Category — Interface Prototyping

For many years now, outsourcing has resounded through the land. But still it is linked in our heads with big companies which give some work away because they either do not have the capacity to carry out the work themselves, or want to save money by using this strategy. However, nowadays it is not only big companies anymore who try to gain from this process, but more and more small businesses and private people.

The advantages of outsourcing

But what are the advantages of outsourcing and how can these be generated? The system is easy. If you as a company – (whether a small or big one) – would like to give previously performed in-house tasks to an external provider, you can simply give the contract to a third-party who you will pay to carry out the task on your behalf. The main advantages include cost savings, being able to focus on your core business, overall being able to improve the quality while increasing flexibility at the same time. Collaborating with external experts allows customers to calculate their business costs more precisely because the costs only occur for a certain period of time.
But how can you find such an external provider, and how do you know if the price you are paying is not too high and if the proposal is really the best you could get? One possibility is: Using global internet platforms which arrange services for you in order to meet your individual needs. One of the biggest in Germany is twago.

Team Work Across Global Offices – twago

twago is a Berlin based company which focuses on outsourcing and offshoring of online services. The overall goal is to achieve the best performance for the best price for the customer. The more precisely you know what specific task you would like to have done, e.g. programming, web design, user interface design, etc., the better it is. You simply post your project with a detailed description on the platform and receive proposals from all over the world from up to 20,000 providers. These service providers can be companies or freelancers. You can find a service provider who best fits to the individual project. Whether you are looking for a service provider from around the corner to meet up face to face or you prefer a freelancer from a specific country, twago offers the possibility to find the right service provider with suitable skills. You choose the one that best fits your needs and preferences. And the best of all: Using twago is easy. You just have to register, post your project and award it to your provider of choice. Should you need any help or special service the kind twago employees are ready to support you. You can try it out at: http://www.twago.com.

Companies today realize the value of providing outlets for communication with their customers.  Blogging is an effective method to do so and has thus given rise to the corporate blog. However, corporate blogging is much different than the traditional personal blog, particularly in its purpose.  Let’s take a look at the main purposes for creating a corporate blog, in addition to pointing out how their purpose often differs from the traditional blogs.

This blog post is the first in a series of two about Affinity Diagrams as a usability and interface design method

What is an Affinity Diagram?

The Affinity Diagram is a tool used within project management and other fields such as interface design (for example before creating wireframe prototypes) to sort large amounts of ideas into groups for review and analysis. The affinity diagram methodology was created in the 1960s by Jiro Kawakita and is thus also dubbed the KJ Method. Originally, Affinity Diagrams were intended to help in diagnosing complicated problems through the organization of qualitative data to reveal themes associated with the problems. Affinity Diagramming is related to other user interface design methods like card sorting which also use ideas that are written on cards (or post-it-notes etc.).

What benefits do Affinity Diagrams offer during interface design and wireframing?

Affinity Diagrams can greatly aid interface designers during the conception stages of a project when wireframing and prototype creation are typically used to generate interface design solutions. Affinity Diagrams can help identify what to include into a wireframe prototype by consolidating lots of customer data into meaningful design criteria. The methodology, in effect, can uncover the range of, give boundaries to and uncover similarity among user’s problems and needs. But Affinity Diagrams can also help identify potential areas for future study. Affinity diagramming is advantageous because it facilitates teamwork and collaboration and consequently improves the cohesion of a team. Because the method is straightforward and simple it is also cost-effective. Affinity diagrams can also help identify customer work practices and can therefore be considered a precursor to Contextual Design, another interface design method.

What are drawbacks of Affinity Diagrams and how can this affect wireframing and interface design?

Affinity Diagrams are considered cost-effective but the method can be time-consuming, especially when there are copious amounts of data to be analyzed which can prove to be exhausting for your team as they evaluate all of the data. These drawbacks are due to the time and effort it takes to extract data (which could, and often does, come from a number of sources) and consolidate them into meaningful ‘units of information’. Time is consumed both in completing the affinity diagram project and the subsequent interpretation of the resulting groups and sub-groups. Another problematic situation can arise when there is simply not enough data. As a rule of thumb, if 15 or less items of information have been identified then you may forego the Affinity diagramming process and resort to other user interface design methods.

This blog post is the first in a series of two about contextual design as a usability method

What is Contextual Design?

Contextual Design is a User-Centered Design process that was developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holzblatt. It gathers information for the purposes of understanding how users work in order to create user interface designs (or other products) that adequately support users and assist them with accomplishing their goals. According to Beyer and Holzblatt, Contextual Design “uses extensive field data as the foundation for understanding user’s and business’ needs”. It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering data relevant to the product, field studies, rationalizing workflows, system and human-computer interface designs. The ultimate goal behind Contextual Design could be described as producing user interface designs that are usable for a specific group of target users, a critical factor in achieving product success.

Contextual Design is important to interface design

Just like with many other products and services, contextual design is vitally important to user interface design. Successful UI (user interface) designs are the ones that help users accomplish tasks as easily and quickly as possible, and that requires some work on the UI designer’s part. Contextual design is all about knowing which functions and features and design characteristics are needed to accomplish that. It gives designers the ability to comprehend the context in which users employ a specific user interface.   Taking the time out to conduct research and identify with user contexts is intended to give user interface designers the knowledge required which they can then fashion into wireframes on the road to creating great user interface designs.

Welcome to my two-part blog on Ethnography and the role it plays in usability engineering and user interface design.

What is Ethnography?

Ethnography is an approach to research that involves in-depth study of population groups through participant observation, interviews, questionnaires, and artifact analysis in an attempt to gain a thorough understanding from a number of perspectives. This research methodology is usually associated with the social sciences, in particular anthropology and sociology. Ethnography also takes place in the natural context of the subject being observed and, as such, the term is often interchangeable with phrases such as “field study” and “case report”. Traditional ethnography focuses on long-term studies spanning weeks, months, or even years. This is in order to understand, first-hand, fundamental answers in regard to the subject(s). Where do they live? How do they make a living? What do they eat? What are their linguistic, housing and marriage customs etc?

What does ethnography mean in the context of user interface design?

In the context of user interface design, ethnography is a valuable source of data for personas, scenarios of use, task analysis, requirements elicitation, and storyboards. Sometimes in life the laboratory setting can obfuscate data due to the very act of observation affecting the subject. Ethnography seeks to paint observations in their proper naturally occurring context, i.e. the point at which they would be using a software application and navigating its interface design in the course of their everyday life.

Ethnography as a usability method

Ethnography lends itself well to usability testing of user interface designs due to the principle of holistic human data collection. This works well in tandem with the fundamentals of user experience in user interface design. Ethnography brings with it a number of merits to usability testing. In comparison to observations conducted in the lab the authenticity of ethnographic reports is higher. Behavior observations are best understood within their natural environment and ethnography allows for this. As a usability method ethnography provides a much more comprehensive perspective of the users and their environment than other forms of research. Another advantage is that it employs a theoretical framework for contextualizing data.

When to use ethnography as a usability technique

According to usability expert James Horn, the use of ethnography as a usability method is “best used in the early stages of development, when you need to know more about the issues surrounding the use of a product rather than actual metrics.” In the very early stages of user interface design, using the ethnographic method will help you collect user requirements based on how users operate within their “native” environments, which is how they operate in the real world.  Obtaining these user requirements will then allow you to incorporate your findings into preliminary designs of a user interface. Of course, it is important to watch out for observer bias, as Information and results are highly dependent on the researcher’s observations and interpretations.

In this 2 part blog I shall look at the role gender plays in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). What is Gender HCI, after all? Does empirical data show significant differences between male and female end-users?

What is Gender HCI and what does it have to do with user interface design?

Gender HCI is a subcategory of Human Computer Interaction (HCI). HCI is concerned with the design and evaluation of interactive systems used by humans, such as user interface design. Gender HCI, a relatively new field that is still in its formative stages, shifts the focus to the differences between men and women and the role that plays in how they interact with interface designs. The term Gender HCI was coined in 2004 by Laura Beckwith, an Oregon State University PhD candidate, and her adviser Margaret Burnett. Relevant research reports that dealt with the gender aspects of user interaction date back all the way to 1987, namely Chuck Huff’s research on how games designed as “gender neutral” look like games designed for boys.

Gender HCI, like regular HCI, is a highly interdisciplinary field because it requires that designers and researchers from various fields collaborate to understand the ways in which males and females solve problems, communicate, and process information.  Researchers and designers must explore diverse areas such as psychology, computer science, marketing, neuroscience, education, economics and others to ascertain the information needed to research requirements and design successful user interfaces with potential Gender specifics in mind. Since it became clear that Gender HCI’s is a viable category of HCI, research and interest in the field has exploded. Today many computer scientists and designers are occupying themselves with system models based on gender differences.

Topics explored in Gender HCI: Why is it important for user interface design?

Gender HCI is not simply about adding pink to an interface design optimized for girls and, conversely, blue for boys. Examples taken from the available empirical data have shown that Gender HCI applies to many situations. An example of this is in spreadsheet problem-solving tasks where it was found that female end users were significantly slower to try out advanced software features. It has also been found that with smaller displays, males’ performance was significantly better than female’s. Larger displays improved the performance of females while the performance of males was not negatively affected.

This blog post is the first in a series of two about accessibility design as a usability method

What is accessibility and why is it important?

In general, accessibility describes the degree to which a product, device, service, or environment is easy and straightforward to use by as many people as possible.  In addition, accessibility concerns itself with the benefits of the entity being accessed: How does easy use of a product benefit the user and the creator?

Accessibility results from proper design of products and services. Take public transportation for example.  Public transportation is designed to optimize the routes which users (by bus, tram, or train etc.) must take to get to their given destinations.  Public transportation provides users with maps, internet sites that help them plan their routes, elevators and wheel chair lifts for the disabled, and many other features that make it easy and beneficial for people to use.  When public transportation is easily accessible, the benefit is that the users have efficient, cost-effective means of travelling and the creators are able to earn money and sustain the transport system.

Computer science, accessibility design and user interface design

In computer science, accessibility design means creating websites or software that is easily usable and available to people of all abilities.  This means that each interface design should grant users equal access to the functionality of and the information contained within the site. In computer science, accessibility design concerns itself mainly with the construction of interface designs that are accessible to the disabled. For example, how can a designer code the HTML to provide or enable text-to-speech software for the deaf or text-to-Braille hardware for the blind?  The concept behind accessibility design is clear: Disabilities should not hinder users from accessing and using a given software or website due to shortcomings of its user interface design.

What is learnability?

According to the UsabilityFirst glossary, learnability is a measure of the degree to which a user interface design can be learned quickly and effectively. Learning time is the typical measure. User interface designs are usually easier to learn when they are familiar and designed to be easy to use based on core psychological properties. The learnability of an interface design can be, in turn, further broken down into five similar but distinct components: the aforementioned Familiarity, Consistency, Generalizability, Predictability, and Simplicity. When developing usability tests, it is important to keep the learnability of your user interface design in mind because a website or app that is easy to use will likely be used more often and more productively.

The five components of learnability

As mentioned above, there are five distinct components that comprise learnability.   It is essential to understand these constituents because they contribute to a user’s overall ability to learn a given interface design:

1.   Familiarity: Familiarity comes into play because users tend to expect certain things to happen.  This can include certain layout conventions, such as navigation schemes, color schemes or responses of an application.
2.    Consistency: Applications with a consistent interface design are easier to learn. This is especially important across various different parts of a software application, where changes of the interface design may confuse users or require them to adapt to yet another pattern.
3.    Generalizability: Generalizability means looking at other software applications that are similar to yours. The expectation of users is that tools which serve similar purposes include similar functions and respond to similar priciples. As users use many applications, generalizability helps them learn to operate an application without having to understand entirely new interface design concepts each time they encounter a new product.
4.    Predictability: Predictability means whatever tool you are developing, users of similar tools should be able to navigate your interface design with only the knowledge of using a similar tool in the past. That is to say that meeting user’s expectations improves learnability.
5.    Simplicity: Learning is fastest when there isn’t much to learn. Simplicity means keeping your interface design as lean and clean as possible for optimum learnability. Minimizing the amount of learning required by limiting the interface design’s complexity, improves learnability.

In part 3 of my blog entry on context of use I shall look at things to consider when conducting a context of use analysis during the interface design process.

How to use the context of use analysis

A context of use analysis takes the form of a brainstorming session among all project participants. The meeting should be conducted by someone with experience using context of use analysis from previous projects. Three general categories can be used as a springboard to uncover probing questions during context of use analysis that will help determine the most important contexts to design the usability test. The interface design’s target user group is one such category. Possible questions include: How many different user types are there? Why are they using this particular interface design? How can the actual design of the website or application reflect a marketing strategy that hones in on this particular group? The interface design’s tasks and goals is another category. Question candidates are: How many and what types of tasks do users need to carry out using the proposed interface design in order to achieve their goal(s)? The third general category is when interface designers define the contexts in which users will use the interface design. This includes answering question, such as: Will users have fast or slow internet connections?  Do all users interact with the computer and interface design in similar or dissimilar environments?

It is also important to set a timeline (be wary of time and ensure participation among group members is equal) and a schedule of topics to discuss. This can be designed in any fashion, but an example could be:
1.    Introduction: introduce the interface design project, talk about goals and objectives of the website or application.
2.    Discuss context of use categories.  Broadly define context of use categories and then discuss them in depth. Divide into groups and work through potential context of use questions.
3.    Small group presentations: Give each small group a chance to introduce their findings to the larger group and then discuss each topic and how it relates to the interface design task.
4.    Work together to create main goals of usability testing.  What contexts of use should be targeted in order to obtain optimal user experience feedback on the interface design?

Conclusion
It is critical for interaction and interface designers to understand the contexts in which users will use a website or application in order to create the right kind of usability test and develop products that work for the targeted users.  Context of use analysis is an effective way for designers to ensure that they will be able to ask users the right questions and ascertain user experience feedback that will guide the interface design process in the right direction towards a successful interface design. Thus, it may be recommended that interface designers use this usability method often, carefully following best practices.

The BBC News website has long been a popular source of news on the web. A revamped interface design, the “biggest rethink of the design of the site since 2003”, has now provided the website with improvements that increase the usability of the website. This redesign is a great example of how an already great interface design can be improved upon by looking at key usability issues. It must be said that users of CNN’s website will no doubt realize that BBC’s new interface design looks a lot like cnn.com. But rather than chastise BBC’s re-designers as clueless copycats devoid of creativity I think they should be praised for sticking to great interface design and usability principles. A mistake a lot of interface designers make is in designing a work of techno-art instead of a functional website or software application. Remember that your interface design should be usable by all and sundry and not just those with degrees in computer science.

The most startling change to the BBC’s interface design is moving of the navigation from the left of the screen to the top. This decision frees up a lot of space for actual news content and makes sideways scrolling (which many users find frustrating) more redundant. Stories that are new now stand out as they are marked with a red “NEW” badge. Below the days’ main stories is a section where users can navigate stories according to geographical location. This area is differentiated from the rest of the page by using a stark color scheme that stands out from the rest of the page. Clicking on a single story, one can easily share stories via Facebook, Twitter and the like. This is possible from both the top and bottom of the story so that users who scroll all the way down to the end of a story do not have to scroll all the way back up just to share. Had that been the case then the number of stories from the BBC website being shared on social networks might be reduced. Good usability practice here as well.