User Centered Design

I went to a seminar today titled "Conducting User-Centered Design Tests in 5 Minutes or Less." The speaker was Matthew Winkel, Communications Officer for Web and New Media at The College of New Jersey. The presentation took about 75 minutes, including questions.

The gist was that most people don't have a big budget for design testing, or alot of time. To top it off, most users have an attention span that tops out at 15 minutes. This led to the idea of quick and dirty user design tests, which I summarize below. The first three can be accomplished with a print out of your interface and a pencil or highlighter, the last two are a little more involved.

The short version of the different types of tests:

1.) Label test: Hand out a printed screen shot and have the user circle or highlight the labels they find confusing. This shows which labels aren't adequately descriptive or are ambiguous.

2.) Visual Affordance Tests: On a printed screen shot, have the users highlight which areas of the page are selectable. This helps you pinpoint which parts the site the users don't realize are clickable, and which parts fool the user into thinking they are.

3.) Brand Tests: Hand the user a sheet of paper that has a list of attributes (ex: trustworthy, cluttered, simple, contrived, etc), and have them circle the ones they think applies to your site. Of course, this test only works with people who have actually seen/used the site. You could also provide a printed screenshot if your site lends itself to that.

4.) Single Question Web Poll: A popup dialog that asks a single question. Figure out what one thing you most want to know. Given it's only one question, it's more likely people will respond than if there were more.

5.) One or Two Task Tests: Have user sit down and assign them a single task (or two, max). Record what they say/do. Users are more likely to participate if they know it will only take 5 minutes or so.

What to ask about? Identify your key task or most desired task. Look at the search logs to see what people are most interested in. Look at Google Analytics (or other tracker/logger) to see what questions people navigate to in the FAQ. That tells you what parts of your site are the most confusing.

How to find people for tests? Approach people in common areas, get student help to recruit their friends and friends of friends. Do not use same students repeatedly.