wireframes & usability

In recent years, as user experience research has become more critical or even standard practice, there is a clear trend towards measuring user experience and usability using quantitative research techniques.

WHAT IS URUT?
URUT is an automated test process whereby a script or series of questions is prepared and packaged into an application. Test subjects may be invited in advance to participate, or intercepted when they enter a website. Hundreds of participants may be involved and all their data is gathered and analysed automatically. URUT can be both simple and quite sophisticated, and Fortune Global 2000 and Internet 200 companies are increasingly using Unmoderated Remote Usability Testing (URUT) as part of their user experience and usability research toolkit.

WHY, WHEN AND HOW WOULD YOU USE URUT?
1. To quantify your usability research
One customer base includes different personalities, usage patterns and perspectives. Quantifying site usability is the only way you can ensure that you are reaching a true representation of your diverse population. Using URUT you gain valuable data about that population and can validate lab findings – or alternatively target which critical tasks you need to be probing in a lab-based study.

2. To conduct benchmark studies
URUT allows researchers to obtain statistically significant usability metrics on how a website performs vs. other versions of the site or vs. competing sites. It’s a great way to measure user experience and compare results either across time or through industry benchmarking.

3. To test users in their natural context
My computer and environment is different from my friend’s computer and environment and most likely different than a good portion of the population. Testing participants in their natural context accounts for different systems, configurations, and setups. The data you gain not only accounts for a mix of these various environments and setups but also encourages participants to act as they normally would, as they are not being observed.

4. To understand user behavior
You want to understand why users are coming to your site and what they do once they come there. URUT uses a combination of web analytics (where users go) and surveys (the why) to create a complete picture and provide valuable data to support the best user experience for your site.

5. To validate or define your lab-based research
You want to ensure that the research you are currently conducting is valid and a true representation. With URUT not only do you gain data that supports your current research, you can also use URUT to target key critical issues and tasks to bring in the lab for further probing.

6. To test internationally without traveling
International research is very expensive and at times put aside due to the cost and time commitment. URUT allows you the flexibility to conduct a study in many international locations from one place. Not only does it remove the expense of travel it also removes the need for all data to be translated before analysis.

As the web becomes a more complex place and users interact with it in different ways, user experience and usability testing and measurement must evolve and continuously innovate. URUT is an example of this innovation and has proven its worth for the past 6 or 7 years. The key to solid research lies not only in proper execution and the right technology, but also in the ability of the research team to understand that different data comes from different methods and tools, and that each should be used with a purpose and to meet specific goals (what, why, when and how). The combination of methods and tools is often the best way to go. URUT is a great choice for specific purposes and, if well executed, can become an invaluable source of data about user experience.

Taken from:

http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article6067.asp

Seems as Remote Usability Testing will be becoming more pervasive in the future.
Uxited.com reports positive findings on their remote usability testing which were conducted over the course of two days.
Uxited’s findings on the benifits:

• You hear what the user is saying (and perhaps listen better since you’re not distracted by what he/she looks like).
• You see the user’s on-screen activity including what browser they use and how it’s set up (e.g., number of toolbars).
• You get a better understanding of the user’s natural environment (whether their speakers are hooked up, whether there’s a dog in the house, etc.).
• You may get more honest feedback.  I’m not sure what the research says about this, but my impression was that people not meeting face-to-face with a facilitator may be more comfortable saying what they really think.
• No need to sit in a dark room behind one-way glass, nor keep our voices down when we wanted to discuss users’ comments during a test.  (Our conference line was on mute, of course.)
• No travel costs

We from pidoco° have been stressing the very same benifits for some time now and since our Remote Usability Tester has been available as a public BETA, we have been gaining heaps of positive feedback on this process.
Certainly, in the age of the real-time communication it is just another step towards improving communication within business and private realms whilst protecting the environment.  (Soon no more business trips in First Class needed, sorry guys!)

Welcome to the future of UX..

Rob James posted a great article on the “top down approach” which would aid developers to work on their projects in a “holistic approach”.

Essentially the concept is that you work from the user’s perspective down, rather than thinking through the requirements to come up with the domain model, class models and the like. The reason that this is beneficial is that you focus on what the user actually requires to do, not what the system expects them to do. And that is the first step towards building systems that employ best practices in usability.

In the post he mentions the 9 steps of successful project development:

• Concept
• Brainstorming
• Paper wireframes
• UI Design “Look & Feel”
• HTML Screens
• UI Controller Layer
• Tests and stubbed service layers
• Service implementation and data layer
• Utility classes

A well written article and surely a great approach and we believe that the perfect mediator between end-user, developer, client and technology is in fact -the wireframe.

There are many guidelines out there on Usability. We find that this article shows a few tips which can definitely aid the overall experiences of a Web interface. It can help to keep those tips in mind when designing an interface, even when still in the prototyping phase!
A  nice little article by “bestdesigntuts” on U&Design ideas with direct quotes.  The original post can be found here:

1. Design is a key determinant to building online trust with consumers. For motivated users of an information site, bad design (busy layout, small print, too much text) hurts more than good design helps. – Sillence, Briggs, Fishwick, and Harris, 2004.
2. Layout on a web page (whitespace and advanced layout of headers, indentation, and figures) may not measurably influence performance, but it does influence satisfaction. – Chaperro, Shaikh, and Baker, 2005.
3. Experience matters: Blue links are easier to click than black ones, even though black ones have higher visual contrast and are easier to see. – Van Schaik and Ling, 2003.
4. It’s important to consider the users when you have a choice of icons, links, or both. Initial performance is best with the link alone. Frequent users can use either equally effectively. Icons are not faster, relative to text links alone. – Wiedenbeck, 1999.
5. Rules of thumb for icons: Make them as large as feasible, place frequently used icons in a persistent task bar, and arrange them either in a square (first choice) or in a horizontal layout. – Grobelny, Karwowski, and Drury, 2005.
6. The acceptance and impact of animation is enhanced when users are warned to expect it and allowed to start it when they want. – Weiss, Knowlton, and Morrison, 2002.
7. Use of whitespace between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20 %. – Lin, 2004.
8. A format of 95 characters per line is read significantly faster than shorter line lengths; however, there are no significant differences in comprehension, preference, or overall satisfaction, regardless of line length. – Shaikh, 2005.
9. Applications vs. websites: In general, visual layout guidelines for GUIs also apply to the web, but there are differences to be aware of. For example, dense pages with lots of links take longer to scan for both GUI and web; however, alignment may not be as critical for web pages as previously thought. – Parush, Shwarts, Shtub, and Chandra, 2005.
10. Narrative presentation enhances comprehension and memory. Narrative advertisements produce more positive attitude about the brand and a higher incidence of intent to purchase.– Escalas, 2004.
11. On sites with clear labels and prominent navigation options, users tend to browse rather than search.Searching is no faster than browsing in this context. – Katz and Byrne, 2003.
12. Users will wait longer for better content. Users will wait between 8-10 seconds for information on the web, depending on the quality of the information. – Ryan and Valverde, 2003.
13. Consumer purchase behavior is driven by perceived security, privacy, quality of content and design, in that order. – Ranganathan and Ganapathy, 2002.
14. In 2001, Bernard found that prior user experience with websites dictated where they expected common web page elements to appear on a page. The same still holds true today: Users have clear expectations about where to find the things they want (search and back-to-home links) as well as the things they want to avoid (advertising). – Shaihk and Lenz, 2006.
15. When assessing web accessibility under four conditions (expert review, screenreader using JAWS, automated testing via “Bobby”, and remote testing by blind users) those using screenreaders find the most issues, while automated testing finds the least number of accessibility issues. – Mankoff, Fait, and Tran, 2005.

1. Design is a key determinant to building online trust with consumers. For motivated users of an information site, bad design (busy layout, small print, too much text) hurts more than good design helps. – Sillence, Briggs, Fishwick, and Harris, 2004.
2. Layout on a web page (whitespace and advanced layout of headers, indentation, and figures) may not measurably influence performance, but it does influence satisfaction. – Chaperro, Shaikh, and Baker, 2005.
3. Experience matters: Blue links are easier to click than black ones, even though black ones have higher visual contrast and are easier to see. – Van Schaik and Ling, 2003.
4. It’s important to consider the users when you have a choice of icons, links, or both. Initial performance is best with the link alone. Frequent users can use either equally effectively. Icons are not faster, relative to text links alone. – Wiedenbeck, 1999.
5. Rules of thumb for icons: Make them as large as feasible, place frequently used icons in a persistent task bar, and arrange them either in a square (first choice) or in a horizontal layout. – Grobelny, Karwowski, and Drury, 2005.
6. The acceptance and impact of animation is enhanced when users are warned to expect it and allowed to start it when they want. – Weiss, Knowlton, and Morrison, 2002.
7. Use of whitespace between paragraphs and in the left and right margins increases comprehension by almost 20 %. – Lin, 2004.
8. A format of 95 characters per line is read significantly faster than shorter line lengths; however, there are no significant differences in comprehension, preference, or overall satisfaction, regardless of line length. – Shaikh, 2005.
9. Applications vs. websites: In general, visual layout guidelines for GUIs also apply to the web, but there are differences to be aware of. For example, dense pages with lots of links take longer to scan for both GUI and web; however, alignment may not be as critical for web pages as previously thought. – Parush, Shwarts, Shtub, and Chandra, 2005.
10. Narrative presentation enhances comprehension and memory. Narrative advertisements produce more positive attitude about the brand and a higher incidence of intent to purchase.– Escalas, 2004.
11. On sites with clear labels and prominent navigation options, users tend to browse rather than search.Searching is no faster than browsing in this context. – Katz and Byrne, 2003.
12. Users will wait longer for better content. Users will wait between 8-10 seconds for information on the web, depending on the quality of the information. – Ryan and Valverde, 2003.
13. Consumer purchase behavior is driven by perceived security, privacy, quality of content and design, in that order. – Ranganathan and Ganapathy, 2002.
14. In 2001, Bernard found that prior user experience with websites dictated where they expected common web page elements to appear on a page. The same still holds true today: Users have clear expectations about where to find the things they want (search and back-to-home links) as well as the things they want to avoid (advertising). – Shaihk and Lenz, 2006.
15. When assessing web accessibility under four conditions (expert review, screenreader using JAWS, automated testing via “Bobby”, and remote testing by blind users) those using screenreaders find the most issues, while automated testing finds the least number of accessibility issues. – Mankoff, Fait, and Tran, 2005.

“It’s all about usability”.. agreed!

Thanks to Scott Monty

To mark the 50th anniversary of the Prince Philip Designers Prize, design commentator Kevin McCloud interviews H.R.H. Prince Philip about his passion for good design. Some interesting retrospective views by the Prince, definitely an interesting view.

A SXSW Presentation from March 2009 held in Austin Texas-USA which we caught off slideshare.
A fairly lengthy presentation on wireframing- very informative for both, novice and advanced users!

Steffen Zörnig talks about us and some of our competitors.
It is an interesting review on wireframe creation tools and a definite must-read.  Sorry to the one’s who don’t speak German, maybe you view it via google translate..
One of his statements is that Usability Testing will definitely improve your prototype and that the usage of prototype creation tools is advisable.

Wireframe Mockups, bei dem die Webseiten skizziert werden und dank aktueller Software wie FlairBuilder, MockFlow, Axure, oder Pidoco sogar als Prototype (Klickdummy) interaktiv nutzbar sind. So lassen sich im Vorfeld schon Probleme in der Usability feststellen und verbessern.

Furthermore, his conclusion is that in fact our product seems to be the best solution in terms of functionality.

Funktionell ist jedoch Pidoco ein großes Stück weiter und wäre für größere Projekte meine erste Wahl!

Well, we could’t agree more and would like to thank Steffen for the research well done. Of course time is short these days and that is why we’d like to take the oportunity to add to his review.

Our product provides the “scribble mode” which lets the collaborators/co-workers etc.  undestand that it is- in fact a wireframe.
Anybody looking at a prototype done in the  “scribble mode” will get the impression that it has been done by hand(or on paper).  A nice little feature which shouldn’t be missed out on! Here is a good example of how it can look like.. We also let our users export to HTML, since it will give the possibility to directly import the pidoco° prototype into running projects.

A great review on wireframing tools and some of the author’s requirements for successful implementation. The author (Rolf Kleef) lists his personal requirements as:

• Integration of the whole work processes with how I work would be great, specifically allowing offline work on designs

• Software as a service (SaaS) is ok, if I can take my data with me.

• Should not require software installation, or expensive subscriptions to participate for people outside my organisation.

• Should be usable on all platforms: I’m using Linux, designers usually want a Mac, and project clients often are still stuck on Windows.

We’re extremely pleased that Rolf Kleef is so satisfied with our product and we are hereby thanking him for the great review.

However, one requirement is missing in his list:

• The ability to review the prototype and to get feedback from other co-workers!

We believe that getting feedback is an integral part of the design process and that it should be done via the very same tool which builds the prototype, wouldn’t you agree? If you do, then you have surely already made friends with our Reviewer and Remote Usability Tester, and if not -you really should!