The project followed a classic UCD approach, test then design, test then design. One of the key challenges was to reduce ping-pong beahviour – that is the user clicking on a more info link for each product to get more details. But for us to add more details to each card listing how do you limit information overload? At the same time we wanted to move away from the standard, slightly dull, table listing.

We tested a number of alternative approaches and the eventual design direction was for mini tabs on each listing.

User testing showed we needed to make the tabs more tactile, more attractive to click. The purple hover was introduced. User testing results were really positive. Users liked the interaction and playfulness.

Post launch we got some great feedback from the design community:

Go see the results for yourself, moneysupermarket.com’s new credit card site. Let me know your thoughts.

Reference:

• Comparing Google Credit Cards to Moneysupermarket.com

Old computers not necessarily used by old people

Over the last few months I’ve conducted an awful lot of user tests with the over 60s. At last count it was over 50 users. So it was great to attend Bristol Usability Group last night where Andrew Arch from the W3C’s Ageing Education and Harmonisation project was talking about Designing for Older People.

Many of the recommendations we’d made to our clients in designing for the age group were backed up by the W3C guidelines.

Here are a few of the recommendations talked about:

• Browser accessibility functionality has a stigma attached as so is not often used by this age group.
• Including an in-page font-size control is perhaps the most useful and most common thing a designer can do
• This age group struggle with small hyperlinks and other small areas where they need to click – e.g. radio buttons with no direct html label tag.
• There is a danger of patronising this age group with ‘big’ and ‘blue’ text.  They still appreciate design.
• In designing for this age group there is an increase in usability for all user groups (Rather like the Usability Bonus the now defunct Disability Rights Commission discussed)
• Older people may not be familiar with using a mouse having only ever owned a laptop
• This age group is very wise so often have plenty to say in a user test meaning a typical hour’s test won’t cover as much as the same amount of time with a younger person

Thanks to Dave Ellender for organising and hosting the evening.  Great chatting all things accessibility afterward with Ann McMeekin and the BUG glitterati.

Update: Ann McMeekin has done a much more indepth write-up of Andrew’s talk

cxpartners are off to SXSW. Me and Giles Colborne, cxpartners MD, are spending the next week in Austin, Texas for SXSW the largest interactive festival in the world.

If you want to talk user experience with a European angle or just say hi and catch-up just drop me an SMS +447905 33 4163 or contact me

A recent project I worked on for a high street bank showed that users who clicked on commonly used, important link could not get back to the application form they were completing. Hitting the back button through an error. The form data was gone, and so at that point was the user and the sale of the product, also gone was any good will on the part of the user toward the bank, the user was not going to recommend that bank to any friends. In short a lot of business could be generated for a small, trivial, easily fixable issue.

The will was there to fix that issue, estimates were made of the increase in business but it took months to make the change. Why? Well the estimates were in the tens of millions. Who would believe that making a little change would yield such huge results? The credibility of the recommendation was undermined by the crazy-huge estimate.

What bought this back to mind was a recent article by Jared Spool, the $300 Million Button. Jared talks about an increase of $300 million dollars from changing the text of button to read ‘Continue’ rather than ‘Register’. Simple, logical, unbelievable. I’d love to use this as a case study to sell usability testing, I dearly would, but I can’t see any business believing such a dramatic claim.

So, I hear you ask, how do you sell the benefits of usability testing? In a word modestly.

Finance Directors, without fail, always ask me “How much extra conversion can we expect from making the changes you suggest?” My experience may lead me to think 4%, 5% maybe 7%. I’ll always say 1 to 2%. Partly because I don’t want to to be held to this (who would?) but mostly 5% is a huge increase. For an average client I work with that could be millions of pounds. Who would believe that?

As always if you’d like an informal chat on the benefits of user testing get in touch. I can be honest, modest and realistic. By the way you don’t want to buy some of this oil I’ve got do you? Clear up that problem of yours in no time…

I’m doing a quick 12 minute SkillSwap talk this Tuesday on International Usability – things you never would have guessed all about the things I’ve learnt from international usability testing. The event is at the Pervasive Media Studio from 6pm.

More details:
-User experience Skillswap
-Book a free place

Then on Wednesday I’m on a panel – Working in the South West for the Web developer’s conference in Bristol. Again I’m focusing on the international work I do and how it’s possible to be international and still live in the South West. The event is all day at the Watershed in Bristol.

More details:
-http://www.webdevconf.co.uk/

Thursday is World Usability day and I’m running a free Usability Surgery with Stuart Church and Dave Ellender at the Pervasive Media Studio again in Bristol. Thursday evening brings Bristol Usability Group drinks in the Watershed Bar.

More details:
-http://bristolusability.org.uk/
-Usability Surgery on Upcoming

Drinks in the Watershed bar from 5.30pm
-http://upcoming.yahoo.com/event/1321355

The work I’ve been doing with Eyetracking has shown that they users may look at something but they don’t focus on it or indeed talk about it but they keep it in their head until they do need it

If in the course of user testing the user hasn’t seen the widget for changing the font size, or the link to contact customer service, or the CEO’s latest blog post it doesn’t mean it hasn’t been noticed. In testing features set up a meaningful task that requires the use of the widget you want to test and then gauge how easily it was found.

Finally resist the urge to make your widget bigger and flashier otherwise you’ll end up with something that’s rather more garnish than meal.

Back in 1994 a chap called Rolf Molich (and friends) decided to see if us usability people were consistent in our ability to identify usability problems. He devised a simple test. Ask 9 usability experts to evaluate the usability of Microsoft’s free email service Hotmail and come up with a list of usability issues.

Rolf then aggregated all 310 usability problems uncovered from the experts and found something rather surprising.

Usability experts are not equal

It seems not all usability experts agree. Of the 310 usability issues found only two, that’s 2, were found by more than 6 experts. Of all the problems identified 75% were identified by only one expert. Usability it seems is in the eye of the beholder.

So what are we usability folk to do?

Rolf’s old partner is crime, Jakob Nielsen (Jakob and Rolf came up with the original usability heuristics) conducted a wonderful piece of research and found that 5 users will identify 70% of all usability problems. Notice the similarity in those numbers? 75% of problems are identified by 6 experts vs. 70% of problems found by 5 users.

The recommendation: run a usability test with real users. It need not be expensive, only 5 users are needed after all, it need not be exhaustive, a hour is more than enough.

Us usability people can help organise and interpret the results and most important of all make recommendations to fix the usability problems identified. A usability expert has techniques and theory but can’t always uncover usability issues any better than a user can.

Finally, be wary of people describing themselves “usability experts”, we now know there is no such thing.

• Molich and Co’s original study on usability experts

I’ve put together 5 tips for international usability and published it over at cxpartners usability blog.

From usability to customer experience – and the bits in between.
Things learnt from user testing, information architecture, wireframing, task analysis and generally being ‘the usability guy’

I mentioned the book “the Design of Everyday Things” by Don Norman which is a great introduction to all things good about product design and a website called Boxes and Arrows for all information architecture and wireframe goodness

Links

• Seth Godin
• Creating passionate users
• Functioning Form
• 37 Signals (Ace)
• Bokardo
• cxpartners The rather lovely Bristol usability company I work for – blog coming soon

Please leave a comment below if you enjoyed/hated it or feel you need to vent at how I failed to compress the PDF properly