Posts Tagged ‘user experience’

« Older Entries

FedEx Walks the UX Walk

Friday, November 18th, 2011


For the third year in a row, FedEx invited AnswerLab to participate in their World Usability Day event. And, it IS an event. FedEx’s Digital User Experience Team organizes a day-long conference as a forum for sharing ideas, best practices and networking opportunities with user experience leaders from FedEx, other leading companies such as Microsoft, Adobe, Hilton and ServiceMaster, and UX partners. There were approximately 250 of us gathered to highlight the importance of user experience’s impact on business results and to collaborate on creating the best possible experiences for FedEx customers.

The event really nailed some key areas of opportunity available to companies focused on creating superior B2B and consumer digital experiences:

• Customers are more likely to have a first digital interaction with a brand on a mobile or social platform.

• Users adopt new products or services when doing so results in experiences that make their lives better.

• Every touch point you have with customers is a key moment in your brand’s story. Even the way you handle the experience of a customer leaving is impactful, both in the likelihood of their return and their social impact via word of mouth on future customers.

AnswerLab led an interactive session on best practices for uncovering user insights across mobile platforms with ethnographic research (studying users’ natural environments and their mobile behavior within the context of these various environments). We enjoyed the opportunity to share our mobile expertise and best practices with hundreds of UX practitioners in this educational forum. We’re looking forward to next year and more World Usability Day events.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Product Lifecycle User Research

Monday, February 7th, 2011

User research, when applied to an entire product lifecycle, has tremendous advantages. Stakeholders are afforded the opportunity to benchmark their existing product, learn from users as they interact with prototypes and early concept ideas, shape the product offering as a result, and apply those decisions to the redesign. And once the product has been redesigned, testing it again to validate the final design is icing on the cake.

Productlifecycle

It all starts with a Wants & Needs Analysis. What do your users want? What do your users need? This is an important question to ask when redesigning a product. For the rest of this post, I’ll assume you are redesigning a website but the benefits of user research over the course of an entire lifecycle applies to any product. There are various ways to discover what your users want and need, such as asking them to fill out a survey or provide feedback in a focus group setting.

Based on this information and any other business objectives, a site benchmark should be conducted. Before tearing down your site, it’s always a good idea to get a good feel for what users think of it right now. Can they find the information they are looking for? Does your site provide the kind of content that visitors want? The site benchmark often involves a quantitative study, whereby site visitors are intercepted by a popup window asking if they would like to participate in a study. The results, in conjunction with the previous round of a wants & needs analysis should give your team further direction for the redesign.

Armed with tons of information about what your users really want and need, the design team can finally get to work! We suggest starting with very low level design ideas such as wireframes or simple paper prototypes. Why? They are low-cost, easy and quick to develop, and when tested with even a small group of participants, can verify whether or not you are heading in the right direction. Wouldn’t you rather know now that your understanding of your user’s needs is correct, before you’ve invested lots of money and resources?

Now that you’ve tested some early stage wireframes, learned where to make changes, and adapted your design, it’s time to build out a site that is higher fidelity. This could include full color mockups, clickable comps, or even something more developed like an iRise simulation. Many times, our clients think they have to get a fully developed prototype out the door for testing at this stage but that’s just not the case. Remember, when you are conducting user research across an entire product lifecycle, there is no rush. Take your time and think in stages. It’s far easier to make some changes, even if incomplete, and test, than it is to commit all your resources to making something ‘perfect’ and then having to adjust because it’s not ‘perfect.’

What’s next? A soft-launch. This could be a beta invite, or even a site that goes live under the radar. The main point with this, the live customer feedback, stage is to get feedback on the final decision you’ve decided to run with. All the previous steps lead here. Did your design reflect on what your users want and need? You’ll find out during this phase. Once you’ve synthesized the feedback, it’s time to launch.

Launch

Congratulations! You’ve not only launched your new website, you’ve approached it methodologically, taking into account, at every step, your users wants and needs. After all, your site is really all about your users, isn’t it? Sure, you can just test your site pre-launch and skip all the stages we’ve discussed here. But that would be doing your users a disservice. By listening to them early and incorporating them into the redesign process often, your site is much more likely to satisfy and create happy users.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Emerging iPad Best Practices: App Navigation

Monday, August 9th, 2010

In May, we conducted our first series of usability research sessions with the iPad. The research spanned 5 days for a total of 25 participants, and very quickly we saw certain navigation patterns emerge. Participants consistently struggled with certain apps, while other apps were much easier to use and navigate.

This post will outline a few of the best practices that we have synthesized from our early research. AnswerLab has also published a full report that tackles the question: How can content owners and digital marketers successfully create a digital content strategy across mobile platforms? See our website for more information about iPad user experience research.  

1. Don’t neglect information-seeking paradigms

Users have been conditioned by years of web-browsing to expect certain navigation elements. For example: Participants in our test were frustrated when they could not find a way to go Back or return to Home.

Confused, some of these participants used the iPad’s own Home button, thereby inadvertently exiting the app completely. This disrupted the flow  and took the users out of the immersive experience of the app, making them less likely to return again.

Users struggled to find their way back to the app home screen in Pinball HD for iPad.

Many participants also felt disappointed to learn they could not search content in the New York Times Editor’s Choice or NPR apps. They said that the inability to search diminished the utility of the app to the point that they would use the website instead of the app going forward.

The takeaway? Provide a simple, discoverable way to go Back or get to the app’s Home screen easily. And if your app contains a lot of content, make sure your users have their preferred method of wading through – search.

2. Navigation elements need to be easily discoverable

In addition to mimicking the basic website paradigm, the navigation elements in your app need to be easily discoverable. Despite the fact that some of the applications we tested had Back or Home buttons, some participants were not able to find them.

In the USA Today app, none of the participants realized that they needed to tap the USA Today logo to navigate to different news sections. Building a great app with rich content needs to be accompanied by a sound navigational structure that allows users to access the breadth and depth of your app without getting confused or frustrated.

Users failed to discover that tapping the USA Today logo would reveal navigation by section.

Other applications that we tested – like ESPN’s Score Center XL, Epicurious, and Wikipanion – had navigation elements that were only obvious when the iPad was in landscape mode. Participants that were already in landscape mode noticed these elements, but those that were using the iPad in portrait mode did not discover that they could turn the iPad 90° to uncover these features.

In landscape mode within the Epicurious Recipes & Shopping List app, users would have been able to sort by recipe categories and favorite recipes.

To ensure that your users discover all of your navigation elements – and don’t get lost in your app – make the most basic elements obvious and provide visual cues for elements that are more advanced or hidden.

3. Swipes are more fun than clicks

The touchscreen tablet platform opens the door to novel ways of interacting with content. Leverage touch gestures like swipes and flicks where appropriate, and where users most expect them. For example, users expect to be able to pinch or spread to zoom content – a convention learned from touchscreen mobile phones – and most participants in our testing understood and were delighted by the action of swiping to the next page in apps like the New York Times Editor’s Choice or Time Magazine.

Apple’s iBook application lets users swipe to turn the page in iBooks.

Again, ensure these sometimes unexpected ways of interacting with your content are discoverable by providing indications or visual cues to your users.

4. Keep an eye out for emerging standards

The iPad has only been available for a few months, so the platform is new and rapidly evolving. As more users adopt the iPad or other touchscreen tablet devices, standards for navigation and interaction will emerge that have yet to be established. Users will become more familiar with these standard interactions over time, but certain functionality may take a while to catch on or, certainly, to become ubiquitous.

In the meantime, make sure your app is simple to use. If you are pushing the envelope to institute your own set of standards, make sure they are discoverable and intuitive. Most importantly, test them amongst your users. Keep an eye out as standards emerge and be prepared to incorporate new best practices as they are defined.

Our latest report will help content owners and digital marketers create a winning digital content strategy across mobile platforms. Go here for more information about the iPad user experience research.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

Early Days of Optimizing for the iPad

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Suzuki recently celebrated 50 years of international racing. As part of the celebration, they designed a new website optimized for the iPad.

http://www.suzuki50years.com/

At AnswerLab, we’ve heard from a number of our clients that they’d like to understand users’ expectations across platforms to help inform their design strategy. Should we design mobile apps or mobile optimized websites? Which mobile platform should we design for? What do users expect when they interact with our content on the iPad?

We conduct a ton of mobile user experience research at AnswerLab and now that the iPad has entered the picture, interest is gaining momentum. When I read about Suzuki’s latest creation, I immediately grabbed the AnswerLab shared iPad and brought up the site.

My first impression… It looks fantastic on the iPad.

Suzuki iPad Website

The designers obviously put energy into creating a site that fits well on the iPad’s screen. And Suzuki fully embraced the iPad/iPhone touch interface, allowing one to traverse the site via a simple swipe to change pages. As an iPhone owner, I’m used to performing this action in iPhone apps and the extension of this gesture to the web page is gratifying — albeit a bit unfamiliar.

While writing this blog post, I discovered Apple’s list of iPad ready websites and I’m sure there are others. I intend to check many of them out to see how well they’ve embraced the iPad’s unique format.

Whenever there is an iPhone optimized website, I’ll opt for it when browsing on my iPhone. Given that the iPad’s screen is much larger than my iPhone, only time will tell if I will prefer an iPad optimized website or the standard version of a website.

As your company decides which platform to embrace and whether to create an app or a mobile optimized site, consider your target audience and especially what experience you are bringing to the table. Suzuki may not have a huge iPad audience at this time but by creating an iPad optimized site, they are taking a risk and learning what works, and what doesn’t. At AnswerLab, we conduct research for industry-leaders to minimize their risk. When the platform is new and your audience is relatively small, risks like the one Suzuki is taking with this site may be somewhat trivial. However, prototype testing, conducting research, and fully understanding your users needs becomes paramount as the platform matures and users’ expectations become clear.

Recently, AnswerLab conducted testing to understand mobile consumers’ behaviors when purchasing apps and interacting with mobile devices including the iPad. Look for more information based on our findings in the near future.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Gaming Grows Up

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Online gaming is no longer the purview of hard core, up-all-night enthusiasts.  The newest games that are successful at broadening market adoption have lowered barriers to entry, incorporated motivational drivers for the larger audience (e.g. social elements), and improved their viral expansion loop.  Ensuring strong growth within the increasing revenue opportunities of these markets leads gaming companies to benchmark and evaluate their products.  AnswerLab is increasingly assisting clients to develop success metrics in gaming products, incorporating playability with a strong understanding of the roles that user experience research and usability have within the space.

Game success could be defined simply by player counts and revenue.  However, games with long-term success in mind are creating new development challenges, adding additional metrics of success to ensure continuous engagement and strategic expansion.  These success metrics are becoming increasingly important as competitors enter the space.   Success within these metrics shows how game design differs in some very important ways from application design.  For example:

  • Challenges are key drivers of game engagement, yet detrimental within applications
  • Sequential discovery of features and capabilities heightens engagement in gaming, which is not the typical effect in commercial applications
  • Motivation for engagement is driven more from elicited emotions than perceived utility

Some success metrics apply across game and application design:

  • Objectives & rules to complete the objectives must be easily understood
  • Key elements to complete the objectives must be discoverable, usable, and comprehendible
  • Contextual help and concise messaging is key
  • Showcasing progress & highlighting success furthers engagement

These are critical factors for driving adoption and engagement of a game.  For game designers who can make use of these factors, and tailor them to the motivations of their target players, they will ensure successful experiences with their games.  But what motivates users to become players?  Through studies focused around gaming, AnswerLab researchers have grouped player motivations into BAGS.

Badgers: Collectors of feedback largely reflecting behavior outside of the game’s primary objective

Achievers: Those who showcase skill/expertise level at the game’s primary objective

Game Itself: Players who are primarily interested in the story, challenges and/or dynamics of the game

Social: Those who are drawn by the opportunity to interact and communicate with other players

Each of these motivational factors varies in intensity among different players, and there is a world of factors within the game itself that impacts engagement.  Understanding the most motivational factors of target players, while analyzing key metrics throughout game development, is a powerful approach to assessing and improving the player experience. Game designers and developers that keep in mind these essential building blocks will be well on their way to ensuring business success of fun & games.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in Uncategorized | No Comments »

« Older Entries