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=================== Good Experience - 20 May 08 ====================
By Mark Hurst
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Tuesday, May 20, 2008
- The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it)
- For more reading...
- 3 Job Openings: Foster City, CA
- Fun Stuff
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The top 8 mistakes in usability (and companies investing in it)
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I recently gave a talk to a company that is beginning to invest more
in the customer experience of its website. They wanted to know: how
do we avoid the errors of other teams making this investment? There
are lots of gurus, blogs, and trade groups, all promoting their own
tools and methods - usability, user experience, interaction design,
information architecture, and so on. The team knows that they want
"better usability" but aren't sure about the next step.
And this company is growing fast, so a lot is at stake in them
getting it right. If they build the right processes in-house (or
hire consultants that offer them), they'll reap the rewards.
I told them that when committing to customer-centered development
(of a product, service, website, or whatever), it's important to
stay strategic, always try to improve the business, and listen to
customers (as human beings, not as users of a tool).
But in doing so, avoid the following:
1. Not conducting any customer research.
Some companies still don't conduct customer research, but instead
rely on their best internal guesses as to what their customers want.
Except in organizations where ESP is a common employee skill, this
tends not to lead to healthy, customer-centered operations.
2. Conducting "pretend" research.
Let's pretend our user's name is Jane. Let's pretend she is 38 years
old, drives a purple Prius, reads mystery novels, loves bulldogs,
and likes to go sailing. Let's pretend she comes to our website and
likes feature A but not feature B. Therefore, we should develop more
things like feature A. See? We're very customer-centered.
This is the fun of creating a persona, which allows teams to make
decisions based on fictional people, rather than doing the hard work
of listening to *real* customers. (Yes, I'm being provocative; yes,
personas can be useful in some cases - see more in this post:)
http://goodexperience.com/2007/08/personas-wasteful-or-helpful-y.php
3. Conducting research, but the wrong type.
One of the most popular research methods in business today is the
focus group: an individual moderator, typically a high-energy
person, encourages a live panel of many respondents to give feedback
on a product or service. This can be useful in some situations. But
where customers interact *individually* with a company - say, on a
website or in some other customer experience - the one-to-many
method of focus groups doesn't yield very appropriate findings.
4. Conducting one-on-one research, but with tasks defined
beforehand.
Traditional usability dictates that the moderator should write the
test questions beforehand. But how can you know the right questions
to ask before you've even met the customer? Task definition comes
from the age of software, when the tool - a piece of software - was
being optimized (thus the term "usability" refers to - and focuses
on - a tool, not a human). Customer experience is concerned with the
customer; their individual, real-life experience is what we're
supposed to be observing. It's beyond presumptuous to think you can
predict the appropriate tasks before the session starts. Read more:
http://goodexperience.com/2008/04/asking-customers-for.php
5. Not inviting stakeholders to attend research.
I've often heard the complaint from UX professionals that "we don't
have enough impact in the organization." Maybe that's because too
many practitioners write reports about their work, and lob them over
the cubicle walls, rather than getting stakeholders involved in the
research. Writing reports may work in the publish-or-perish academic
world, but in the business world, it's infinitely better to have
stakeholders physically sit and watch customers as they interact
with the website (or product or service or whatever).
6. Not prioritizing findings.
My favorite, love-to-hate conclusion of a usability report goes
something like this: "We uncovered 52 usability errors on the site,
and here's a list of all of them." Oops: an unending list of tactics
that no one will want to wade through. Instead, whenever discussing
results (presumably in-person, to stakeholders who attended labs),
focus on the most important two or three strategic findings - the
ones that will really move the needle on key business metrics. (You
DO focus on the business, don't you? See the next point.)
7. Not relating to business objectives.
Some usability researchers seem to see their work as an extension of
their master's thesis in human factors - a scholarly exercise that
demonstrates their mastery of various research and analysis methods.
This may work in academic research labs, but in the business world,
the point of this work is to improve the business. If you want to
have an impact, then conduct the work in the light of business
objectives: increasing revenue, or cutting costs, or improving usage
or conversion rates or pageviews or *something* that helps pay the
bills.
8. Missing the larger picture.
Tactical disciplines like usability and information architecture are
useful, valuable, and have their place in the development process.
But what's much more important is to understand the *people*, the
human beings, who make the company possible. The customers, the
visitors, the patients, the readers, the guests, whatever you call
them - their experience is what determines the company's success or
failure. So focus first on the overall experience. It's strategic,
not tactical. It's about the people, not the tool. Focusing on the
larger picture first will set a better context in which to work -
later - on usability tactics.
- - -
Post your comment:
http://goodexperience.com/2008/05/the-top-8-mistakes-in.php#comments
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For more reading...
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Thought for the day. It's not the best experience that wins. Rather,
it's the best experience that people are ready for. (Substitute
"product" or "site" or "book" for "experience", as necessary.)
How to write a FAQ, by Kevin Kelly:
http://kk.org/ct2/2008/05/naq-never-asked-questions.php
Pathetic Geek Stories, drawn by Gel '04 speaker Maria Schneider,
has a new design. Great stuff - all reader-submitted stories:
http://www.patheticgeekstories.com/
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Job Opening: Rearden Commerce (Sr. Interaction Designer)
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Company: Rearden Commerce
Title: Sr. Interaction Designer
Location: Foster City, CA
Rearden is looking for a Sr. Interaction Designer who has a passion
for designing easy-to-use, consumer-friendly web interfaces.
Candidates must understand the balance of user experience, business
case, time-to-market, and make tradeoffs where appropriate. For more
detail visit: http://www.reardencommerce.com/careers/
Send resumes to Ricky Fiel via email: rfiel@reardencommerce.com
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Job Opening: Rearden Commerce (Sr. UE Developer)
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Company: Rearden Commerce
Title: Sr. UE Developer
Location: Foster City, CA
The Sr. User Experience Developer will take design wireframes and
visual designs of the next-generation Rearden Platform and bring
them to life as high-fidelity, functional web-based prototypes
conforming to the latest W3C Web Standards. Candidates must be able
to write the dynamic code necessary to build features.
Resumes to rfiel@reardencommerce.com or visit reardencommerce.com
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Job Opening: Rearden Commerce (Sr. Producer)
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Company: Rearden Commerce
Title: Sr. Producer
Location: Foster City, CA
Rearden is looking for a Sr. Producer who has a passion for working
with our User Experience and Marketing groups to manage multiple
projects and roadmap endeavors. It is critical for candidates to
work well with other teams and to have a strong leadership presence.
More info: http://www.reardencommerce.com/careers/
Send resumes to Ricky Fiel via email: rfiel@reardencommerce.com
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All recent job openings...
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All recent job posts:
http://goodexperience.com/jobs
Post a job opening:
https://www.goodexperience.com/jobpost
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Fun Stuff
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A self-explanatory, one-use website:
http://www.sadtrombone.com
A better Youtube interface:
http://www.dipity.com/mashups/timetube
Low/hi-tech todo list - chalkboard on a laptop (tx, boingboing.net):
http://russelldavies.typepad.com/planning/2008/05/blackboardpro.html
My online game picks:
http://goodexperience.com/games
- - - - - - - - - - - -
Until next time,
- Mark Hurst
mark@goodexperience.com
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contact info
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ABOUT MARK HURST
Mark Hurst, founder of Creative Good and Good Experience, has been
advocating for good experiences for over ten years. He also writes
this newsletter.
Mark Hurst's bio: http://goodexperience.com/about/mark.php
Contact Mark Hurst: mark@goodexperience.com
Mark's book, "Bit Literacy," solves information & email overload:
http://bitliteracy.com
Gel (Good Experience Live) conference:
http://gelconference.com
Uncle Mark 2008 Gift Guide and Almanac:
http://unclemark.org/unclemark2008.pdf
If you want customer experience consulting, contact Creative Good:
http://creativegood.com
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