Hot answers tagged methodology
22
A main component of natural interactions is Direct Manipulation. Traditional interaction methods (keyboard) are very efficient but often very unnatural because what you do and what happens on screen aren't necessarily very logically connected. This was a classic problem with command line interfaces (or worse, punch cards). The Graphical User Interface was ...
17
Humanized interfaces make use of heuristics, emotional design and humanized copy to make an interaction with a computer feel as natural as possible.
Heuristics
Humanized interfaces try to explain errors in a helpful way, and prevent users from causing them whenever possible.
Instead of a message like "504 gateway timeout" twitter throws out this message:
...
16
The general rule of thumb for usability is to start off with no feedback, but to then display some busy indicator after 200ms, and if the process normally takes 5 seconds or more to present a larger feedback element (usually with a time elapsed timer, but preferably not with a progress bar unless you're very sure how long it will take). If something is ...
16
Place demographic questions at the end of the survey. If you place them at the beginning, you will induce a phenomenon called stereotype threat.
Stereotype threat says that if you remind someone of a stereotyped attribute of themselves, it will impact their performance even if they don't believe that stereotype. For example, suppose a girl has heard a ...
14
The minimalists would say "when there is nothing left to remove" :-)
Ok, Now seriously, an interface is complete when is satisfies all the goals you set for it - so if you don't have measurable goals you can't measure completeness - after all you can't measure fitness without knowing what you are supposed to fit to.
A good example of goals would be: ...
14
I think it has nothing to do with plasticine :). Hold up your hand and show "a small amount of something". You're probably pinching. "A pinch of salt" is a small amount of salt. I assure you that both the gesture and the expression have existed long before multi-touch :). Ask a person to demonstrate something large, and he will spread his hands. Ask him to ...
14
User Experience is not devoted to suppress revolutionary ideas nor innovation. In fact User Experience is the opposite: making sure new ideas and innovation works the way users expect. User Experience has nothing to do with the business plan of Foursquare, but rather how to make the check-in User Experience as simple, easy to understand and joyful as ...
14
After some years of fighting I got used to it. There are various ways to struggle with it, you can play as an authority often saying "no", or actually "NO!", but you will lose your followers, because there are always decisive people who will maintain that they know better. You can try to establish processes, but there are going to be people who will not ...
12
Standard Progressive Disclosure should start at the simplest, least intrusive information first. Maybe even consider allowing users to put off answering some parts of the form (this will probably reduce completion rate of the "extra" fields but increase the completion rate of the start of the survey). But if you must do it all in one go, I'd generally ...
11
I have read up on this a bit, and it seems that my answer will contradict some of the things that have already been mentioned. My sources are all academic, and as such reflect the use of on-line surveys for conducting experiments. Feel free to read the sources that I link to, and draw your own conclusions. I mention some peripheral work as it relates to ...
11
This article cites some studies about it:
Some recent research in the Journal of Business and Psychology
reveals that placing demographic items at the beginning of a survey
increases the response rate to those items in comparison to
demographic items placed at the end. And more importantly, it did not
affect scores on the three noncognitive ...
10
My favorite answer to most UX questions is: "It depends".
How will the redesign be done? Full redesign with a rewrite of navigation and content? Or keep the existing content as is, and just redesign navigation?
My next question is: What are you trying to organize? 600+ words sounds like a lot of words to organization, and I don't believe that you ...
9
Many others have attempted to define the roles within user experience, but there are no hard boundaries.
Jesse James Garret descibes in his book The elements of User Experience (See overview) includes Usability as part of the Strategy Plane, although I'm sure he would agree that as in so many situations, the components of user experience do not fit neatly ...
9
Goals and vision are the question. User experience is the answer.
User experience is not just about what users need. It's about meeting the product owner's goals or vision, while taking user needs into consideration. These goals or vision might be revolutionary or conservative. In addition, if you research both the owner requirements and the users' needs ...
8
They are asking one question, but they mean another. What they mean is: I don't trust you. Can you show me that someone else said this? Someone who published a book or study or something?
Engineers have ancient tomes that describe programming patterns and standards. They would like design to be the same. They want to see you have read books. Get a ...
8
UX - User Experience is the field of design enlighting and useable software.
UCD - User Centered Design is a process of how to achieve this.
So, UX can't be about hygiene factors by definition, because it is no process like agile, waterfall or UCD is. It's not about how to reach your goal, it's an area where you work.
User Centered Design
You said there ...
8
If you looking for different processes rather than methods, there are
User Centered Design / Goal Directed Design
Usability Engineering
Design Thinking
LeanUX / LeanStartup
Data (or Metrics) Driven Design
Open Innovation / Participatory Design
Lead User Design / Design-driven Innovation
Four of them did I examine for innovation capabilites in a past ...
8
It's a good but difficult question, without any universally good solution. However I will try to give you some things that you can do to help with this.
Firstly, recognise that the role of a UX designer is to say no a lot of the time. That doesn't mean that you say "no" whenever someone suggests something that you don't particularly like.
Secondly, you ...
7
I think "complete" is a problematic definition, but I think I know what you're aiming for (see my definition on the bottom).
Let's open with an easy example - looking at cars, what's a complete user interface?
A wheel for steering
Gas/break pedals (and hand break)
Gear transition (automatic or shift)
Lights, whippers, etc.
How about a radio/CD player? ...
7
The first tool I use that works really well is simple pencil and paper prototyping. Draw a UI, and then put it in front different people and pretend it's the actual interface. Have some try to figure out the what and how with no guidance, and with others start by asking them to complete specific tasks. Ask them what they think particular affordances might do ...
7
IMHO rather than undermine the real commercial needs of the user experience agency it's much better to offer a series of lower cost alternatives services.
Such as:
Remote users testing
Hallway user test
User testing doesn't have to be lab based to be effective.
Matt
7
Basically the validation for large IA is similar as in other situations. Do a closed card sort.
Other comments on your problem:
Check the the article Scaling the card sort method to over 500 items: restructuring the Google AdWords help center by Nakhimovsky et al for ideas on how to conduct card sorts with a lot of items. In essence you have to get the ...
7
The big difference is where your focus lies, as with this purposefully extreme example about a short form:
Task Analysis
Start > Enter value > Enter value#2 > Confirm input > Exit
User Journey
How does the user get to this form? > Where does the user know the
value from? > What format does the user have the value#2 in? > Does
the user know ...
6
In a nice way, do your job. That means do your wireframes, elicit feedback on what the team think about them. Push at the meetings to get heard. I realise that it is difficult, but you need to make your own stamp.
The problem is that while you understand the essence of what the other members of the team contribute to the project, they do not understand ...
6
It's not the whole picture, but analytics might be really useful (if you can get some) to help you rough sort the giant IA task at hand. Depending on how sophisticated the data is, you might be able to identify notable patterns:
Highly-trafficked areas (Are these really key functions? If so, prioritize them.)
Tasks users tend to perform in clusters (This ...
6
I think you got start explaining the macro picture of what UX does in day-to-day life, and then zero it to the particular area, it goes like this -
"An UX specialist actually deals to understand products and interfaces from user perspective. Users are the predominant drivers for a product - and as an example (provide metaphors/example always) - imagine you ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible
