We sometimes have clients come to us who want a rich, descriptive understanding of their users’ behaviour and motivations, whilst at the same time expecting statistics and hard figures to go with this. If time and budget had no limits this could most definitely be achieved. However, we often find ourselves giving clients a mini rundown of the limitations and benefits of each approach so they are in the best position to understand our proposed solution.

The Pros:

The Cons:

Understanding the why’s and the process of something is essentially what qualitative research can unveil, however if it is numbers and statistics that you are after then quantitative is the best approach to take. It would not make sense to run a series of in-depth interviews with a focus on user needs and then use this information to say 66% of users want X and 25% of users don’t need Y. It simply does not make sense. What you can do is provide a summary of the users’ mental model, the process they take when approaching a task and the information they need to support this. Or map out the customer journey that highlights user needs during each stage.

While it is generally agreed that each approach is distinct and has unique properties, they are often used to complement each other. For example, when a quantitative analysis identifies that the customer conversion rate has dropped 30% in a re-designed website, it often uses qualitative research (i.e. moderated user testing) to understand why. Similarly, when a quantitative survey is delivered, the questions it asks have most likely been informed from qualitative research preceding it (i.e. depth interviews).

While there is much debate around which is the better research technique and why, what isn’t attested is that the most accurate results occur when a triangulated approach is taken – that is, when they are used together.

As UX researchers we have a body of knowledge that has been built up through both our individual experience and shared wisdom that has come from others within the UX community. This knowledge forms the basis of the basic UX principles that we recommend our clients adhere to when developing a product. The sort of things I am talking about here are: users reading webpages in an F pattern, users’ expectation of search, satisficing (i.e. choosing the first option that looks as though it will meet our needs) and providing users with a sense of control.

Example eye-tracking heatmap from UsabilityOne

We prove our expertise and value to clients through sharing this knowledge with them, particularly when it assists them in understanding user behaviour they have witnessed first-hand while observing user testing of their product. Quite often clients are willing to accept what we say as we are the “expert”, but there are those who want proof beyond what can be seen as our opinion. Even those who accept our expert advice sometimes need more iron clad evidence to sell recommendations to other stakeholders.

This is where research that qualifies the observations we have made as individual UX researchers becomes so valuable. I recently came across this interesting blog post which pulls together research that informs 10 basic UX principles (http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-tips-based-on-research-studies/). It is essential to our effectiveness as UX researchers that we are aware of the type of research that this blog references. More importantly we need to understand the research, view it with a critical eye, and weigh up what we see as the advantages and disadvantages of the research methodology and analysis before we share it with colleagues and clients.

PDF’s in general should be avoided as they cause many usability problems. However there are times when PDF’s have their place on the web; for instance if a document is meant to the printed then PDF is the correct medium. If your site contains PDF’s it is vital that users are aware of when a link will open a PDF.

Indicating the presence of PDF links helps to avoid PDF shock; that is giving users a nasty surprise of being dumped into a PDF file. There are a number of different ways of indicating PDF links. One method is to include a PDF gateway page; a page which summarises the PDF content, warns users that they are getting a PDF file, as well as presenting the file size. Gateway pages are supposed to prevent PDF shock as well as let users determine if the PDF is worth opening. However in our labs we often see users experience difficulty with gateway pages. Users assume the gateway page is the ‘result’ and don’t continue to click the PDF file. It is in-fact breaking the link to the real file. Many government websites use this technique and I’m starting to wonder if it really is the best way to display PDF’s.

My preference would be to include the PDF symbol next to the link along with the file size. If this is included in the link anchor text then screen readers such as JAWS can easily determine the presence of PDF’s. Surely this is enough to determine the presence of PDF’s without the need for a gateway page.

What do you think is the best way of presenting PDF links?

It’s that time of year. The Christmas parties have been attended and enjoyed, the final presentations delivered and now we are closing our doors until next year.

Thanks for a great year and for reading our blog, we hope you have enjoyed it and we are looking forward to tackling 2011 head on!

We’d like to wish everyone the Season’s Greetings and a Happy New Year from the team at UsabilityOne.

Also – our newsletter has gone out today featuring a great article on the psychology of web optimisation.

This month’s UsabilityOne newsletter includes Jonathon’s article on the important questions you should address before undertaking a round of user testing. The newsletter also includes what UsabilityOne has been up to, as well as a couple of articles we think are worthwhile sharing.

If you would like to subscribe to our monthly newsletter you can do so via our homepage

UsabilityOne Managing Director, Shef Bey was interviewed earlier this week by Power Retail. See a video of the interview here…
http://www.powerretail.com.au/insights/usability-testing-essential-for-optimised-online-user-experience/

A cliché which seems to have developed in recent years is the video of a baby using an iPhone/iPad. I must say that I find this a little tiresome and boring – I don’t care how clever your child is! Having said that, it is interesting to note that very young children can interact with Apple’s touch devices.  And it got me thinking, what is it about the design that means that young children, often too young to speak, can interact with them?  I think it comes down to 2 design basics: feedback and a clear call to action.

Apple seems to have mastered the call to action.  For starters, both devices have one physical button which appears to provide children with an obvious start point as well as an incentive to see what happens. Young children explore the world, trying to understand how things work – and Apple’s clear button and subsequent unlock bar lure children into this curious new device.

Feedback is the other core design basic which assists children to understand the Apple devices. The feedback is immediate and also suggestive of what is possible. For example, when a little finger touches a photo and begins to drag it across the screen it suggests that there is somewhere for it to go. And soon, there is a new image.

Apple illustrates how important it is to get the basics of design right: feedback and calls to action, when done correctly, make a device child’s play for the user.

So next time you look at your website (or other device?), perhaps you should think of it from a more child-like perspective! Is there a clear call to action? Is feedback immediate and suggestive for the user? How intuitive is it? If it’s not child’s play for the user to navigate, then it might not be right.

Purchasing online often involves a number of factors which are nonexistent in the physical world. Questions such as product availability, delivery options and delivery price take on greater meaning when shopping online. In the physical world these questions are answered before the stage of paying for goods; we know if a product is available because it is on the shelf, and delivery for most items is not usually an issue as we can take the product away with us.

image by emmerrrrrrr (flicker)

What can often frustrate users online is when these questions are not addressed until too late in the purchase process; when the user has already made some sort of a commitment to the product, only to find out it’s either not available, cannot be delivered in the expected time frame/location or delivery costs are too high. Had the user known these factors upfront during their browsing phase the frustration levels would be a lot lower and the chances of that user staying a customer much higher.

It is important to inform the users of the following before they arrive at the checkout. It  may be just enough for users to stay a customer rather than go straight to a competitors site. A few small changes can have a great impact on a user’s shopping experience

• If a product is out of stock provide this on the product listing page
• Offer an email alert when the product become available
• If, for whatever reason, a product cannot be delivered in the company’s standard time frame (next day delivery for example), provide this detail upfront on the product listing page, before users have committed to the order

Reducing user frustration leads to a much more happy and satisfied customer. And satisfied customers are more likely to return. Empowering users by giving them information before arriving at the checkout process of factors such as product availability, delivery time frames and costs is one simple method to do this.

Meeting with clients in Canberra recently reinforced our belief that the topic of website consolidation is a hot issue right now. Should government departments – and to a lesser extent, corporate bodies – have a proliferation of websites for each campaign and project? Or should their online presence be consolidated in the form of one main website containing all the disparate elements of the business or body.

There appears to be somewhat of a standoff between government and bodies on whether to create – for example – campaign sites, or to incorporate these into department websites.

Creating separate campaign sites has its benefits. These sites can be designed around one focused message, cutting through the noise of the rest of the Department’s activities. However, they also introduce confusion, as users must find a separate site rather than finding all content on the parent Department site.

The Department of Health and Aging (health.gov.au) has individual websites for many of their campaigns, such as How do you measure up?(measureup.gov.au); Alcohol-related harm (drinkingnightmare.gov.au) and the national tobacco campaign (quitnow.info.au). The Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy (dbcde.gov.au) has lots of information about the switchover to digital television on their main website but have also developed a campaign website, Get Ready for Digital TV (digitalready.gov.au).

Whether or not to create a stand-alone campaign website  is the question. This is a question that has been increasingly prevalent lately, and we’d love to hear your thoughts or experiences…

This week we came across this tweet:

There is some lively debate about the actual existence of the pagefold on websites (see http://www.thereisnopagefold.com/).  The main arguments as far as I can tell, is that the pagefold does not apply to the web because, unlike the physical world where a newspaper fold applies to all readers, online users can view pages in a variety of screen resolutions which alter the placement of the fold and there is a scroll bar on most websites to find more content.

My take is a little more pragmatic;

When we observe users in labs, time and time again we see some people not using the scroll bar.  While good designs help to avoid this, it does happen.  As such we recommend to our clients that they present key information (not all content) above the page fold in common screen resolution formats (eg. 1024 by 768).

Whilst I agree that we should think about websites outside of the newspaper paradigm I do believe that talking about the fold encourages website owners to think about the placement of key information on the page to make it easier for users to undertake key activities.

What do you think?