For the past few weeks I've been going around setting up things to start on my new assignment. Yes, I'm an Independent Creative Consultant now. Predominantly working on Product UI and Usability revamp. I work for a products company, headquartered in Norway. With fully established client base for desktop EPM (Enterprise Performance Management) solutions. Their new venture is to offer this solution on the web as SAS (software-as-a-service). I took a demo of this product while I was asked to do some consultation work on their website revamping. I was simply fascinated about the product functionality but it was not very intuitive. So here I am doing exactly what it takes to make it a world class product :)
Now over to the topic: Usability testing with Grayscale prototype.
As usability professionals, we base few of our design rules on established practices which are tested and used across other organizations. So when we develop the wireframe we will ensure that most of that gets into the design as hygiene. I had developed 2 wireframes and presented it to the operations head. He was able to visualize how the end product will get transformed and then he asked me if I can give him a document why this wireframe is better in terms of usability than the existing product. To give him a tangible way to measure usability I asked the question to god google “How to measure usability” after skimming thru’ the search results picked up http://www.userdesign.com/usability_faq.html#measure it was precise.
I picked up few metrics and developed a test and ran it thru’ few prospective users – I was really amazed at the way I could qualitatively gauge my prototypes. Sometime the things we assume the user might know are not so in reality. End of the test I went back to my table and figured out solutions for the most of the issues and developed the recommendation document. And I was sure why my design was better than the existing in terms for first time user experience, time taken to complete a task, where people get lost in the existing design and how the new design can handle it etc.
Deadlines sometimes make us deliver products before the end of their gestation period. Which is not very good for the product. I think as usability professional we should take intiative to champion the cause of usability in the organizations we work for. And eventually it will become an established practices for the generations to come :)
Some useful article about Grayscale prototype:
http://www.newfangled.com/website_development_process
Prototying software http://www.carettasoftware.com/
It think it will be more useful for websites than web apps.
