Theory - The Usabilla Blog

Why The User Experience Can Or Cannot Be Designed

on July 2, 2012 / by Paul Olyslager / No Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Paul Olyslager.

It seems an endless discussion whether the user experience can or cannot be designed. The difficulty of the discussion lies in the level of abstraction. I believe that is because everything is an experience and everyone is a user. There is no standard definition, nor consensus among the practitioners, of what experience design really is.

In this article I hope to shed some light on the issue. I will share my thoughts about the difficulties to design the user experience and give some practical tips how to overcome this challenge.
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Theory

How Individual Learning Styles Improve The User Experience

on June 19, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / 1 Comment

Every website has a certain purpose, be it to inform people, create a community, or sell stuff. At the same time, people who visit a website have a certain goal. This sounds pretty straightforward, right? Now consider the diversity of people that come to your site and you will see that things are a little more complex. In order to reach your own goals and at the same time help your visitors reach theirs, you need to carefully think through how you present the content on your website.

I found this very nice quote by Forgus that sais: “Perception is an active process of locating and extracting information from the environment and learning is the process of acquiring information through experience and storing information. Thinking is the manipulation of information to solve problems. The easier it is to extract information (perceive) the easier our thinking process becomes.”

Basically this quote tells us that we are responsible of whether or not people care for the information we offer on our site and at the same time if they can handle it. We have the obligation to make information as easy to access and as intuitive to perceive as possible. The way we present our content defines if and how many people can solve their goals.

In this article I’d like to guide you through different learning styles and explain how thinking like a teacher can help you create a better user experience.
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Theory

Combining In-Person and Remote Research

on June 14, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

This article was originally and in full length published on UX Magazine.

In the early 90’s, Jakob Nielsen declared in-person user research as state of the art. “User testing with real users is the most fundamental usability method and is in some sense irreplaceable, since it provides direct information about how people use computers [...]”. Sometimes in-person user research can be logistically impractical or cost prohibitive, so remote user research is often employed as an alternative.

In-person user research has been around the longest, and is still widely used as a great way to gather feedback on websites, advertisements, or software. In-person research usually involves letting users perform tasks on a computer while asking them questions, observing their behaviors and body language, or having them think out loud.

In remote user research, on the other hand, the physical location is no longer important because the research subjects can work independently of the researchers. There are two forms of remote user research: moderated and automated. Moderated tests require the researcher to interact with the participant during the session. During automated tests, the researcher does not interfere, which allows people to participate whenever it fits their personal schedule.
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Theory

5 Reasons To Outsource Search Engine Optimization

on June 11, 2012 / by Alexis Thompson / 1 Comment

In this guest post Alexis Thompson shares with us her thoughts on outsourcing SEO work.

The Business Process Outsourcing Industry has been growing since the start of the new millennium. A lot of giant businesses, such as Coca Cola, have been outsourcing some of their business processes to third party services providers. In this article, we will talk about five reasons why outsourcing SEO work is good and why you should consider it, too.

1. SEO requires expertise

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not as easy as you might think. If you’re a beginner in the world of internet marketing and not specialized in SEO, don’t make the mistake and consider yourself an expert. SEO can be a very complicated subject that won’t work successfully if you have only little knowledge about it. It’s greatly recommended to hire an SEO professional, leaving important decisions to the real “king of the trade”. External SEO specialists not only have the required expertise in the field, they also work with the latest and most effective SEO marketing tools for more refined improvements.

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Design

Not Just Pretty: Building Emotion Into Your Websites

on June 6, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

This article was originally and in full length published on Smashing Magazine. Please visit the original source for the entire text, including many visual examples.

Emotional design has become a powerful tool in creating exceptional user experiences for websites. However, emotions did not use to play such an important role on the Web. Actually, they did not use to play any role at all; rather, they were drowned by a flood of rational functionality and efficiency.

We were so busy trying to adapt to the World Wide Web as a new medium that we lost sight of its full potential. Instead of using the Internet on our terms, we adapted to its technical and, at first, impersonal nature. If it wasn’t for visionary contemporaries such as Don Norman or Aarron Walter, we might still be focusing on improving processes, neglecting the potential of emotional design.
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Theory

5 Reasons Why Metaphors Can Improve Your User Experience

on May 23, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

There are many ways to experience the world around us. Especially offline, we can make use of our different senses to collect information, interpret our environment and make judgments. On the Web, however, our senses are more limited. As designers, we need to present information carefully to make sure our users think, feel and do the right thing.

A great way to help your users understand abstract content, create a sense of familiarity, trigger emotions, draw attention, and motivate action are metaphors.

The way we think, what we experience, and what we do every day is very much a matter of metaphor.

– Lakoff and Johnson

Let’s look at five reasons why metaphors can have such an influence on your user experience. For the full article, including examples, please visit Six Revisions.

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Theory

If You Don’t Learn, You Might As Well Not Test

on May 22, 2012 / by Richard de Vries / No Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Richard de Vries.

The most popular way of optimizing a website is by A/B testing it. For some reason the bigger the website gets, the harder it becomes to test. If you are dealing with optimization in a big company there is a fair chance you will recognize this. Putting up with rules and regulations, trying to get everyone involved and not getting people to agree upon what to test are just a few of the many things you will run into. The easiest way to solve this is to avoid working for big companies and only work for startups. However if you change your approach to testing, you might be able to create some magic, even in a big company.
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Theory

Book Review: Playful Design by John Ferrara

on May 16, 2012 / by Sabina Idler / No Comments

The new book Playful Design by John Ferrara is about to come out and our friend Matthew Niederberger was lucky enough to get a sneak peek at one of the first copies. Here is a very brief summary of what he thinks about it. For the full book review, please visit the actualinsights blog.

According to Matthew, Playful Design is a very insightful book on how and why games
can solve real problems. It covers everything from clear explanations of the fundamentals, over definitions, to individual elements. From game concept to prototype, the author discusses many different facets of game design.
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Theory

Optimize Your Conversion With Insights From Behavioural Economics

on May 15, 2012 / by Neal Cole / 3 Comments

This is a guest post by our friend Neal Cole.

As Dan Ariely explains in his popular books people are often irrational in their decision making as they are heavily influenced by unconscious biases. Conversion professionals can utilise knowledge of these ‘rules of thumb’ to nudge website visitors towards a particular behaviour. However, because people may not be fully aware of these influences customer research cannot predict how they will respond to the use of such persuasive designs.

Online experiments (A/B and multivariate tests) are the only true way of evaluating how visitors will respond to a new web page or online journey. Organisations that use such experimental testing can potentially save millions of pounds by avoiding lost sales and benefit from an uplift in conversion.
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