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Theory
We had a long and very exciting day yesterday in Cologne. The 6th Design for Conversion was very well put together. The interesting and broad talks on the how and the why of persuasive design on the web gave enough ammunition to get our hands dirty in the real life case.
We met some nice people that we will definitely see again.
For now, we will leave you with some pictures below. Thanks all!
Announcements
Incorporating usability techniques and processes of User-Centered Design (UCD) in companies that are not used to working with them can become a daunting task. Over and over again we hear arguments that justify the rejection and invalidate the possibility of change, even if this is minimal. This article describes the most common arguments we hear, and proposes concrete actions to refute the negatives.
by Doug Savage (www.savagechickens.com)
Design
Usability testing has been a fundamental tool in the UX arsenal for decades now. The value of actually meeting your customers and letting them experience your product makes a significant impact to the shape of that product. In it’s most formal version, testing can be a multi-day, multi-thousand $/€ process that delivers final analysis days if not weeks later. With many organizations moving to an Agile philosophy and methodology, UX practitioners are finding it difficult to integrate formal usability testing into this faster-paced, iterative approach to software development.
See? Lions and zebras can get along. So, too, can Agile and Usability Testing.
Design
Do you often have difficulties explaining to your friends and family what do you do for living? At least I did. When I had to explain my line of work and what usability really is, I had a hard time at first. But now I’ve found a nice story to tell them, that helps them grasp what I’m doing.
I help people vuja de!
Vuja what?!
Theory
Have you ever wondered what it would be like if you had to do business with the Smurfs? There are more than one hundred Smurfs, each one with its own idiosyncrasy, traits and quirks that demand special attention and care. How would you communicate to each Smurf? How would you engage each Smurf to listen to you, and eventually buy what you’re selling? Quite a smurfy-question don’t you think?
Well, here at Usabilla we always spend our time constructively thinking of major issues like this. So we smurfed our research and we present it to you.
Demo UX Cases
People often don’t read webpages, but scan them. Good experience designers know this and take good care to provide the user with a clean headline and a prominent call to action. Great experience designers go a step further and adjust their copywriting and links to aid in the scanning. By striking a balance between informative and intriguing wording, people will be enticed to keep reading or explore the rest of the site. Some people will even do both!
Figure 1 - Subject of study - Nescafé
We wanted to test this for ourselves. How will users react to different worded hyperlinks in an otherwise identical website? Have a look at the remote test we have set up.
How-tos
Automated remote usability testing is a very simple and efficient way to gather feedback on digital interfaces – if done correctly. When you do usability testing automated AND remotely, it’s good to keep in mind that the participant is missing some common communication channels. You ask participants for feedback, but you can’t see their faces, while your participants can’t ask any questions to express discomfort or uncertainty. When you’re aware of these limitations you’re able to compensate for it by carefully designing your test questions.
Theory
What do you know about communication? Let’s take a closer look at this topic and find out how communication models can be helpful when it comes to web content. Communication models help you understand the basic rules of communication. Based on this understanding you can analyze different forms of communication and improve your content. We will briefly introduce three interesting communication models and try to put them in line with good web content.
Figure 1 - One of the three communicational models
Design
An overall good user experience is an essential aspect for creating a successful website. The term user experience seems to be a popular trend lately, but how can we describe user experience and how can we make sure to offer enough of it on our websites?
To keep it simple, user experience describes how users perceive a website, what kind of emotions they have when visiting a website, and whether or not they are motivated to return. This subjective experience is in a large part based on the visual appearance of a website.
Of course web design is its own field of expertise and one could claim that only experienced designers are capable of designing a good website and therefore provide the basis for high user experiences. There are some basic principles, though, that help not just professionals to design an appealing website – the so called ‘Gestalt Laws’.
Figure 1 - Law of Similarity (http://sensingarchitecture.com/tag/gestalt-principles/)
Demo UX Cases
As promised, we’re back with the results from our web credibility test case that we previously introduced. We are very pleased with the results as they seem to be in line with previous findings on web credibility by experts in the field. The findings of this test case support the assumption that different aspects on a website can either increase or decrease it’s perceived web credibility.
Figure 1 – heatmap showing elements that were perceived to increase the website’s credibility
