I find myself getting lost in sites with confusing navigation structures and poorly organized content. I define confusing as any time I have to look twice for the main navigation or when pages within the site have extremely differing structures and layout from the home page for no apparent reason. As for the content: Anything
Read on »usability testing
Book Review: ‘Selling Usability: User Experience Infiltration Tactics’ by John S. Rhodes
The phrase “user experience infiltration tactics” was enough to get me interested. John S. Rhodes offers his advice, based on his professional experiences, about spreading the knowledge and influence of usability practices within an organization. Rhodes’ major assumption is that his reader is a usability and UX proponent who wants to “infiltrate” his or her
Read on »Analyzing the results of eye tacking
This past week I put together a report about an eye tracking study for Kent State University’s library website. The task was: Ask the library to order your favorite book. This proved to be a huge difficulty for the five participants. They had no idea where to start, what to do, and how to do
Read on »Benefits of eye tracking usability studies
In their “How to Conduct Eye Tracking Studies” report, usability experts Kara Pernice and Jakob Nielsen suggest such studies can help reveal: … the time a person spends on a page, the action he takes there, what he reads aloud, what he hovers the mouse over, whether he smiles or grimaces, and what he comments
Read on »Mobile Device Usability Test Setup
Over these past few weeks I have undertaken the task of putting together the plan for a mobile device usability testing setup. There are a lot of little details — from hardware to software — to pay attention to. You can view my full proposal here or below. The main issues I had was how
Read on »Usability Testing: Yes to gesture tests!
It’s absolutely necessary for usability studies to include steps for testing gestures, specifically on user interfaces which will be used on more than one device. A gesture test could be included as its own separate study within the overall usability testing study of the interface. There could be specific gestures to be tested, which means
Read on »Mobile Device Usability Testing
I am working on a project which calls for the following: “… think through the process of setting up and conducting a usability test for mobile devices … you will design the location and test protocols, including any logistical and equipment considerations necessary to conduct a real test.” I found “A Big Nerd Ranch Tech Talk:
Read on »Unmoderated Remote Usability Test Findings: Wunderground.com
Here is a presentation about the findings from an unmoderated remote usability test for Wunderground.com. If you would like to take the test, click here. View the presentation PDF here. On findings Wunderground.com is easy to use for simple tasks such as looking up a city’s 10-day forecast, finding the radar for your area or
Read on »Creating An Unmoderated Remote Usability Test
This week, I created three tasks for an unmoderated remote usability test for wunderground.com. If you’d like to take the test, go here. It shouldn’t take more than 10 minutes to complete. This exercise helped me understand the importance of setting up close-ended tasks for such a test. The follow-up questions are just as important
Read on »