My Twittering (2009-06-14)
- This week, my tweets will focus on the UPA conference, and my research into usability research. After that, normal broadcasting resumes. #
- Made it to Portland for #upa2009. Had a nice dinner with a school friend from years ago. #
- Users wiling to struggle with an unusable intranet if the info is useful. Kath Straub at #upa2009 #
- Offices with background music degrade the performance of their staff. Staccato music is worse than meditative music. #upa2009 #
- Blind experienced Internet users gesture to indicate spatial organization of information that is different from the visual org’n of a site. #
- Add to the public data of US internet users: do the self-test at the Pew Internet Project site. Look on http://htxt.it/ffxk #upa2009 #
- If you’re at #UPA2009 conference and interested in user research, please participate: http://bit.ly/zmRCI #
- By show of hands, 2 of 15 usability testers collect time-on-task data. #upa2009 #
- Kath Straub on a meaningful measure of web-site usage: Engagement Index (visitors move n clicks beyond the landing pg). #upa2009 #
- Lickert scales and subjective sliders give the same results. The latter is more “fun” for participants. #upa2009 #
- The volunteers and staff running #upa2009 this year are so friendly and helpful! #
- Today at #UPA2009, in the Tools Of The Trade workshop, 7 participants will present the tools they use in their usability practice! #
- Research idea: put iPhone-app icons on scrabble tiles, w/ a text label below each icon, so research participants can shuffle them. #upa2009 #
- Further to prev tweet, you can get “fake” scrabble tiles at art-supply store, because some people make jewellery out of them. #upa2009 #
- Wall-mounted User Personas incl a video cam attached to the wall. Staff watch representative video of users from the UP research. #upa2009 #
- Annette on user personas: “The greatest sin in my work life is to have my own work not digestible and usable.” overheard at #upa2009 #
- Discussion: editing research video faster. “It takes a long time w Adobe Premiere Elements.” Problem with handheld cam: Batteries! #upa2009 #
- Discussion: editing research video: You can import avi, wmv into #Morae, then playback >100%, but do you get the editing features? #upa2009 #
- Shane from TechSmith says: #Morae can log/tag events with a wii remote during the research, if your laptop is bluetooth enabled. #upa2009 #
- Lisa says Balsamiq is cheap, and low-fidelity (sketch-like) but for $75 there are somethings it doesn’t do. Overheard at #upa2009 #
- Tools: To share your Balsamiq interactive prototypes, your recipient needs #Balsamiq or you can provide live desktop-sharing. #upa2009 #
- I’m impressed at the ease with which Lisa adds tables/grids and tabs to her prototype, by using Balsamiq. #upa2009 #
- Discussion of HTML vs Axure vs Balsamiq for prototyping. At Mary’s company people like Axure. “Visio is a nightmare.” #upa2009 #
- For usability testing, S asks room “Do ppl still prefer low-fi prototypes when we have tools to make things look fantastic?” “Yes!” #upa2009 #
- Peers presenting tools to each other. Linda demos Revolution prorotyping tool, which evolved from HyperCard. Multimedia capability. #upa2009 #
- Put a mirror in front of people as they work: they’re more productive, make fewer errors. From @kas’s #upa2009 session RT via @trentmankelow #
- RT pls. What do you use to make multimedia-prototypes for usability testing, other than Runtime Revolution and Microsoft Blend? #upa2009 #
- Annette doing impromptu demo of FlairBuilder. Let’s hear it for online presence and Twitter at #UPA2009 conference. #
- Comparing FlairBuilder & Balsamiq: very similar, FlairBuilder is 2x price ($150) but not low-fi. “Lisa: Seems like it works better” #upa2009 #
- Annette: “OOHH! YouTube” as she adds multimedia to FlairBuilder. Trent points out Annette’s Ooh: “There’s user delight.” #upa2009 #
- ProtoShare combines prototyping, collaboration features, and spits out a document. Interesting, but no trial software! #upa2009 #
- Another prototyping “tool” is taking big paper & markers to customers to walk thru the prototypes and gather sketched feedback. #upa2009 #
- The weakness of paper prototyping is the lack of interaction — the transitions between the sketched states. #upa2009 #
- Tip: Before sharing your PowerPoint prototypes: compress your ppt file: Format tab > Adjust group > Compress Pictures (one or all). #upa2009 #
- Oh dear. When the client sees your obviously low-fi prototype and still says “I LOVE the visual design.” #upa2009 #
- Raluca on attaching a camera to users’ mobile devices: users don’t want their device scratched, an extra half pound gets unwieldy #upa2009 #
- Document camera looks like desk lamp, built in camera. It’s good to view user activity on a surface but not on a hand-held device #upa2009 #
- Demo of a document camera. Its light may cause glare on a shiny device. Excellent image! Soft controls for brightness, focus, zoom. #upa2009 #
- Discussion: is a web cam a substitute for a document camera? Doc cam ($3000) better for high detail, larger surfaces. #upa2009 #
- Raluca: users “are really cautious” about having you attach video cameras on their phones for usability studies. Damage. #upa2009 #
- Best: connect document camera to Morae (only if DirectShow driver). Or display the video live, and use #Morae to record the screen. #upa2009 #
- Usability study collects user input into a “diary” by SMS/Twitter during the day. Users review and expand the diary in the evening. #upa2009 #
- Cost of using private Twitter accts or D message to conduct int’l user research: whatever the cost of SMS/texting in your country. #upa2009 #
- Shane demos #Morae. I’m already a user so it’s hard to pick out its amazing features because it’s all familiar to me. #upa2009 #
- Need participants for research on the epistemology of usability research. Details at FiveSketches.com. Please approach me at #upa2009. #
- Mary showed the use of SurveyMonkey. Discussion of privacy issues. SurveyMonkey is located in Portland. Any of you at #UPA2009? #
- To recruit study participants, 3%-8% of Facebook ads get clicked, whereas display ads in MySpace “are broken”. Overheard at #upa2009 #
- Annette says: recruit study participants with Facebook ads, buy a $1 age-appropriate photo from iStockPhoto.co; works for all ages. #UPA2009 #
- Q: Incentives for int’l recruitment: how to pay ‘em? A: Via local bank; mail a USD cheques+$25 cashing fee; send local Amazon certs #upa2009 #
- Tools workshop continues: productivity tools! Screen-sharing alternatives for PC & Mac: Yuuguu (time-limited) and @Mikogo (free). #upa2009 #
- Christina Wallace shared several techniques for directing and redirecting a team by using images. #upa2009 #
- Susan Weinschenk presents with great graphics, precision timing, visual jokes, engaging content. Excellent learning op. #upa2009 #
- The next session’s another thrill! Four more Big Names: Chauncey Wilson, Karen Bachman, Rolf Molich, Nigel Bevan, on BoK. #upa2009 #
- Body of Knowledge sess’n starts w 3-min frantic writing, on individual cards: “What should be in the BoK?” Results posted tomorrow #upa2009 #
- Chauncey says the Body of Knowledge (http://www.usabilitybok.org/) is what’s left of UPA’s certificat’n attempt of a few years ago. #upa2009 #
- Spanking! Chauncey Wilson: “Usability … is still a relatively young field in serious need of some discipline” at BoK session. #upa2009 #
- Nigel Bevan says “invite people who put advice on lists (eg UTest) to add to the Body of Knowledge. http://www.usabilitybok.org/ #upa2009 #
- Rolf Molich: If we’re begging volunteers to contribute content to the Body of Knowledge, it suggests we want quantity, not quality. #upa2009 #
- Impressed yesterday to watch attendee w limited sight nav/pan so fast around Hilton’s sign-in page at 500% magnificat’n. #upa2009 @whitneyq #
- Molich calls for HFI to publish what content the CUA certification covers. #
- Rolf Molich calls for HFI to publish what content the CUA certification covers. #upa2009 #
- First REAL discussion between audience and panel presenters I’ve seen, this year, at the Bok sesson! #upa2009 #
- Carol Smith’s session on usability testing tips - the logistics of it. Tip 1: Hire a professional to recruit participants. #upa2009 #
- Recruiting for remote #usability testing: recruit pple who have a separate phone line & Internet connection: screen share + talk. #upa2009 #
- Can your remote participant install minor applications (e.g screen-sharing app.)? Some IT dept’s lock down user ‘s computers. #upa2009 #
- Get someone to run you through your own usability test, beforehand. Give assistant a checklist to ensure you don’t forget anything. #upa2009 #
- RT @MaryT_ A theme I’m seeing: have your team members try design or user research, and then share findings with everyone. #upa2009 #
- “When you conduct on-site studies, always bring duct tape and painter’s tape {masking tape]” says Carol Smith at #upa2009 #
- Technical trouble during a remote usability study? Log in to a user’s machine remotely: https://www.copilot.com/ #upa2009 #
- In Online Card Sorting With Images, Jed Wood says “tell people the purpose of your study (e.g. website); you get better results.” #upa2009 #
- Jed Wood says: Start with an open card sort, validate with a closed card sort. #upa2009 #
- Modified Delphi method: card sorting with serial participants: one person sorts, the next person continues/adjusts it. #upa2009 #
- If you have a very large set of cards to sort, give participants overlapping subsets. Works if subset is 60% of larger set. #upa2009 #
- To study the IA of ALDO’s online shoe store: card sorting with images (not text) of footware. 51 womens, 53 mens. #upa2009 #
- People think about footware in diff ways. Card-sorting with the same 104 cards, men create 7.2 groups, women 8.4 groups. #upa2009 #
- Jamie Hart’s card-sorting results: “Surprise, surprise, men have a simpler view of shoes.” #upa2009 #
- In the IA, men need 8 categories (down from 18) vs women need 22 groups (up from 18). Sales incr, user-complaints decr. #upa2009 #
- Chris Nodder’s Usability for Evil: UI purposely designed to emotionally involve users in something that benefits you more than them #upa2009 #
- Nodder: “If you want to learn about evil, read marketing literature.” “A complete disregard for their users; it’s maximize profit.” #upa2009 #
- Nodder shows how companies put important information in plain sight, but use design, layout, to ensure nobody looks at it. #upa2009 #
- On LinkedIn, Ron Bates has 40000+ contacts. If he spent 1 min with each, it would take him 3 working years to talk to them all. #upa2009 #
- On an online store, a “Hacker/Virus Safe” logo in top left corner increases sales 8%, but are 2x as likely to be untrustworthy. #upa2009 #
- “Give people member-only perks to keep them coming back.” How is this Evil? “THEY benefit more than YOU,” says Nodder. #upa2009 #
- “Anything you can do to make people feel loved will endear them to you.” Can you do this on your site? #upa2009 #
- Hebard at Intuit on ethnographic user research: “Our ethnographic findings are pretty durable,” can be used in successive projects. #upa2009 #
- Hebard: “Ethnographic questions are about the LINK btwn culture & behavior.” Not “What are you wearing” but “Why’d you choose it?” #upa2009 #
- Evangelize your research methods. Tell people what ethnography is, how to work with you, how it’s valuable. #upa2009 #
- For longitudinal ethnography, use a pre-screening activity. If they can’t complete THAT, exclude them from long-term research. #upa2009 #
- Example pre-screener for your longitudinal ethnographic-research subjects: “Take a photo of yourself, write a short introduction.” #upa2009 #
- Ethnographers see emotions and FEEL emotions. Hebard tells story of flood that wipes out businesses & hope. Not like lab research. #upa2009 #
- Ethnography: one of few ways to get people’s values & emotions. Write them down in your fieldnotes. Important for emotional design. #upa2009 #
- Hebard’s hardest things about ethnography: 1. Framing the question, 2. Emotions (both the level of engagement and the abrupt end). #upa2009 #
- At Intuit, the ethnographic research informed strategies for the design of future products, says Hebard. #upa2009 #
- Eva Kaniasty lists four common criticisms of usability testing, proposes web analytics as a way to address some. #upa2009 #
- Visitor/session tracking lets you track what visitors are doing. Where are users dropping off the optimal click path you designed?#upa2009 #
- Kaniasty calls clickmaps & heatmaps from CrazyEgg “poor man’s eyetracking”. http://crazyegg.com/ #upa2009 #
- Email datamining (e.g. via Facebook) is “stalking on a grand scale” says Kaniasty. Use the data for u-testing recruiting profiles, personas. #
- Session recording (web sites) gathers scroll maps, form analytics, page actions. Helps find potential problems, tests browsers. #upa2009 #
- Kaniasty says A | B multivariate testing is “pretty difficult.” I disagree. (@kas recommended testing multiples in a diff #upa2009 session) #
- Eva Kaniasty’s overview of analytics/usability-testing methods covers the basics, so it’s perfect as a New-To-Usability topic at #upa2009 #
- “Software is a necessary evil for those who build hardware,” says Leo Frishberg, at #UPA2009. #
- Discussing famous Agile Process diagram (Desiree Sy in JUS 2:3 2007) where design in one sprint informs the dev of the next sprint. #upa2009 #
- Sometimes you’re designing one or two cycles ahead of the coding, testing two or three cycles after the coding. #upa2009 #
- Says the Agile session moderator: “I’d like to hear from you guys what REALLY happens in cycle zero.” #upa2009 #
- When designing of concepts begins at sprint zero, then we need a research phase before that — 2-3 months for the field research. #upa2009 #
- One speaker: at SAP the designers feel they own Agile’s sprint zero. #upa2009 #
- Leo: “How do we approach the up-front research in an agile way so it’s not a black-box block that precedes Agile’s sprint zero?” #upa2009 #
- “Make the thing fit the human, not vice versa” is ergonomics. “Make the __ fit the human, not vice versa” is #usability. So what’s the __? #
- Leo thinks there’s a huge apology for the notion of Big Design at Agile sessions at #upa2009. Can you get a user experience w/out that? #
- Sprint zero is about understanding. “During sprint zero, we had lots of getting-to-know-you and who-has-personas discussions.” #upa2009 #
- If you work from the single sprint out, it’s difficult in any one sprint to know whether the piece is the right piece. #upa2009 #
- Flashback to Jared Spool’s opening session: our role is like the stranger in the ‘Stone Soup’ story. We’re an enabling profession. #upa2009 #
- “The only projects I’ve seen succeed is the-brilliant-dictator and the people-admit-the-product-will-iterate with customer input.” #upa2009 #
- Lissajoux: “During Agile development, the project’s vision must be reset from time to time … and the pieces refactored.” #upa2009 #
- In my experience, development teams like the promise of “speed” in Agile development. Is that the (sole) goal of Agile? #upa2009 #
- “Our field has a tradition of critiquing. Do we hop on board Agile train if it produces bad results? Do we critique the process?” #upa2009 #
- “I’ve come to appreciate Agile but it is a developer-focused process…that is it’s shortcoming. What about the rest of team?” #upa2009 #
- “Agile is developer-focused because developers have been so inefficient. …With Agile, the bottleneck has moved to UX/UI/design.” #upa2009 #
- Agile is rather ironically named. Isn’t it a broken development-centred philosophy? #upa2009 #
- “Agile is an ogre that dominates the room.” (Much frustration with Agile being expressed, now, at this #upa2009 session.) “Futile” #
- Voice of support: “Agile isn’t about checking off boxes in a process, but about organising the work in ways that gets it done.” #upa2009 #
- [Do US attendees of #upa2009 notice that I use Canadian spelling, or assume I’m making Twittypos?] #
- Leo says: “Agile has an extraordinarily dependency on co-location.” #upa2009 #
- OK, I’m packing up; my ride is here! THANKS to all the volunteers and conference staff for a wonderful time. Enjoy closing plenary! #upa2009 #
June 14th, 2009 | Tags: @JeromeR, Jerome Ryckborst, microblogging, My Twitter summaries | Category: My Twitter summaries |
1 comment
Jerome on Twitter
Jerome on LinkedIn
Jerome on Technorati
Jerome on Delicious
This is fabulous - thank you! Very helpful. I was at UPA but you can’t go to all sessions and even if you did, you wouldn’t take away the same nuggets of wisdom. Thanks much!