step in more detail.
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Summary of Responsibilities The act of gathering business requirements typically involves project team members interviewing key business stakeholders to gather ideas. Business stakeholders are those within the company who have a business stake in the project's success, or who have contributing subject matter expertise, or both. These people are not involved in the project full time, but they need to be involved in key points of the process and requirements gathering is one of them. Remember, they also have per diems (so to speak), so your time is precious and often hard to come by unless you plan ahead. Project sponsors are business entities that also have direct responsibility for the success of the project and are usually at a relatively high level in the company, such as a supervisor. He or she will not be involved with the project on a day-to-day basis throughout the project's life cycle, but may be actively involved in gathering requirements and ensuring high engagement of business stakeholders. The sponsor may also participate in part or all of the meeting. The project team includes people who are formally assigned to the project as ongoing resources. They can be involved as project managers, UX designers, business analysts, technical leads, visual designers, quality assurance managers and more. Depending on the size of your project, this could be your main job. Within the project team, responsibilities for the requirements gathering process are often unclear. Taking the time to define responsibilities early on will help ensure an efficient flow of meetings. As you determine the specific responsibilities each team member will have during requirements gathering, you need to ask a few questions: Who is primarily responsible for gathering and planning the right business?
Are stakeholders among the most productive groups? This can include internal and external stakeholders (eg partners, suppliers, etc.). Who creates topics and question structures for business stakeholders?
Encounter titled? Time permitting, this is a great team collaboration exercise. The lead facilitator can organize them into a structure that flows smoothly into the meeting. Who chairs the meeting? Who takes notes and how are they shared?
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Who is following whom? Will someone from the technical team be present at all meetings?
If so, how was that person involved (listening, giving information, or something else)? Whether or not you are primarily responsible for one or more of these areas as a UX designer, you have important skills to bring to the process. Creating structure for topics and questions requires an ability to clearly categorize (which sounds like a good match with information architecture) and of course facilitation skills are important to keep the meeting on topic with the participation of all participants.
Gather the right stakeholders The main purpose of stakeholder interviews is to understand the ideas, needs, knowledge and frustrations related to the project from different perspectives and then feed them into the project requirements. There is also sometimes an unknown benefit of involving many different groups so that each group feels they have a say in the project and therefore accept the final solution. While engaging people to gain their support may seem more political than practical, it is often a critical step in connecting you with a network that will support you throughout your project. It also helps you avoid last-minute changes, which can happen when someone you haven't spoken to asks a question late in the process. So it's usually a good idea to get a variety of people involved. On the other hand, schedules and budgets must be considered. From their perspective and yours, having multiple people in just for one meeting takes time, not to mention time to organize notes to spot trends and consolidate layoffs. For the sake of efficiency and your own sanity, it makes sense to prioritize the groups you want to talk to and select key people from those groups to act as thought leaders for your group. Who are the potential stakeholders you might involve? These groups are often great sources of ideas:
Marketing activities that require the display of information on the website)
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Teams that need to directly support the processes behind the website or
Applications, such as content delivery, data entry and management, and timely response to collected information Front-line customer service, such as telephone or online support or
Anyone who works with customers face-to-face (for example, in a retail store or via delivery) sales, product management or consulting to represent a company
Products and services offered Human resources, to achieve recruitment goals Public relations, to provide information to investors and the media Each team responsible for other relationships that need to be developed
This will affect its planning as part of the project, for example in relation to partners or suppliers. People. Create groups where good discussions can take place. There is no right way to do this, but a common way is to group stakeholders by department as follows: Marketing (five people) Product Management (four people) Customer Service (two people) Sales (four people)
A smaller project might involve one person from each group, with everyone coming together over a series of two or more collaborative sessions. After considering your stakeholders and the general structure of the meeting (discussed in the next section), you can begin planning the meeting. Try to start planning at least a few weeks in advance; it's hard to get everyone in the room.
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Make a plan for the meeting While you're working on selecting the right stakeholders, develop a list of topics to cover and questions to ask (this will also help you refine your stakeholder list). You should have a different plan for each group you meet with, although many of your questions may be the same between groups. You also need to specify the level of detail you want in your meeting. If you're only meeting with a lot of people once (eg, members of multiple departments, as above), you'll want to gather ideas, but you probably don't want to spend a lot of time going over the nitty-gritty details during the meeting. In this case, if one of your stakeholders comes up with the idea that "customers can track their orders online," you might just want to ask why this feature is important and if the stakeholder can think of a way to make it properly operating site. These questions will help identify large discrepancies between stakeholder expectations for features without spending an entire meeting on one statement. You can then work through the specifics of your idea with the project team and go back to your stakeholders to ensure that the requirements you create still represent your original ideas. Let's say you're redesigning an e-commerce site and you're meeting with various stakeholders, with each group holding a meeting. Below is an example of scheduling a meeting with a group of people in the sales department.
Sales: Requirements Participants Focus Session Inside Sales: Jenny Bee, Tracy Kim, Joseph Arnold Lead Management: Kevin Abernathy, Cat Parnell Duration: 2 hours Objectives: Understand your current sales process and identify issues with how the web can support better this process and opportunity Context: We reviewed a PowerPoint presentation about the buying process that provides good context for how buying decisions are made. We also plan to talk to the customer service team.
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Sales - Requirements Gathering Meeting (cont.) Question Sales Process: How does the sales process differ for different product lines? Are there regional differences? Are there differences based on customer size (for example, small versus large companies)? How has this process evolved over the past two years and how is it expected to evolve over the next three to five years? How does a potential customer perceive everything there is to buy and how it all works together?
Overall Impression: Who do you think are the primary visitors to your current website? because? like them? What are they trying to achieve on the site? How is the web impacting today's sales process and/or sales closing rates? What information do customers need to make a purchase decision? Is this information available on the website today? Is it easy to find? is accurate How difficult is it to maintain content on a website today? What metrics are you getting from your website? What other metrics do you find valuable? because?
Envisioning the future: What can we do to better support the sales process when considering future sites? What functions and features of the current website are critical to sales? no need; What is missing?
Summary: Any other thoughts, suggestions, or concerns we haven't addressed? Which sites do you think do a good job of supporting sales? The number one thing a company can do to improve customer satisfaction?
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Lead meetings effectively Here are some practices that can help you conduct requirements gathering meetings. Make sure you use a common glossary. Much confusion can be avoided if qualifying teams agree on a common list of terms and definitions. For example, will the people who use the system be called users, clients or customers? Are people more familiar with the term interaction designer or information architect? To avoid confusion, take some time at the beginning of each meeting to explain which terms are used and what they mean. You can also benefit from creating some visuals that help explain the relationship between different terms or functions (see Figure 5.3). category
category
category
Subcategory
Subcategory
Subcategory
he
he
he
article
article
article
Figure 5.3 Diagram showing Element Terms and Relationships
A common vocabulary of deliverables to be used in the project will also help stakeholders understand the process and the type of output they expect to see. This can give you confidence that your time and energy won't go down a black hole of ideas. In general, if you define the same words multiple times (especially if the definition changes slightly each time), consider including them in the project glossary and sharing them with the project team. Other examples of terms that are best clarified at the beginning of a project include;
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Roles that will interact (e.g. job applicant with client or competitor)
Scene builders and publishers) will be broadly referred to as the main deliverable (functional spec
visualization, wireframe, sitemap) and briefly explain the difference between them The difference between different levels of information (like our category
information in figure 5.3) the difference between needs and ideas
Hear ideas and drill down to requirements Stakeholders can make claims that look like requirements. Consider an example. business advocate
"We need a blog on the site."
Second
It's really an idea, not a necessity. If the blogging function is fully designed and implemented, it becomes a solution, but it is not necessarily the solution that best meets the primary needs of the parties requesting it. Asking why blogs are important can elicit broad need statements such as "We need to look relevant and connected. Everyone is talking about blogs and I think if we don't include them, we'll be left behind." I need a way to get people to visit the site to generate more advertising revenue, and a blog means that newly published content has a following. "We need to have a better way to communicate and innovate with our customers, and bloggers can give us feedback to hear your ideas." Each of these statements describes a valid need. By exposing them, you'll understand the drivers behind specific feature requests, helping you build consensus when integrating and prioritizing requirements.
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After the Converging Requirements meeting, group the ideas you gathered into general functional areas. You will start to notice a lot of overlap; this is a good sign that an idea is widely accepted by stakeholders. Eliminate redundancy and try to incorporate a set of ideas that effectively capture the intent of the stakeholders. To turn the ideas you collect into useful, traceable project elements, you need to translate those ideas into requirements. Think of raindrops forming from a cloud: you move from a large, undefined cloud to a larger number of well-defined raindrops. So when you get a cloud of ideas like "customers can track their orders online," you have to translate that into different statements that define what the system should do. The final requirements should provide an idea of the general requirements to be addressed Represent and integrate the requirements provided by the different stakeholders Provide direction for the design without being too specific about what it would look like
Implemented as a separate unit of work for prioritization and tracking purposes
As you begin to move from ideas to requirements, make sure your CTO (or someone else who can represent your project development team) is there to ask questions that will help you gauge what's needed as you further prioritize to the workload. forward. If you have a dedicated QA team member, that person can also provide some detailed questions to help gather the requirements. To break down the concept of tracking requirements, ask questions like How accurate should tracking be? What kind of information should be included in the tracking details; for
For example, should we provide an updated estimated delivery time? These kinds of questions can be asked and discussed in detail with the stakeholders who gave you the initial idea if they have a lot of time to devote to the project. If you don't have much access to these stakeholders, you can work out the details yourself through discussions with the project team.
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Then review the requirements with your project sponsor to make sure your options make sense for the business. Table 5.1 lists the types of requirements that can arise from idea tracking and how you can capture them. Table 5.1
Examples of business requirements
ID card
area
1
order tracking
2
3
order tracking
order tracking
Demand
Business needs
Orders can be placed through
Encourage self-care
enter the tracking code
On delivery (support
In connection
avail)
Users can track their packages -
Demonstrating efficiency and innovation
GPS age determination, truck tracking
effective delivery (competitive
or airplane
avail)
Users can view all previous orders Duplicate orders and orders within the last 365 days are encouraged
Self Service (Sales, Support Benefits)
Note that in some cases the requirements overlap, such as the first two requirements in the table: both are detection methods. They can coexist in the same system as you can enter a code to find your package through the GPS view. However, they are separate because GPS-related requirements may require more effort and should be prioritized independently of other functions. When merging reports, consider any business requirements that you believe may conflict with user needs. For example, a business requirement may be to collect personal information from potential customers, such as their email addresses. But customers may have reservations about providing information. After all, filling out forms takes time, security and privacy are an issue, and this step could interrupt the larger work they're trying to accomplish. When you identify such conflicts, they will begin to give you insights that may help you meet business and user needs. For the tracking example, you can suggest a "send to a friend" feature that captures email addresses for the user's convenience. This means that sending a friend can become a requirement to be included in your priority mix. thoughts like this
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One can help meet business and user needs, so it's ideal for capturing them. They also exist in the area of overlap between the definition and design phases (see Chapter 4), as you begin to think about design solutions to business problems.
Determining potential conflicts between the design development business and user needs is an excellent thing to explore during user research, which we discuss in the next chapter. User research also allows you to expand Table 5.1 to a full set of possible requirements, prioritized into a list of project requirements (shown in Figure 5.1 and discussed further in Chapter 9). Remember that gathering business requirements usually happens at the same time as exploring technical possibilities and gathering user requirements. Next post: Time to talk about users!
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6
User Research Know Who You're Inviting to the Party There are many user research techniques that can be used throughout the project lifecycle to better understand your users or test their behavior in different versions of a party. This chapter will focus on some of the more common methods used in the early stages of a project. These techniques will help you determine which user groups should be given the highest priority during the project, put their needs and frustrations into context, and evaluate the performance of your current site (if any) using optimal practices from the field of experience design. users. .Carolyn Chandler
Basic steps in user research 1. Define your main user groups. This includes creating a framework to describe the main types of users you are designing for, allowing you to focus on recruiting users for research. 2. User Participation Plan. This includes choosing one or more technologies to engage user groups in the research, depending on the needs of the project. 3. Conducting research. Here we'll cover basic techniques such as interviews and surveys and give tips on how to approach them. 4. Verify your user group definitions. Using what you learn from your research, you can solidify your user group model. This model then serves as a platform for developing more detailed tools such as roles (discussed in Chapter 7). 5. Create user requirements. These are statements of features and functionality that the website may contain. You will add these statements to your business requirements (discussed in Chapter 5) and prioritize them to become project requirements (discussed in Chapter 9). This chapter will cover the first three steps, starting with step one: defining your user groups.
Defining Your User Group User research at the beginning of a project can seem like a chicken and egg (chicken or egg?) dilemma. How can you make sure you're talking to the right people if you don't already know who those people are supposed to be? One way to start is to create an initial or tentative definition of the users you will be designing for. This describes the main groups of users on your site, which can help you focus your research efforts on the right personas, demographics, or other variables that may affect how users experience your site. User group definitions can be advanced (specify a list of each target user group) or detailed and intuitive (diagrams showing different types of users and how they interact with each other). .
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A high-level definition of a company's main .com site might include the following user groups: potential buyers, current buyers, partners, and job seekers. As you begin to define groups for user research, you will begin to prioritize user groups in more detail. Their initial definition is based on the collective knowledge of business stakeholders and project team members about the types of potential users likely to interact with the site. These definitions can be created by collecting some of the goals and characteristics that different groups of users may have. Here are the basic steps to define a group of users: 1. Create a list of properties to help you define the different users of your site (some of the more common users are covered in the next section). 2. Discuss the features with someone in your company who has been exposed to the relevant user type (eg customer). 3. Prioritize those features that appear to have the greatest impact on why and how potential users use your website or app. 4. Determine the user groups to focus your research and design on. The following sections take a close look at some brainstorming techniques to help you gather these features and how to prioritize and model them (creating representations of different types of users to help you focus your research efforts).
Create a property list A good start for a property list is to gather and incorporate any research or other documentation your organization has that can provide guidance about users. Here are some possible sources: Documents that explain the company's strategy, such as corporate goals,
Competitive information, marketing strategies and business plans Current customer market segments and other demographic data
Collection from the Marketing Department Past User Research (see Table 6.1 for some examples)
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Surveys, such as user satisfaction surveys and feedback forms. Customer service reports covering frequently asked questions.
Next, identify people in your organization who have some knowledge about current or potential users. The number and types of people you should include depend on the type of project, its scope and schedule. If you know that your initial user group definition may have a short life (for example, it is only used for a month or two when planning the user survey), you can only include two or three participants. If you feel that the initial definition may need to support you through most of the design process (for example, if you only have this definition to work with until you do usability testing after the design is complete), include more participants and make sure that You have a cross-sectional view. Some potential participants include marketing professionals responsible for brand representation, departments and campaigns, salespeople, product managers, customer service or support representatives, and trainers. It is also good to include project team leaders and other business stakeholders in this exercise. Ask the team to think about the different types of potential users they tend to interact with. Then ask them to list some of the common features they found. Here are some examples that may vary: Primary goals as they relate to your site's theme. because it is
What do users want to achieve when they come here? For example, buying items, exchanging shares, or getting answers to specific questions are all common goals. document. This can be defined in a number of ways, but one way is to associate roles with
The user's main target: job seekers, support seekers, potential customers, etc. Once you have more information about your users, you can segment personas by different needs or styles. For example, on an e-commerce site, buyers may include bargain hunters and insiders. Demographics, including age, gender, family (single, married, children);
Income level and area. Experience, including training, work familiarity
Technology (often referred to as technical knowledge), level of subject matter expertise, and frequency of use (once, occasional, frequent). 88
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Organizational characteristics, including the size of the business user's work
For your department, job type (in-level, freelance, middle management, executive), tenure (long-term or high turnover?), and work pattern (remote work, number of business trips). Once you have a list of some of the attributes that come up most often when stakeholders describe potential users, you can begin to rank them according to their level of importance, and then use that ranking to start defining and modeling user groups.
Prioritize and define which of the features listed above do you think have the greatest impact on how and why different groups of users use your website? Focus on the ones you think will have the biggest impact on user goals or behavior. Prioritize these features and keep in mind the goals you created in Chapter 4; they will also help guide your choices. An example best illustrates how attributes are prioritized. Let's say you work with a company that provides online stock, options, and futures trading tools. The firm has determined that part of its strategy will be to attract hobbyists who trade stocks on their own on the Internet and encourage them to try trading new types of products, such as options and futures. The company plans to do this by offering easy-to-use business tools aimed at those looking for hands-on learning in a safe environment. When discussing the features with business stakeholders, the following factors seem to have the most influence on how these tools are used: Current frequency of transactions, especially directly online.
(for example, quarterly, daily, several times a day). Those who are just trading (eg once a month) may not seriously try new things, and those who are already trading full time may not find much value in tools aimed at new traders. But these active part-time traders are likely to be extremely interested in the company's tools. Number of product types traded: only stocks or shares, options and
futures contracts. Those who already sell all types may prefer their tools, but those who sell only one type may be ready to expand to others. Define your user group
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Level of subject matter expertise (for example, trade familiarity
terms). This will help you determine how much help they need with the process, including tutorials and glossaries. Level of technical knowledge (for example, familiarity with markets
online and electronic banking and commerce). This will affect their security needs for data privacy and how advanced or simple the web interface needs to be. You can prioritize these characteristics because they affect the types of users you will target for your research. If where traders live does not appear to have a real impact on how or why they trade, the regional characteristic can be removed from the list for consideration by study participants. On the other hand, if the importance of a particular feature is causing a lot of discussion, it might be a good topic for a survey or interview question (surveys are covered in more detail later in this chapter).
contralto
Comparing two or more properties can also help you prioritize. For example, if you create a graph using two characteristics of an online business, you can begin to see how these groups fall into specific ranges. Figure 6.1 is an example of a rough user model that you can create using the two attributes Direct Transaction Frequency and Number of Product Types Traded; it also shows the end user groups that can be formed through discussion.
Full time product specialist
Full-time General Specialist
Frequency of direct transaction
"Second Career" Entrepreneur
Supplemental Income Marketer
active explorer
long term investor
low
lovers
low
contralto
The number of types of trading products (equities, options, futures)
After the 90s
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Figure 6.1 A diagram of two features representing a rough user model. Collaboratively building this model can facilitate discussions about potential differences in user experience and motivation.
This user model provides a high-level way to talk about different types of users. It is not intended to be the definitive model, nor does it point to specific groups of users (who may be long-term investors in stocks or actively exploring other possibilities in options or futures). But it does begin to express your understanding of different groups of users and how they might be motivated to use your site. A discussion of important features can also help you determine which features to focus on when recruiting users for research. If you determine that trading frequency is important and your main priority is to attract those who currently have moderate frequency, you should define what you mean by moderate frequency (e.g. one to three times per week) and recruit study participants accordingly. Speaking of research, let's talk about techniques you can use to attract users to your projects.
Can you design based on user models only? There's a debate in the UX world about creating user mockups before research is done, because doing so can influence their thinking before you have real user data, and because your project team or project sponsor can see the mockups as alternatives for user research. an unvalidated model introduces a greater risk that your assumptions are wrong. However, in projects where you won't be in contact with any users, a well-thought-out model (validated by sources outside the project team, such as customer service or training teams) is better than no model. .During the planning process.
Choosing Research Techniques Now that you have a general idea of the user groups to include, it's time to plan the next step: your recommendations for the amount and type of user research activities to be conducted during the project. . Table 6.1 provides some information about the most commonly used survey techniques and when they are most useful. Use this chart as a reference to help you choose the best chart for your project. The following sections describe each technique in more detail.
Selection of technical research
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Box 6.1
Common user research techniques
Activity
What is this
when it is useful
sincere
Typical time frame *
user interview
Have a one-on-one chat with a participant who belongs to one of the site's main user groups.
User access is available, but the type of access (in person, by phone, etc.) varies.
Get direct feedback. Gathering information about attitudes and context can be difficult, especially if the interview is conducted remotely.
2-4 weeks for 12 interviews: maximum planning 1 week, interviews 1-2 weeks, collection of results up to 1 week.
framework study
Field visits with participants to observe and understand how they operate in normal everyday settings.
The Gaining Access project team knew very little about the participants. to target users. The impact on the user's environment may raise smart security concerns (eg hospitals). Properties and invasive users work. For companies with fairly complex applications, tasks or workflows. It might be easier to visit daily.
3-4 weeks for 12 meetings: 1 week for planning, 1-2 weeks for observation, 1 week for analysis and reporting of results.
research
A series of questions consisting mainly of closed-ended (multiple-choice) answers, used to identify patterns in large groups of people.
You want to express your results in more quantitative terms (eg "80% of your target user base says they never buy a car online").
Short-term surveys of 3-4 weeks: 1 week to plan and write the survey, 1-2 weeks to conduct the survey and 1 week to analyze and report the results.
You want to get the context, but you can't get to the user.
You are more interested in gathering information about preferences than actual performance.
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Obtain appropriate samples. Make sure the questions are well worded so you get accurate answers without leading the respondent to a specific answer.
Box 6.1
Common User Research Techniques (continued)
Activity
What is this
when it is useful
sincere
Typical time frame *
special team
A type of group discussion in which the moderator guides the participants in solving questions about a specific topic. It focuses on discovering the participants' feelings, attitudes and thoughts about the topic.
The team believes that user behaviors will strongly influence how they use a solution (eg whether there has been a problem historically).
Learn how to get the right information for your problem.
3-4 weeks: 1 week planning and drafting questions, 1-2 weeks conducting focus group discussions, 1-2 weeks analyzing and reporting results.
card sorting
Participants are given items (such as themes) on cards and asked to sort them into groups that make sense to them.
You are working on a content feed site with many components and want to provide your user group with an efficient structure.
Determine which topics are best to include.
3-4 weeks: 1 week planning and preparation, 1 week conducting research, 1-2 weeks analyzing and reporting results.
usability testing
Users attempt to perform standard tasks on a website or app while a moderator watches and, in some cases, asks questions to understand user behavior.
Existing solutions are being improved.
Choose the appropriate task to focus on.
3-4 weeks for 10 users and medium form: 1 week for programming and writing tasks, 1 week for execution tests, 1-2 weeks for analysis and reporting of results.
Competitive solutions are available for testing. It has a prototype that allows users to complete (or simulate) tasks.
Effectively facilitate teams.
Determine the formality level to take the exam.
*Typical time frames represent the time typically required from the time the user is scheduled. Let's say there are two groups of 6 to 8 users (except for surveys, where the number of users should be larger). This does not include recruitment time, which can take one to two weeks after creating the recruitment questionnaire.
How much research activity can I include? Before choosing an activity, ask yourself how much money and time your team can spend on user research. Consider the following scenario to see how interested your client company is in user research. If the project leader and project sponsor are comfortable with user research and are interested in using it for a known purpose, such as ensuring the site meets specific project goals, then you may have more leeway. .
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When two or more activities are scheduled, or when you run an activity multiple times (for example, to test a plan, change the plan based on the results and try the new plan again). If no one in the organization is familiar with user research and has some resistance to it, it is better to do a round of research and choose the technical actors who you think will add the most value to you, the project team and the projects . business. Once the findings are available, the project team will have a better understanding of what was involved and how it could benefit the project. Then, you'll have good reason to do more research later if needed. If you have room for at least two rounds of research, a good approach is to include one round early in the definition or design phase to get to know your users better. Then include another round to validate the design before development begins. For example, for a task-based application, you might interview users before design and then perform usability testing of the prototype later in the process. Or for a content source, you could start with a contextual query and then include a card sorting exercise.
Research Planning Considerations When planning any research technique, consider the following factors: Why do the research: What do you want to learn from it Who are you including: The main user groups you described above How to get participants: Recruit people to participate and select them (ie, ask questions to make sure they are in your target user group) How you will compensate participants What space and equipment you will need What you cover: Main topics How you get information: Amount of information Who is involved and what Use the Tools The Chapter 13 will cover all of these considerations as part of a detailed look at one of the most common techniques used by UX designers: usability testing.
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Note For more information about task-based applications and content sources, see Chapter 2.
Navigating Steve Baty has written an article that describes the different approaches and how to choose between them depending on your stage of development, your information needs, and the flexibility to incorporate user research. It's titled "Bite-Sized UX Research" by Steve Baty, UXmatters: http://uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000287.php.
Let's take a closer look at each of these techniques and how they are commonly used.
User Interviews User interviews are structured conversations with current or potential users of your website. These can be done over the phone, in person in a neutral location such as a conference room, or preferably in an environment where users are likely to use the website. (The latter case is also appropriate for contextual research, as discussed below.) Interviews can help you understand participant preferences and attitudes, but should not be used to make formal statements about actual performance. . If you're looking for specific information about how people interact with your site, it's best to observe how they use it (for example, in contextual queries) or ask them to perform tasks on the site (during usability testing). Site analytics can also give you insight into some performance information, which is especially powerful when combined with interviews or queries that provide context for the data. Basic Flow For user interviews, UX designers create a list of questions designed to elicit the following information: Experiences related to the website or topic.
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Attitudes towards the company brand as experienced by the participants, for example, in terms of the categories of topics covered (for
source), process designed (for task-based applications) or marketing approach (for marketing campaigns) common goals or needs that drive users to your website or other websites
competitor The next steps a user typically takes after visiting a company website Other people involved in the experience. For example, a
Do users tend to collaborate with others as part of a larger goal they are trying to achieve? Are they likely to share information or seek information from others along the way? Any other information that helps you verify the assumptions you made.
Facts so far about user groups; for example, whether the variables you discussed when creating the transient user model appear to affect the user's experience with your site. If more than one person is conducting the interview, it's a good idea to have a series of question lists and scripted introductions to keep the interview consistent. Choose in advance how you want your interview to be structured. If you're looking for a formal report, you'll probably want a highly structured report where the order of questions doesn't change much and all questions are asked with minimal addition. If richness of data is more important than consistency, you might decide to conduct a semi-structured interview, where you start with a series of questions but let the discussion follow a natural course, with the interviewer asking questions to explore further interesting comments. (the so-called polling). The length of your interview can vary; 45 to 60 minutes is usually the sweet spot for shooting. It gives you plenty of time to build relationships and cover a wide range of topics without boring your attendees. User interviews provide a rich data set that you can use to write personas, which is covered in Chapter 7.
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Interview Tips The quality of information you get from the interview has a lot to do with the quality of the questions you ask. Focus on the personal experiences of the participants. Don't make them guess what they might do in the future or what other people might do. This type of information rarely predicts what they will actually do. Do not ask questions that require specific answers or steer participants in a positive or negative direction. Ideally, questions are simple, neutral and open-ended. Some examples of key questions are What do you like about PseudoCorporation.com?
This assumes that users enjoy using the website. Only use this question if you're also asking what they don't like. Did PseudoCorporation.com meet your expectations?
This can be answered with a simple yes or no, which doesn't give you much detail to help you with your design work. Would you rather use PseudoCorporation.com or CompetitorVille.com?
If the latter, why do you think they are better than Pseudo? There are several problems with this: you are asking two questions in one statement and forcing an implicit view on the participants. A better question: Tell me about the last time you visited PseudoCorporation.com. Why did you go there do you remember your visit
If you're doing a longer, more formal interview series, you might want to include some multiple-choice questions. However, in most cases these will not give you much information. When participants ask verbally, they can be difficult to understand and do not allow users to explain. Typically, these types of questions are intended for testing or probing. Test with someone, perhaps someone other than a key team member within the organization. This will help you identify issues that may not be clear and will also help you optimize your schedules and processes. If possible, and with the participant's consent, record the interview so that others can benefit from hearing the answers directly from the participant.
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Contextual Research Contextual research combines user observation and interview techniques. UX designers target participants, ideally the context in which they are likely to use the site. For example, for an office application, a contextual question would involve sitting at a participant's desk. This approach gives you valuable information about the participants' work environment, including the problems users actually face, the types of equipment they use, the spaces they work in, and especially the space they occupy.
How much (or little) privacy they have, how often they are interrupted, and how they use phones and paper (pay special attention to any printouts or notes they post). Mouse and keyboard preferences. it affects a lot
Your design choices, especially if you're designing a tool that requires a lot of data entry. How they work with others in terms of collaboration and sharing.
resource. For example, if more than one person is using the same computer, this will affect how you design the connection and security features. Other tools they use both online and offline. how people use paper
Of particular interest: for some tasks it may be difficult to devise electronic solutions comparable to paper documents. Counseling combines observation time and interview time. They can last from hours to days. If the participant cannot spare at least 2 hours, you should consider just conducting the interview. During the observation, the participant needs time to adjust to your presence and engage in some physical behaviors, which does not happen until after 15 minutes. Basic Flow Prepare a 10-15 minute introduction that you can use to introduce each participant. It should include the purpose of the research, a high-level description of what you will be doing together (observations and interviews) and 98
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This information will be used. This is also a good time to sign a consent form and assure participants that what they share will remain confidential. Start with some high-level questions about typical participant flows, especially those related to website design. Let participants know when you are ready to stop talking and start observing. Observation can range from active to passive. With active observation, a common approach is to have the participant take on the role of teacher while you take on the role of student. The teacher explains what he is doing as if teaching you his process. Active observation often gives you more context about why participants behave, but it can influence how participants act. In passive observation, encourage participants to act as if you were not there. Your goal is to observe the behavior as naturally as possible. For example, if a participant is talking to you, they are less likely to answer the phone or ask someone a question about a problem you are trying to solve, but if they are passively observing, they are more likely to see this. happen. You can then continue with the interview section, asking about the reasons behind certain behaviors you observed. Either method will work well. In general, if you don't have a lot of time with participants (for example, only 2-4 hours at a time), you may choose to use active observation to ensure you get the details you need. If you have a full day or more, passive observation can provide a good balance between physical behavior and conversation. Once you get the information from your queries, you have a lot of rich data to wrangle! So how do you spot patterns or trends in your results? A useful approach is a technique called an affinity graph. There are many resources available on this topic, but here is a brief overview. A Quick Guide to Correlation Charts Correlation charts are a technique for combining many disparate and independent elements, such as statements from users or observations made by researchers, to form patterns and trends. Here are the steps required to draw a simple kinship map: 1. Assemble the research team and their notes.
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2. Give everyone a pack of post-it notes and ask them to write a statement on each sheet, along with a short code that will allow you to trace the statement back to the participant, such as their initials. Focus on statements that appear to be related to the website design, either specifically (functional statements) or more generally (statements that represent the participant's attitude toward the company or the issue). 3. Ask everyone to put their post-its on the wall. If you work in a large studio, you need a large blank wall; try to buy one that you can visit for at least a few days. 4. Once you have all your notes ready, start grouping similar statements side by side. This part of the exercise can involve larger groups. This is a great way to start sharing your results. 5. Once the groups start to form naturally, start naming them to give more structure. If some sticky notes belong to more than one group, you can repeat them and place them in each appropriate group. NOTE This method is suitable for contextual searches, but can be applied to many other situations. For example, this is a great way to create categories for unsorted topic collaborations so it can help you move your card sort results to other levels of structure.
Patterns can take many forms, so it's best to let them form on their own. However, here are examples of the types of categories you might see, including the types of statements you'll find in them: Goal: "I'm trying to clear all open items here before I leave for the day."
Matching external experience with internal thinking): "I use this online tool as my portfolio for things I refer to often but don't want to take with me." Idea and feature request: "I hope this allows me to undo. I follow
Accidentally moved an entire folder and it took me ages to undo it. Frustration: "I'll ask the help desk about it, but half the time they won't." "
I also don't know what the problem is.
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Solution: “This takes too long and I end up typing
list and use it throughout the day. Then at the end of the day, I look at the results. " Value Statement: "This tool right here has saved me a lot of time, so if you
Changing won't remove it!
Exploring in Depth A standard resource for contextual inquiry is Designing Situations by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt (Morgan Kaufmann, 1997). The book also contains detailed information on interpreting results through techniques such as affinity plots. For more information on mental models and how to understand them, see Indi Young's Mental Models: Aligning Design Strategy with User Behavior (Rosenfeld Media, 2008). This is especially useful when dealing with the information architecture of your content sources.
Surveys Surveys involve a set of well-defined questions distributed to a large audience. Most often, they consist of closed-ended questions (such as multiple-choice questions), which can be easily collected using tools that can reveal patterns in responses. Surveys are great if you want to be able to express results in a more quantitative way than this (eg "82% of respondents who work from home said they had some kind of high-speed internet connection"). Learn about the types of open-ended questions used in interviews. However, you can also gather qualitative information about user habits and attitudes from them. In the field of user experience, surveys are often used to measure user satisfaction (satisfaction with an existing website or application) or to create or validate user models such as segments or personas.
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Basic Process As with user interviews, you don't want to ask questions that require users to make guesses. Don't ask "If you had feature X, would you use it?" Unlike interviews, true/false questions are the best and easiest postmortems in yes/no multiple choice surveys. Participants were also more responsive. Use surveys when you have questions about demographic data requests, such as: Of the devices listed below, which do you personally own? Select all that apply. Computer Mobile phone Gaming system such as Xbox, Playstation or Wii
Or for a multiple-choice attitude question: Read the following statements and choose the extent to which you agree or disagree with each. Fake corporate customer service meets my needs. Strongly Agree Agree Neither Agree nor Disagree Disagree Strongly Disagree
In particular, questions like the second example are often used to supplement usability testing tasks. You can use this formula as a follow-up question to find out if participants are frustrated with completing the task. Participants did not always like to voice negative opinions out loud, but were often willing to voice their opinions when confronted with the rating system. This highlights another point: surveys are a great complement to other forms of research you might be doing, such as user interviews or contextual queries. Combining the two research methods can provide a more comprehensive understanding of users than either method alone.
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Navigation If you want to have a high degree of confidence in your results and have the budget, there are official tools to measure user satisfaction with ease of use. These tools include tested questions to ensure they do not mislead or mislead a general audience. Some of the most commonly used are ACSI (American Customer Satisfaction Index): www.theacsi.org/ WAMMI (Website Analysis and Measurement Inventory): www.wammi.com SUMI (Software Usability Measurement Inventory): http://sumi. ucc. I.E
When designing a survey, keep the following in mind: Who is it for?
Use your temporary model to determine this. How you answer the rest of the questions here will vary. Which survey distribution method will get you the best results?
If your main user base tends to be concentrated in one particular location, you may be able to get more results by going there and creating a form for users to fill out a paper survey. If your user group is active Internet users, conducting an online survey may be the best option for a large number of participants. Or you may decide to better serve your user base with phone surveys using your current customer list. How much time participants may be willing to spend on completion
The research? If you offer some kind of compensation or other benefit for completing it, you can usually create a longer questionnaire that can take half an hour to complete. If not, you need to keep it short to ensure people will - think 5-10 minutes. Either way, be sure to give participants an estimate of how long it will take and let them know your progress as they go (for example, using page numbers like "2 of 4" or showing a percentage of completion).
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How do you know when to start analyzing data?
You may choose to participate in the survey until a certain number of participants is reached or until a certain deadline is reached, whichever occurs first. What tools will you use to collect and analyze data?
If you are conducting an online survey, the tool you use to collect the data may have options for viewing and analyzing the results. If not, you'll need a way to transfer data to your tool of choice. For paper-based surveys, this means a lot of data entry, so be sure to plan for that time.
Focus groups Focus groups involve bringing together different people in the target audience and facilitating discussions with them. A common goal is to get feedback on topics related to the organization or its brand, such as past experiences, related needs, feelings, attitudes, and ideas for improvement. Focus groups are a great method for several purposes: Listening to various user stories. Open discussion is a great way
The storyteller in all of us. When focus groups go well, people build on each other's stories and ideas and remember situations they might not have encountered in more structured one-on-one interviews. The format and energy of the group allows time to remember these stories and share them. Know the relevant experiential differences. most people are born
People who share agricultural information and want to compare their favorite tools with others in an interest group. Often, you can get information about competing websites or services, or you can hear suggestions for solutions, resources, and support. Generate ideas. Although you don't want it to be the pool itself
As a designer, you often get great ideas for new features or designs directly from the team or by listening to their workflows or frustrations. As with stakeholder ideas, be sure to trace them back to the main requirement (see Chapter 4) to ensure it is addressed. Understand the multiple points of the collaboration process. And if you are
Teams are great for filling in the gaps in your understanding when designing processes that involve multiple related roles and collaboration
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how people interact. For example, if you work with content sources such as an intranet, bringing together content creators, content editors, and content consumers can help you identify where the process can be improved. There is much debate about the use of focus groups in UX research. This is not a good technique for usability testing (as users often work alone, not in groups), and sometimes the group setting unduly influences participant statements. However, if properly planned and facilitated, focus groups can provide a lot of valuable information about your project. Chapter 13 discusses this in more detail in the context of a proof of concept. Basic Process When writing focus group questions, keep in mind the same techniques you would use to write user interview questions (described above). Start with some simpler questions, like "Tell me about the last time you visited PseudoCorporation.com. Why did you go there?" Leave any brainstorming questions to the middle of the group when participants are comfortable with you, each other, and topic time. Set aside chunks of time for each topic and stick to it; it's easy to start a conversation and time flies! If you're worried about timing, put your most important questions in the middle of the topic list, after people are excited about the event, but before any potential time conflicts that might occur near the end. Much of the logistics of focus groups is about usability Test the same. (Chapter 13 provides advice on selection, recruitment, and planning.) The main difference with a focus group is that you need a larger room and a table to allow participants to interact easily with each other. Shoot each 1-2 hour group session6 Up to 8 people at your location Give each person a name tag or business card so everyone can refer to each other by their first name. The format of the discussion itself should include an introduction, which usually touches on these key points: your role as moderator and what you hope to gain from the discussion.
Investments (eg a few dots above).
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Why are participants selected to attend (eg “You all
current users of the Pseudo Corporation website, which we have gathered to understand their experience"). How this information will be used to design and
Confidential opinions. As a moderator, you can listen to them too
experience. You want them to feel like they can share honestly, so ask people to be honest, but also respectful of the rest of the team. There are many topics to cover, so at some point you will complete one
Discuss a topic to make sure you can cover them all. This can turn into a round of introductions to the group, often including some sort of icebreaker question. Your goal is to get everyone talking about the first question, even if it's just telling a short story. You can start with one person and work around the table, or let people respond naturally and then call out the names of people who don't respond. Often, you end up going around the table discussing the first few questions, and then when you feel the group is ready, you can use your body language to open up questions to everyone.
Snorkeling: Body Language Having a good understanding of body language can be an incredible tool when conducting focus groups or any in-person user research. It can help you understand when someone is frustrated, excited, angry, or threatened, so you can determine when you should try to make someone more comfortable or ask for a specific comment. The following book on the subject may take more than a weekend to read, but is designed to be easy to flip through: The Definitive Book of Body Language, by Allan Pease and Barbara Pease (Bantam, 2006).
When calling someone who hasn't answered, be sure to repeat the question in case you didn't understand or hear the last question.
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Some statements from the Discussion. Also, avoid making differences of opinion seem like differences between two people. Don't say, "Bob, we haven't heard from you yet. What do you think of what Chris just said?" Instead (looking at Bob), "Bob, what about you?" How was your experience with Pseudo Corporation customer service? As a moderator, you can control the flow of the conversation and pass the virtual microphone. You can maintain control through eye contact, speaking volume, hand movement, and body direction. Most people pay close attention to their body language, and if someone is dominating the conversation, these cues can be useful signals. If the very vocal participant does not understand the cues, use a gentle but firm statement such as "Okay, fine, I'd like to pass this on to someone else. Has anyone else had any of the problems that Teresa has had?" problem; When moving on to a new, larger topic, verbally announce that the old discussion is over and a new one has begun so people can clear their minds about the next topic. Finally, as the event draws to a close, a glance at your watch and a change in body orientation may be all it takes to signal that a conversation needs to end. As with any activity, be sure to thank the team for their time. Sharing results with your team usually takes one of two forms: Share based on the main topics covered Research results or group findings into related categories for contextual research. Affinity maps are another effective way to gather trends and attitudes to show project teams.
Card Sorting In a card sorting activity, participants (individually or working in small groups) are given objects printed on cards and asked to sort them into groups that make sense to them. They either group them into pre-supplied categories (called closed categories) or create their own groups and name each group themselves (called open categories). By the end of the card sorting round, you should start to see common patterns emerge in how people sort objects, as well as common points of confusion or disagreement.
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A common reason to do this is to create a sitemap for a website, or create a hierarchy of content, categories, and subcategories for items such as articles, documents, videos, or photos. This makes card sorting a great technique if you're working on content streams. Note For more information about content sources, see Chapter 2.
Let's say you're working with a common type of content source: your company's intranet. Many intranets tend to categorize their information by the department that owns it, navigating HR, operations, legal, marketing, etc. For long-time employees, this may not be an obvious problem because they may already understand the scope of each department's responsibility and understand where to find information. But for new hires or those who need information not usually referred to, it can be difficult to find information that may relate to multiple departments (or doesn't seem to relate to any department). For example, where would you look for new hire policies? It could be in the legal field, or it could be in the human resources field. With card sorting, you can find common patterns in how potential users categorize information, regardless of department lines. Basic Process Gather the items you want to include in your card order; 40 to 60 is usually a good range. You want enough numbers to allow for potentially large decks, but not so many that you overwhelm the participants (or get overwhelmed when you need to analyze the results). Choose items that you think are easy to understand and free of unnecessary jargon. You can include some subject terms that you think your user group might know, but avoid including too many "inside" terms. If you include too many company-specific terms or acronyms (such as "successful sales campaign"), you're testing the effectiveness of your company's marketing and communications rather than creating a general message hierarchy. For example intranets, you can include vacation policies, 401(k) plan information, new hire contracts, vendor contracts, non-disclosure agreements,
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New employee orientation, health insurance information and information security policies. This list represents a collection of clearly worded items that can be categorized in a number of ways. You might have one participant who groups new employee orientation and leaves the policy to the HR team, and you might have another participant who groups new employee orientation and new employee contracts and calls it "employee onboarding". Once you have a list of items, place them on cards that can be easily grouped and ungrouped. You can print labels and stick them on index cards, or print directly on punched cardstock to separate them into individual cards. Try asking someone to sort the cards and give the group a name, for example by placing post-it notes in a stack and writing the name with a pen. Ideally, your trial participants are people who are new to the project and activities. This will help you get an idea of how long the event is likely to last. If your test takes more than an hour, you may need to cut some cards. Once you've completed a deck, you can invite an actual participant and give them the following basic instructions: 1. Arrange the cards into groups that make the most sense to you. 2. Try to make a group of at least two cards. If a card doesn't seem to belong in any group, you can set it aside. 3. You can name the group at any time during sorting. At the end of the activity, name as many groups as you can. Some trends become apparent just by observing meetings. Others may take more analysis to reveal. There are a variety of tools available for entering and analyzing card grade results; many of them come with tools that allow you to perform card sorts remotely (see the "Card Sort Variants" section below for more information). In particular, OptimalSort (www.optimalsort.com/pages/default.html) and WebSort (http://websort.net) provide remote sorting capabilities and useful analysis tools. Or, if you want a more manual way to do your own ranking, check out Donna Spencer's excellent spreadsheet by filling in
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Instructions are available at www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardssorting/blog/card_sort_analysis_spreadsheet. Card Sorting Variations So far, the discussion has focused on self-directed card sorting, where participants are asked to name the categories they create. This is an open style, which means that the main categories are not given to participants, but open to naming. This is a great approach when completing a new navigation structure or making significant changes to an existing one. For other situations, you can consider these common card sort variations: closed sort. In a closed classification, the top-level category is provided
Then the participants add them. The results are relatively easy to analyze because you have a small set of possible categories and you can focus on which objects belong to which categories most often. Whether you're adding meaningful content to an existing information architecture or validating an existing sitemap, closed taxonomy can provide quick and actionable information to help you make taxonomy decisions. group class. They can categorize objects instead of people
Use card sorting as part of a focus group activity to ask participants to sort items together. Although the results do not necessarily reflect how people have grouped objects, you can gain a lot of information about how people perceive objects and their organization by listening to them work together in the event, discussing the rationale for each arrangement. distance learning courses. Sorting with physical cards can be a fun activity, esp
For group lessons. But there are many great tools for taking online courses with people. This can also allow you to reach larger groups of participants or individual participants that would otherwise be difficult to meet in person. OptimalSort and WebSort mentioned above are two tools that facilitate such online sorting.
Usability Testing Usability testing involves asking participants to run specific tests on a website or app (or a prototype) in order to discover potential usability problems and gather ideas for solving them.
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If you want to gather information on how to improve your current website, you can perform usability testing during the definition phase. Or you can do this on a similar site (such as a competitor's site) to see some potential opportunities for a more user-friendly solution. Most often, usability testing is done as part of the design phase, preferably in iterative rounds (design, test, refine, and retest). We discuss usability testing again in detail in Chapter 13, "User Design Testing"; this chapter includes recruitment and design techniques that can also help you with the activities discussed earlier in this chapter.
After the Research After completing one or more of these user research activities, it's time to revise your initial assumptions about your user group. Putting these assumptions aside for a moment, ask yourself what user groups you would create if you had more information. If some of your previous assumptions were invalid, consider any gaps you may have in your user research because key groups were not included. If this gap is identified early in your research activities, you may have time to adjust and add another group of participants to the ongoing study to ensure you have the full picture. Armed with your new knowledge, you can modify the user definitions to more accurately reflect the groups you should be interested in. This will help you create more detailed tools like personas (discussed in Chapter 7) and help you create user requirements for the list we started in Chapter 5. In this chapter, we discussed the process of getting feedback from stakeholders. business and improving them to turn them into requirements. You'll follow a similar process with users: your work doesn't stop when you capture an idea or a request. Review the underlying needs and goals to make sure you understand them. Ultimately, this will help you design a solution that best meets the needs of all relevant user groups. In the next chapter, you'll learn how to use the information gained from conducting user research to create tools that can target your user group throughout the design and development process: people.
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People Find the best way to put your team or client in the users' shoes People are often a topic of discussion among UX professionals. Opinions range from how much content is needed, to how much research is needed, to whether they provide any value to the project. Some people wonder if they belong in the process. No matter where you position yourself, personas can be used to help your project team and your clients resonate with their users. People can visually review many parts of a project (business requirements, visual design, or QA) by gaining insight into who your audience is and what their expectations and behaviors are. Lars Unger
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What is a person? Personas are documents that describe typical target users. They are useful for project teams, stakeholders and customers. With the right research and description, one can get a pretty good idea of who is using the site or app and maybe even how they are using it. UX designers often see creating personas as a great exercise in empathy. Well-crafted personas are often used as points of contact whenever questions or concerns arise about how various aspects of the project should be designed. You can take out your character and ask how
This chapter focuses on interactive characters.
Why do you create characters? Personas help you focus on representative users during the UX design process. By gaining insight into the "real" behavior of "real" users, people can help resolve conflicts that arise in design and development decisions so you and your team can continue to improve. How real should people be? The answers vary widely. One person's document may be enough for a group, while another may create an entire "living space" for user personas to gain insight into how they "live." It can even create a personal presence that one can interact with to provide insights into online behavior. How you choose to level your character is up to you. People can constantly remind your users. A useful technique is to have your team members keep people in their work space.
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Always remember who your users are. When he briefly shared a bucket with "Nicole," a 34-year-old certified hand therapist from West Chicago, Illinois, he began to feel compelled to give her an experience that was right for her. If it helps, keep a paper copy with you at all times while you sleep and let the penetration fairy transmit the empathy from the page to your sleeping subconscious through your pillow. The purpose of personas is to help you, your team, and/or your clients clear up some of the confusion that can arise when you reach a decision crossroads.
Find information about personas Effective personas must accurately represent many specific users of your product or website. To achieve this goal, people must be supported by research. Chapter 6 covers techniques for researching and modeling potential users, providing a solid foundation for your personas. However, don't look to methods as answers; it's better to find as much data as possible and combine it with observational and interview data; this can also include using online surveys and social network behavior analysis. This is a common theme in personas: get real data, but let the people on the page be real people. To see how one company did this, see the "Case Study: The First Role of the Message" sidebar.
Creating Personas Once you've identified your audience and gathered data to support your personas, your next step is to put pen to paper and start bringing them to life. The number of people you need to create varies. Generally, at least three, but more than seven is not unusual. Instead of targeting a specific number, think about how many target segments you have and what you think is the best way to fairly represent those segments.
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Case Study: Messagefirst Personas To create effective data-driven personas, Messagefirst (www.messagefirst.com) used at least three different sources of data input from the following sources: Stakeholders. We interview them to find out who they think the character is and what they think their behavior is. This is always included. agent of the client. We interview people in the company who talk directly to customers, which usually means sales/marketing and customer service. Each has its own biases, which we must take into account when documenting our findings. For example, the people who contact customer service most often are those who have a lot of time on their hands (often retired or unemployed) or are so unhappy with a product or service that they actually take the time to contact it. customer. We speak directly to real people who will use or are using a product or service. Include as much as possible. Customer data sources. We check any blog traffic, surveys and emails we have available. people we know. We select a person we know that fits the person's initial profile. This helps keep us grounded, ensures the characters are believable and real, and provides a real way to connect if we have additional questions. This is very important for validation and is always included. Because each data input source we use has specific biases, we use multiple sources to normalize the data. For data-driven people, the important thing is not to expect how many people you will have, but to let the data reveal how many people it should be. When I analyze data, I look for gaps in behavior and activity. These spaces reveal the individual. Todd Zaki Warfel, President, Messagefist
The example character for this chapter is Nicolle, a 34-year-old certified hand therapist from West Chicago, Illinois. She is a non-driving commuter and spends 2-3 hours a day commuting to and from work. The fictional customer is a company called ACMEblue, which makes Bluetooth headphones for Apple's non-fictional iPhone.
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This short paragraph tells you a lot about Nicolle, but as you can see in Figure 7.1, the real person contains a fuller story about Nicolle. Note that the content is about Nicolle, not "written by" Nicolle. It's better to write your characters from a third-party perspective than to write in their various voices, especially if you're just starting out. As you expand your experience, you should naturally explore and find the style that works best for you and provides the most value.
Figure 7.1 The role of the ACMEblue fictitious client
What kind of information do people get? The type of information your audience will find relevant and credible is type. Based on the research data you've gathered, you should be able to determine what's important to your client, brand, and project. Most of the people you create will share a common set of required content, along with any amount of data, statistics, and other relevant information that may be considered optional, as it will vary from client to client, if not project to project.
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Minimum content requirements When creating personas, you need to provide enough information to engage people and engage with the people reading the page. To help your audience understand what your character is doing and thinking, be sure to include six key pieces of information: photo, name, age, location, occupation, and bio. The following sections detail the details of each item. Photos Photos are the first (and real) step to getting your human face. When choosing a photo for your character, try to make sure the image doesn't look overly posed or elaborate. Photos that look posed don't look like photos taken in a more natural setting. People seem to prefer taking photos in more natural settings, such as the photo on the right in Figure 7.2, where the subject is standing outside in winter clothing, perhaps on the way to work. Make sure the photo matches the person's lifestyle! lifted up
Natural Image 7.2 Natural looking photos are more effective.
There are a variety of photo resources available online. Some of the best options are iStockphoto (www.istockphoto.com), Getty Images (www.gettyimages.com), and Stock.XCHNG (www.sxc.hu).
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Finding the right photo can be a complete waste of time if you're not careful. If all else fails (or if you have the time and budget), do it yourself! Names Simply put, you need to give your person a name. The photo you use will humanize the combination of research data and personality traits, and your name will be how everyone refers to you in conversations. Not only does Nicolle sound better than "30something blonde working mom," but it's easier to remember and relate to a specific person. Try to avoid the names you use for different people in a project being too similar. For example, Nicolle and Noelle are easily confused, so look for different names. While it may be tempting to use the name of a colleague or client, don't. When you use similar or identical names to people involved in your project, it's easy for them to try to identify themselves in your role. Choosing a different name can avoid awkward situations or hurt feelings. If you are having trouble choosing a name, some online resources can help you with this: Baby Name Sites! BabyNames.com: www.babynames.com Babyhold: www.babyhold.com Top Baby Names from the Social Security Administration: www.ssa.gov/
OACT/babynames random name generator: www.kleimo.com/random/name.cfm
One last thing about names: Make sure your name is trustworthy to the person. Nicolle is for a Midwestern mom, but Nicola or Natalia might be better for an Italian mom. Also, names that seem more funny or aggressive, like Bob the Builder, actually aren't. They tend to make your character look silly and devalue them. Age While your research should determine the age range of your consumers, giving your people a specific age helps add authenticity to the resume you're writing. A 21-year-old student and a 34-year-old working mother behave differently!
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Location At first, location may not seem like important information; however, it is important to remember that cultural and behavioral changes can occur from one place to another. In Italy, for example, different dialects are spoken in different parts of the country. In the United States, someone living in Chicago will likely have a different cost of living than someone living in Savannah, Georgia. Occupation Knowing what your person does can help you identify with them by understanding their daily patterns. A person who works in therapy meets a lot of people on a daily basis, while a drawbridge operator may not interact much with others. Biographies are compelling stories that make people real. Here, you provide the details obtained from your research data and combine them with some "real people". That is, the data is very important to the person, but you don't want to just state that information in broken sentences. Instead, you want to combine facts, anecdotes, and observations into a story that resonates with your audience. This may seem a little strange, but biographies need to be believable, and bringing aspects of real people to your character is definitely not a scam. Nicole, for example, is based on statistical data and the real behavior of people with similar activities, beliefs and aspirations. Depending on your project, you may need to delve deeper into the biography; sometimes the more detail you have, the better. Don't feel like you have to cram your personality onto a piece of paper. Choose the method that works best to bring your character to life and create as much meaning as possible for the project you're working on.
Optional content When you use roles, you'll find that different projects require different sets of information to make the roles more applicable. The minimum content requirements can also be considered the least common
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The denominator of the most people you will create. In most cases, you will combine some of these optional content elements with your key personas. Optional things that can add value to your character include education levels. Knowing a person's level of education can provide some information
More information about some of their habits. Someone with a high school diploma may have very different buying habits and brand perceptions than someone with a master's degree, and this information can affect how they are perceived. Salary or salary range. Money talks about everything, and in many cases, the amount
A person's income greatly affects their standard of living and disposable income. When targeting specific levels of wealth, this information can provide important insights. personal date. what motto would your people claim
like yours? Sometimes this can give you a quick glimpse into a character's basic mindset. Online activities. This can be difficult; there are many ways people spend money
your online time. Some pay the bills, some are heavily into blogging and social networking, and some just use their computer as a device to turn on when they need to get things done. Since many projects have some online components, this component is a bit critical. You will need to rely on your research to help you paint the picture. offline activity. Does your person have hobbies? are there more?
Insights into what life is like when your people aren't online? This element can be as complex as online activity and just as important in how it affects your personality. Key inputs or trigger points for customers, brands or projects. often very important
Learn how a person interacts with customers, brands or projects. Did people find out about it through word of mouth, online reviews, billboards, TV or radio, or online pop-ups? Does your role want to solve a solvable problem with a customer, brand or project? By using your statistics to understand this and writing it in your body, you can understand ways to attract users.
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Technical comfort. Do your people use PCs or Macs? she
Do you have a computer? Direct message, Flickr or blog? Are you comfortable with this activity or confused? Would a very simple solution for beginners help you? Do you have an MP3 player or other portable device? Do you watch TV on a DVR or AppleTV or on demand? The list can go on and on. And to. Depending on your client, brand, or project, it may be important to define these and various other concepts. social comfort. Given the growth of social media and social media
When working, it can be important to be very specific about how your character engages in that particular space. Do you have a twitter account? If so, how many followers do you have? How active are they? Is she the leader? Do you use MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other aggregators or online communities? Mobile comfort. With the increasing use of mobile devices
More importantly, it's important to consider including where your persona is in the movement space, if any. Motivation to use the client, brand or project. In some cases, you may want to
Include why the person wants to use the client, brand, or project. If your headphone cable keeps getting tangled in your jacket and pulling it off your head, this might be a good reason to consider buying new headphones. Real-life scenarios based on research data can help reveal key motivations to include in your personas. user goals. You may also want to determine the person's expectations
Do this using a client, brand or project. This helps to get an insight into what drives the person to use it. These are just data points to get you started. You can build your characters and present them in endless ways. If you're interested in delving deeper into the world of personas, start with The User Is Always Right: A Practical Guide to Creating and Using Personas for the Web by Steve Mulder and Ziv Yaar (New Riders, 2006). ).
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Advanced characters Once you understand the basics of character creation, there are countless ways to expand your documents. A simple one can often meet most of your needs, especially if your project team just wants to empathize with your users. Things tend to get more interesting when you introduce people to your customers. In these cases, you will often find that you need to provide more than the information gathered for the primary role. Figures 7.3 to 7.7 illustrate some of the ways people extend. Feel free to borrow these examples, combine them to create something even better for your projects!
brand
Get to know the brand's consumers
Personas and Scenarios (Based on Ethnographic Research) Personas are composite personas based on target consumer data: in this case, ethnographic, existing segments, and customer database data.
These scenarios are hypothetical but realistic accounts of why these people might visit the brand's website and what they would do there.
Joan, 32 Consumer insights help us understand our users: their motivations, goals and desires. To apply this information to website design, we developed user personas and scenarios based on real-world environments. This approach to design helps create a holistic experience based on understanding customers, their motivations, desired outcomes and behaviors. These scripts specifically answer three fundamental questions that must be addressed before a website can be properly organized:
Pleasure seeker "I really like this" "Sophisticated young man"
principle
start exploring
build experience
"Disapproving of Novato"
"$)*&7&-&7&- Comfort
"Positive Responders"
Feeling 5)&365
explore again
"Veteran Explorer"
Optimize and simplify
"Growing in grooves"
Handy Get-things-Down "Just Needs Work"
Alicia, 26 years old
Rachel, 42 years old
Erica, 47 years old
Greta, 59 years old
Figure 7.3 Main role overview table (horizontal). In the context of high-level organizational strategies, it provides an aggregate view of the various individuals and the departments they represent. Courtesy of Will Evans.
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brand
People and Environment (based on ethnographic research) Alice is a novice chef who wants to explore the world of food,
Target
Especially with baby food, find new recipes online and in magazines with friends. Your exploration more about
He raised a family effortlessly
However, imagination is greater than reality. He is still afraid, no
Find quick and easy recipes using basic ingredients
Trying too many new recipes. Her mother didn't teach her much cooking and her friends didn't have much experience.
I (often) cook two meals: for adults, for children
Not even the kitchen. Alice is a busy mother of one daughter in Chicago. Both she and her husband work outside the home: she manages the offices of a small insurance company.
Alice, 26th generation x married to "newbie wannabe"
1 daughter, 5 tired, ambitious
income
educate
She is very busy and down to earth and doesn't spend much time cooking. Alice just wanted to make it quick and easy, although since she started working out after Sophie was born two years ago, she has often had to prepare different meals for herself and her husband and is trying to get back in shape for to run a marathon. She works from a small selection of successful recipes that she knows, and many of the meals she prepares are based on packaged and prepared foods.
Scenario Alice is eating breakfast with Sophie and watching Cartoon Network. Brand ads that display the brand name appear here. Alice uses the brand and believes that Sophie will choose this dish. He decides to check out the site after he gets off work. Alice has free access to the site half an hour before the meeting. The home page is clean and organized. Check out the main sections of the site and links to interesting content like the recipe of the day.
internet use
Health awareness
cost sensitivity
Click for today's recipe. He loves the accompanying tips, they make him feel like he can tackle this recipe. You like the clean navigation, unlike other sites where you can easily get lost. She likes useful features that go beyond what she sees in cookbooks, like the ability to find recipes based on what's in her pantry and tips on how to use those products. Alice discovers that she can receive the cookbook newsletter and clicks Subscribe. Signing up is easy! Fill out some basic information and opt-in to the 'Food Your Kids Will Love' newsletter.
She likes to add more of her own creativity, recreating dishes she loves in restaurants, like her all-time favorite roast chicken. You also want to add more fresh vegetables to your meals because you know they are healthier. She prides herself on being a detailed planner and able to manage the household on a tight budget. Your fridge and pantry are always stocked with food. She plans her shopping to take advantage of sales and coupons.
Find kid-friendly recipes and food events Find ways to conveniently dress up your favorite foods Projects and initiatives Improve navigation and information architecture Improve registration
At noon a week later, Alice discovers her first e-newsletter from Brand: "Pizza, as easy as 1, 2, 3". Perfection: Her kids love pizza and she often buys it frozen. A link to "Pizza for Beginners" inspired her to see if she could make her own pizza. The link took her to a recipe for pepperoni pizza on something called "Pizza Wizard." Flipped through the recipe and found it easy, just 25 minutes and 4 ingredients. She checks her kitchen to see what she has. He didn't have pepperoni or pizza sauce, but the "pizza wizard" suggested substituting something from his well-stocked kitchen: sausage and tomato sauce. Perfect! There is a link to the coupon. Neena prints out a shopping list for the recipe, adds a few things she needs and heads to the store. Returning from the shop, Alice started. See step-by-step instructions on how to roll out the dough and add toppings. There are pictures next to each step. It is easy to understand and follow. He wondered if he should cook the toppings first, but the pizza FAQ answered.
More targeted newsletters Recipe assistants Better coupon integration Meal planning The “do” attitude relies heavily on prepared food, with relatively few added fresh fruits and vegetables Costs more Spending more time searching for recipes than cooking
Figure 7.4 Target audience faces (horizontal orientation). This detailed view of an individual includes a broader range of data and provides a more complete picture of user goals, needs and behaviors, all within a larger ecosystem. Courtesy of Will Evans.
Figure 7.5 Overview of target audience goals and personas (vertical orientation). The goal overview on the left provides high-level summary information and shows the three people interacting and interacting with the brand. The detailed description on the right provides an overview and biography of a person, as well as information about their actions and motivations.
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Paul and Helen “I think we could put anything on. Not sure how well it would fit.
5 4
Helen's mother passed away a few weeks ago and now they are cleaning the house. They're going to sell the house, but there's a lot to clean up first. The main bathroom of the house also needs some renovations.
3
- From The basement is full of things that Helen's mother has collected over the past twenty years. He never throws anything away. It has newspapers and periodicals from the last 20 years. There are some things Helen wants to keep. Most of the clothing and furniture will be donated to Goodwill. Unfortunately, most of your mother's dairy has been destroyed by water and mold. He still has a few cans of paint, but Paul and Helen don't know if the paint contains lead.
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Know Ex led pe ge rie nc e C on Pric vee Senior tunc pe sp Re e Mpu e d ult type Tim tion C on eline t Κύριος ss ajo er r L Μέγεθος εάν D E ecven wrestling Έτος Re rding pe Wast Bowls 和 Buars ds ine Τι μή和 O Rec am nlin ycli και ac g 计数
It's the first time Paul and Helen have experienced anything like this. They don't even know where to start. They just want this to be as easy as possible. They know they need a litter box, but they aren't sure how long it will last. They think that almost everything can be lost unless someone tells them to. Your only concern is that trash cans tend to be unsightly. They want to find a company that won't make their front yard look like a construction zone or destroy the yard when they make deliveries or pick up bins.
Age: 24-65
Life cycle January
July
pecker
Scepter
1.0 Facts of Life
Main features Ŕ Ŕ
One-off events such as acquiring home assets or minor renovations (eg bathrooms). Little to no experience buying litter boxes in the past.
Aim Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ
Come get a trash can. Get rid of anything you're not saving or donating. Avoid property damage in the process. Avoid unsightly waste bins. Please dispose of the waste bin promptly when it is full.
Pain points of frustration Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ
Question Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ
Ŕ ŕ
Available when needed Price Supplier leaves ownership when found Provides desired container size Speed of installation and pickup once contacted Online Account access for scheduling and payment Equipment quality and cleanliness House brand
Ŕ ŕ ŕ ŕ
Initially surprised by the label Not familiar with the process Don't know what you don't know Make comparisons such as between suppliers
Is there something I can't get into? How fast can you deliver and receive? Will they keep the property as is? How does this work? Is a license required? How much will it cost? How easily can I contact someone if I need to?
Figure 7.6 People from the target audience. The individual arrived at a target age range, which was drawn from research data. The information it contains is broad and aimed at an audience rather than a specific individual. This method can be useful when giving a professional presentation or when the client's budget allows for a detailed face scan. Courtesy of Todd Zaki Warfel.
Jill from all walks of life
Amanda Stone
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"I have to manage various projects for my clients."
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3
AMANDA shares responsibility for the incentive program with some other colleagues. They share access and manage multiple programs for clients. It can be especially difficult to make sure you're paying the right people in the right programs. You need to be able to switch between different programs and know where you are at all times.
2
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circle of life
Key Features Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ
Manage multiple programs Medium to large businesses Medium volume (50-2000+ orders at a time) Multiple people sharing a role 70/30 Fast payments and admin checks Weekly or bi-monthly use year round I'm very interested in reports Want to report Los Heavy The The Excel program uses a custom built-in system with
Objective Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ Ŕ
Integration with current systems. Ability to pay employees quickly and easily. Cost (mainly time). startup help.
Other applications Ŕ Excel Ŕ PowerPoint How can I run reports in all my programs? Ŕ Is there a way for Internet Explorer to get my credentials without calling Ecount? Can we somehow integrate into ClientZone so we don't have to switch between different apps? Am I doing it right?
Ac FT N cew ou P n Cart Zod Re ne q est E Ad asy s m Pa in y C he c R Cu ep ks or rr en rting tB al Pe a ce Cu ople st om S o f t Sy tallo Excel
kindness
ene
influencer
Pay your employees quickly and easily. Ŕ Avoid double effort. Ŕ Check their current balance to see if they need to transfer money. Ŕ Track weekly, bi-monthly, monthly, quarterly and yearly transactions.
Rio
Wazen
oh
he
dg
dg y ow Kn
knows
Wait
about
Em
Man
Uses Account Zone frequently, several days a week. As she manages many projects, she is very active throughout the year.
activities and interests
technology
Age: 28-55
rice
rice
The knowledge
Ain
Account Zone can really help you issue new cards and ensure program participants are paid quickly. The only thing missing is the ability to look at each individual program and all the programs you're running to see how things are going. Your customers love to know how your program is performing. Now tracking in Excel. He ends up sending the excel files to his clients or sometimes exporting them and sending them a PowerPoint with some fancy graphics. It would be great if Account Zone had a way for you to run reports in a single program and across multiple programs.
July
Ŕ ŕ ŕ ŕ ŕ
Ŕ
Ŕ
Ŕ
Ŕ
Scepter
setbacks and pain points
Question -
pecker
You cannot watch multiple programs at the same time. Reports cannot be run in multiple programs at the same time. Bug fixes to "crap" exception files. It is not clear exactly what the problem is and how to fix it. Multiple steps with multiple apps are inefficient and it's easy to get lost where you are. Multiple confirmation screens. Another username and password to remember. Look for an email with your login details.
Figure 7.7 People in the target audience. This person is a heavily data-driven model. While one day in the life story is narrative, the rest is provided in bullet points to serve as a planning checklist. The diagram is used to convey a large amount of information in a small space. Courtesy of Todd Zaki Warfel.
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As you can see, you can combine data in many different ways to present characters, adapting them to different situations. Start with basic characters, then expand to meet your needs.
Final Thoughts on Personas Many UX design professionals do not believe that personas are a good way to articulate user needs, goals, and attitudes. They believe that people block creativity, innovation or good design for various reasons. Other practitioners believe that, based on strong research evidence combined with a degree of personalized reality, people with specific needs can influence the planning process in a very positive way. Which side of the coin you land on is entirely up to you. This chapter is not intended to influence your decision in any way. Many articles on the subject are available online and many professionals are willing to give you their opinion. All of these resources can help you understand how people can best fit your project, so check them out. Jared Spool, CEO and founding director of User Interface Engineering (www.uie.com), also offers insights on this topic: Value comes when teams visit and observe target audiences, digest and analyze their observations, and reduce the production of confusion. . Be a pattern and then be a man. What the team leader knows at the time of planning will have an impact on the final design. The character descriptions are there to remind everyone what happened.
Jared's point is simple: by observing your target audience, combining what you've learned with research data, and putting it all together into segments, you should be able to create personas that trigger the kind of behavior that keeps your team on track . And build empathy for the target. Next. better. Potential app, website or product. Ultimately, though, your characters will be a lot like Santa Claus: they're only valuable if people believe in them.
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User Experience Design and Search Engine Optimization The Key Role of User Experience Design in Successful SEO Search engines are the foundation of the interactive economy. As "interactors," everything we do is ultimately connected to the world through Google, Yahoo, MSN, Ask, and the myriad sub-engines that make up the infrastructure of Internet search. Information architecture is an important part of how search engines interpret websites. This chapter aims to give you a basic understanding of why UX design is critical to SEO and what factors you need to consider so that the environment you create is competitive on Google. Jonathan Ashton
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An Introduction to SEO In short, search engine optimization is the process of developing and maintaining web properties with the goal of gaining and maintaining a leading position in the public search engines for specific key phrases. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is like a martial art, the process of learning and practicing is never complete. Using observed behaviors or learned methods, even teachers can make more progress. As long as there are search engines and websites interested in selling something to searchers, SEO will work. SEO relies on three fundamental areas for improvement and impact:
Potential impact on: Site infrastructure, technical and organizational principles, content and all keyword issues related to optimized terms
Links or link popularity are visible to search engines: the quantity and quality of links pointing to you
How the site differs from other sites and how links are organized within the site .
Why is search engine optimization important? Interestingly, even today, we need to explain the relevance of SEO. Clients tend to understand on some level that attracting targeted visitors from the organic results of major search engines is important to their website, but beyond that, most interactive marketers struggle to understand the impact SEO can have. Global search volume data is available from various sources, but the most important thing to understand is that regardless of the source, the numbers are huge and the annual growth is always in the double digits. In most cases, each quarter increases global searches. When Google first started in 1998, 10,000 searches a day was a huge number, putting an incredible strain on the beta system.
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Hitwise (www.hitwise.com) reports that Google and its affiliates (including AOL and YouTube) generate the most searches in the world, with nearly 72% of searches occurring in the United States as of November 2008. Yahoo is a close second with almost 18 points. MSN and Ask.com followed with 4% and 3% respectively. Internationally, Google is even more dominant: its market share exceeds 80% in many markets. Note For more on the early days of Google, see The Google Story by David A. Vise and Mark Malseed (Delta, 2008). According to comScore (www.comscore.com), 750 million people worldwide performed more than 60 billion searches per month in 2008, with more than 18 billion searches performed in the US alone. In other words, 95% of Internet users use a search engine at least once a month, with a global average of more than 80 searches per month.
Beyond these impressive sales figures, what does this mean on a practical level for interactive marketers? In short, if you don't reach your target customers when they're looking for your product or service, your competitors have the opportunity to outsell them. Look at the analytics for your website and think about it this way: How much revenue would the website generate if traffic to strategic goals increased by 10%? How about a 100% increase? Or 1000%? SEO is essential if your website is not generating a lot of traffic through organic search. A small investment in SEO can go a long way, especially if your interactive marketing efforts to date have focused on buying clicks through sponsored listings. We've seen websites achieve a 35 to 1 ROI on monthly SEO costs. If you're paying search engine companies for sponsored traffic, but not investing in organic traffic, you're essentially limiting yourself to about 10% of your chances. Think about your own search behavior: when was the last time you clicked on more than one or two paid sponsored listings in your search results? Any discussion about why SEO is important and why it exists can go on and on. Suffice it to say that Google can only go up and effective interactive marketing must have SEO as a key component of effective execution.
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Important Key Resources Experience comes from comprehensive training. Professionals who focus only on their specialty ignore everything around them. That's why it's imperative that every interactor spend at least a few minutes learning SEO. Although there are no official guidelines, Google has been kind enough to provide some very important resources. If you are interested in working on better search engine performance, check out this link: Help for Webmasters/Site Owners: Search Engine Optimization:
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35291 Webmaster/Website Owner Help: Guidelines for Webmasters: Quality Guidelines:
www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769 A Beginner's Guide to SEO:
www.google.com/webmasters/docs/search-engine-optimization-starter-guide.pdf If that's not enough, dig into the newsletter and blog. Start with SEOmoz.org and dig deeper. Remember, like everything else in life, if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.
Website Technology, Design and Infrastructure Search engines are essentially Web 1.0.5 technologies firmly embedded in the Web 2.0+ world. The basic premise of a search engine has changed little since the launch of WWW Wanderer in 1993 to crawl the web and create the first web search engine. Essentially, every search engine has an application, or crawler, spider, or robot, that finds and follows links, sending copies of what it can see to a database. The database is then analyzed according to the search engine's proprietary algorithms. Using these rules, web properties are indexed and then ranked according to their score on that search engine's specific scorecard. In this fairly simple process, UX designers face many pitfalls.
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Understanding these key relationships will allow you to see your website through the eyes of search engines. An optimized website is based on a structure and technology that makes it easier for search engine spiders to move. Similarly, many content curation decisions determine how search engines rank results. So much of it is predetermined by decisions made in wireframing and discussions about how to design and manage content.
Flash, Ajax, JavaScript, and other scripted content Today's dynamic and interactive web design relies on technologies that are completely unsuited to the needs of search engines. There is a growing gap between what search engines can see and what designers can do. It is the user experience designer's responsibility to ensure that a strategic plan is in place for design-intensive and dynamic websites so that both search engines and users have the best possible experience. Having a basic understanding of how search engines interact with this type of content will help you decide when to implement it and where to close its weaknesses. It is entirely possible to build an optimized website that relies heavily on scripted content if the right trade-offs are made early in the process. Once a website is up and running, creating static or indexable content becomes much more difficult. Therefore, there is strong support for static content for the sake of usability and search engine crawlers. This may seem like extra work at first glance, but the return on investment is exponential. Flash Flash content is technically "indexable". Search engines have made some recent advances in their ability to view Flash files and find the text and links embedded in those elements. Have you ever seen an all-flash resource rank high in search results despite that content being indexed? You probably didn't because it's dangerous for search engines to open up full Flash support. It is assumed that search engines can fully see all links and text content embedded in SWF objects. What prevents a rogue (or "black hat") optimizer from placing apples on object text layers during rendering
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Oranges for a human user viewing fully compiled components through a browser? How do you deep link to a Flash component without fully compiling it? These fundamental gaps will remain until search engines can achieve a level of artificial intelligence that can tell an image is of a horse without the associated text saying "this is a picture of a horse". To design a search engine friendly Flash site, you need to add a static content layer that renders the Flash content. Leaving search engine requirements aside for a moment, the static content layer is key to meeting usability requirements. Think of a browser as someone who views web content over a dial-up connection or using a screen reader browser. These people may be the lowest common denominator and the policies behind your web development may ignore this tiny percentage of human users. But when you exclude these few people, you also exclude GoogleBot and Yahoo Slurp, two of the most important visitors to your site, as they are the crawlers that allow the major search engines to index your site. If search engines can't see crawlable text or links, your content will inevitably not be found through meaningful search results. Static layers can be implemented in several ways. To satisfy search engines, the static content layer must mirror the Flash content. This is not an opportunity to show search engines anything other than what is implemented in Flash. If you do, you're going against the spirit of the game and putting yourself on the dark side. The ideal way to embed Flash content in a static layer is to use a SWFobject so that Flash and static content can exist in the same URL. This will allow search engines to find static content and allow browsers that support Flash to display animations instead of static content. If possible, do not use redirects to maintain the popularity of links to Flash content. Google Code provides a simple set of instructions for implementing this simple JavaScript snippet at http://code.google.com/p/swfobject. There is another option that applies to the gray area of SEO. Hiding hiding might be a dirty word to SEO purists, but if you approach the challenges below from the right angle, you too can have a piece of cake.
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Cloaking uses user agent detection to detect search engine crawlers as they visit websites and route them to static pages for indexing. However, when a human visitor sees the same page in search results and clicks the link, the site detects that the user agent is someone using a Flash-enabled browser and displays the dynamic to that person in a completely separate URL experience . The bottom line is the same as the SWFobject approach: you need to show search engines exactly what you're doing in your content by hiding what you're doing in your Flash content. Ajax, JavaScript, and other scripted content A powerful Web 2.0 content controller, Ajax enables web developers to create content without pages. However, the problems search engines have with Ajax are multiple and require good planning to avoid major mistakes. Ajax stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML, which indicates that search engines have problems using this technology. Search engines basically can't handle JavaScript; the efficiency JavaScript offers developers is the problem search engines have with dynamic content. Another problem search engines have with Ajax is the asynchronous nature of the technology. Search engines can only see the content on initial page load, and any content loaded via script after the shell is initially loaded will not be visible in the index. Since Google cannot extend the session beyond the initial page load and there is no mouse or external proxy to trigger the script, any user-triggered off-page content will not be visible unless the content text is wrapped in a preloaded shell. It is up to UX designers to ensure that the 3D modeling required to create pageless layouts also includes the requirement to preload text and links into the page shell. Anything else, your nice design is invisible. Scripted Navigation One of the most common problems preventing optimization is the use of JavaScript at the heart of your site's navigation. This is a very common situation and is a result of the way many website development and content management tools work. Scripted browsing looks better, so people tend to be interested in using it. However, if JavaScript is the technology driving site navigation, the result is that search engines cannot generate correct link patterns.
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Links within the site: They simply cannot see the link structure of the site. If search engines cannot model the link relationships on a site, deep content will not be visible or assigned the correct link popularity.
Content Management Systems Content management systems were created to make things easier for people, but many of them make it difficult for search engines to manage their results. Here are some typical problems to avoid, either by using workarounds or choosing a more search-friendly content management system: Dynamic URLs. Search engines don't understand "pages" of content
Know the path to this content. Changes to the path or URL in this content may cause search engines to clone the content unexpectedly many times. This situation can seriously affect the website's ability to function properly. If your content management system has a system for generating a session ID in the URL, then you may have a real problem. Use sophisticated analytics for tracking, not session IDs. Multiple URL paths. A typical problem with e-commerce content is retention
The deal is that as a product progresses through its life cycle, it collects multiple URLs. Also, since search engines can only understand content pages based on the URL where the content is found, when a product appears in a category and is part of a gift basket and is a weekly special (and so on), very quickly , search crawlers follow a bunch of different links to find the same content. Do your best to ensure that each piece of content exists in only one URL, and that multiple paths actually depend on a single URL, regardless of where the link is implemented. Rely on a mature analytics system to analyze channels. Unintentional cloning. when you realize a piece
It's easy to see other situations in content management systems that result in unintentional content cloning if the content is only accessible via a unique URL path. Suffice it to say that the schema should only have one URL path pointing to a single piece of content. Infinite loop. A corollary to the problem of inadvertent cloning is that
limited loop. Make sure you don't install search engine spiders
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Potentially endless task of tracking "next" links in a calendar or some such situation. If a search engine spider can traverse the next link to the next calendar day, where it can find another next link, it will follow that link to the next page and so on. Avoid these types of situations by using captive links that search engines can't follow so crawlers can spend their time on the content you want to index. Old URL structure. The first thing in many web development projects
ects is intended to replace the old url structure. The problem is that search engines may already be indexing content at these old URLs, and once you change all of that, you're essentially sending the index back to where it was. Additionally, any deep links a site has accumulated over time point to the old URL structure. Keep as many old URLs as possible, no matter the cost. When you change your content management system, you will probably need to change all the URLs, so if this is unavoidable, it is recommended to give the old URLs a "301 Moved Permanently" status code and redirect to one of the -a old URLs in the base for the new URL. 301 redirects are the only redirects acceptable to search engines.
Domain, Directory, and URL Structures Matter If you're starting from scratch and brand restrictions allow, try choosing a domain that includes one or two keywords. It's hard to get a .com domain with good keywords these days, but if you do, separate them with a hyphen. An important part of how UX affects SEO is in your site's directory structure. It has a significant impact on how link popularity is distributed across the site. Simple is better. Avoid unnecessary files in your directory structure at all costs. Some content management systems will automatically insert a subdirectory; avoid this if possible. This situation reduces the relevance of the entire site. Search engines understand your site hierarchy based on how your site directories are structured, so make sure the most important directories are at the top of the hierarchy. If your environment allows it, use keywords related to parts of your website in your URL structure. Separate the keywords and
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Do not use too many keywords in the file name. Look for something like this: sitename.com/widget-catalog/aquatic-widgets/underwater-submersible.html. Also, make sure you configure redirects for http://site-in-question. com to 301 Moved permanent redirects to http://www.site-in-question.com. If a site resolves with and without www, search engines (especially Yahoo) will index the content of both URLs, opening the entire site to prevent accidental copying. This tends to spread when third parties link to a non-www site and that site contains a dynamic link structure.
Content: The Past (and Present) and Future Kings While producing content is someone else's job, the legwork of website architecture has a lot to do with serving search engines with the right content. As with all forms of keyword-based search, you need to understand the actual search behavior of the people who want to see your listings. Search engines are still very "primitive" as they rely on users entering keywords to match them with properties that are more or less relevant to those keywords. Choosing the right phrase has a lot to do with whether your site is relevant in the right context. Ideally, your SEO partner will provide you with a set of keyword phrase goals before you begin and work with you throughout the schematic process. If you don't have such a capable partner in your process, read the Google AdWords Keyword Research Tool (https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal) and do some research on people's actual search behavior Browse the your category and then spend some time on this post to discover the phrases that potential customers are searching for and use those phrases accordingly on your site. Search engines look for keywords at various points during the website analysis process. Optimization is all about making sure the right words are in the right places. By understanding the role of keywords in the UX design process, you will create the necessary framework for future success.
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So why is content king? It is at the core of what the site is designed to provide. Search engines need textual content that they can see and index. Website visitors demand engaging content that deserves their attention. Bloggers and webmasters need link-worthy content. If the right content is in the right place, search engines cannot link the right visitors to your site.
Naming Conventions and Terminology Matches It is important that the keyword objectives are reflected in the taxonomy developed for a website. Using keyword phrases in the main structure of your website can make your entire website more relevant to what you sell. If you sell widgets, don't call your product listing catalog online, call it widget catalog. Again, use keyword research to make opposing decisions. For example, use laptops instead of laptops in the structure because people search for laptops more than 10,000% more often than laptops.
Metadata, Titles, and Keywords It's great that we've reached the end of this chapter before diving into the basics of metadata. There are countless meta tags available, but only a few really make a big impact, as all others are prone to spam. Related tags are: Page Title. Note that this is not a label, but
real