Usability testing - in my opinion

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.

Follow-up article.... Poor usability on istockphoto.com

Been quite sometime since I've updated my blog eh? I read an article by Jacob Nielsen on bloggers contribution to information clutter in cyber space http://www.useit.com/alertbox/articles-not-blogs.html was contemplating on my perspective to this article and have finally decided to go low on number of post but improve the quality of each post. Now over to the article

Remember my previous post on usability issue on istockphoto.com, they have done a quick fix to this issue, the 'search within' feature is completely removed from the site!!! Now that can only be a quick fix since 'Search within' is a critical functionality in image search portals...

I think instead of trying to re-invent the wheel they can do a CtrlC + CtrlV of this functionality from their parent company site gettyimages.com its handle quite well there.

Poor Usability in istockphoto.com

Over the weekend, I've been doing some extensive image search for one of my online campaigns. I wanted a portrait of a Team manager preferably in his 50s with a happy look on his face which will suggest 'how easy it is for him to manage data with the help of this particualr tool for which i was doing the campaign. Additionally if the image had people in the background, out of focus, like his subordinates, will add value to the campaign messaging.

User behaiour in image search portals:
The clarity in the kind of image a user wants as they start to search will be about 30-40% as you keep refining your search keywords is when you will arrive at the right kind of image.

I used istockphotos because they have a good repository and affordably priced. The moment you enter the keyword and hit on search... automatically the option to do a 'new search' changes into 'search within'.... Everytime i have to do a new search I have to change it from 'Search within' to 'New search' adding to more number of clicks and interupting on the thought flow. It was very annoying.

And I also noticed that it threw some completely unusable search parameters as reference for the image keyword i was looking for.



If the option to do a 'Search within' was by choice, it would have been more usable and time saving instead of assuming user behaviour in best possible scenario and automatically changing the search criteria.

This morning I thought I will send my feedback on this particular usability issue to istockphoto and to my surprise they din't have their feedback button upfront. I had to do some searching for that as well... I did manage to find it and have posted my comment. Lets see if they take user feedback seriously.

That apart I found the right image that will suit my copy. http://www.istockphoto.com/ has a very good image repository and the best part is you can get a good image for web usage as low as $1. These minor edits on crtical functionalities will enable the user to use the site more effeciently.