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User-Centered Design

Analysis Tools Used in User-Centered Design

Analysis Tools Used in User-Centered Design
There are few tools that are used in user centered design. They are persona, scenarios, and essential use cases.
 
Persona
 
During the UCD process, a persona of the user's need may be created. It is a fictional character with all the characteristics of the user. Personas are created after the field research process, which typically consists of members of the primary stakeholder (user) group being observed on their behaviour, and additionaly answering questionnaires or participating in interviews, or a mixture of both.

Business Analysis - Use Cases

Business Analysis - Use Cases
In my last post on business analysis, I described user stories and gave a comparison between user stories and use cases. In my today's post, I am going to describe use cases.
 
A use case (a case in the use of a system) is a list of steps, typically defining interactions between a role known as an "actor" and a system to achieve a goal. The actor can be a human or an external system.
 
There is no standard way to write a use case, and different formats work well in different cases. There are few templates to use for a use case.

Business Analysis in Content Management

Business Analysis in Content Management
Content management initiative starts with the analysis of the current situation and coming up with a solution and the strategy for this solution. This process is called business analysis. Business analysis can be defined as the discipline of identifying business needs and determining solutions to business problems.
 
The usual problem in content management arena is that employees spend a lot of time searching for information, re-creating information and while they are doing it, they are not being efficient and productive, and so the company looses money. Employees also use obsolete documents in their work and so the integrity of work and compliance is at risk.
 
How is this problem solved? By implementing a content management initiative. The first step of it is business analysis. It involves requirements gathering and development process. During this process you identify the specific needs of the business and then develop and implement the solutions to meet them. This could be for example a new content management system deployment, modification of a current content management system, integrating few content management systems, designing a search solution, etc.

Business Analysis, User Stories, and Agile Methodology

Business Analysis, User Stories, and Agile Methodology
In my last post on business analysis in content management, I mentioned that methods used in business analysis are: focus groups, documentation analysis, surveys, user task analysis, process mapping, stakeholders interviews, use cases, user stories, personas, storyboards, etc. In my today's post, I am going to describe user story method.
 
A user story is a short, simple description of a feature told from the perspective of the person who desires the new system capabilities, usually a user or a customer of the system. It is one or few sentences in the everyday or business language that captures what a user does or needs to do as part of his or her job functions.
 
User stories are used with Agile software development methodologies as the basis for defining the functions that a business system must provide. It captures the "who", "what" and "why" of a requirement in a simple, concise way, often limited in detail by what can be hand-written on a small paper notecard. User stories are written by or for a business user as that user's primary way to influence the functionality of the system being developed.

Information Architecture and Usability

Information Architecture and Usability
The distinction between information architecture and usability may seem like semantics, but there are significant differences between the two disciplines.
 
Though they are often discussed interchangeably, and practitioners are often well-versed in both, information architecture and usability differ in their scope and areas of focus.
 
The difference between information architecture and usability is important to understand because information architecture is more than just understanding what users want and need. A usability-only approach to information architecture is only one piece of the puzzle.
 
Information architecture problems often account for a large percentage of usability problems, but there are many other things unrelated to information architecture that have an impact on usability.

Optimize Web Experience Management

Optimize Web Experience Management

Leading enterprises strive to acheeve higher levels of customer engagement through online channels, and this means they must easily, quickly and cost effectively provide fresh, personal, relevant content anytime, anywhere, on any device, through a consistent and dynamic user experience.
 
Traditional web content management system (CMS) solutions are no longer sufficient, and a richer and broader range of capabilities that enable web experience management - managing and optimizing the site visitor experience across the web, mobile apps, social networks and more - must now be leveraged in this new era of engagement.
 
The Need for Web Experience Management
 
Over the last few years, the Internet has undergone a tremendous amount of fundamental change in its landscape - socia1, personal and mobile.

User Acceptance Testing

User Acceptance Testing

I have mentioned in my posts that if users either find a system difficult to use or find problems with it, then user adoption of this system is going to be extremely difficult. One of the ways to eliminate potential problems and provide user adoption is user acceptance testing.

User Acceptance Testing (UAT) is a process to obtain confirmation that a system meets mutually agreed upon requirements for the system. Major stakeholders, the project sponsor, and users across an organization provide such confirmation after testing the system. UAT is done using real world scenarios relevant to the users' tasks in the system.

Users of the system perform these tests, which you would derive from the user requirements documents. The UAT acts as a final verification of the required business functions and proper functioning of the system, emulating real-world usage conditions. UAT is one of the final stages of a content management project and often occurs before users accept the system. This type of testing gives users the confidence that the system being deployed for them meets their requirements. This testing also helps to find bugs related to usability of the system.

User Study

User Study
You have decided to implement a content management or a document control system. This system that you are planning to deploy is for users. Everything you create is for users. If your system meets your users' requirements, they will use it. If your system does not meet your users' requirements, they are not going to use it.
 
They are the ultimate designers. Design a system that confuses users and they will go somewhere else. Build the system that frustrates users and they will not use it. No matter what you do, they will find all possible excuses of why they cannot and should not use your system. Users adoption is going to be very difficult, almost impossible if you deploy a system which is not based on your users' requirements.
 
But who are your users? Why are they looking for information? What information are they looking for? How are they looking for information? How would they like to search for information? How would like to author this information? How would they like to use your system? and similar questions - these questions you should ask your users before you deploy any system. You ask these and similar questions during user study which should be done at the beginning of your project. This is the subject of my today's post.

User-Centered Design

User-Centered Design
User-centered design (UCD) is a design philosophy and a process in which the needs, wants, and limitations of end users of a product are given attention at each stage of the design process. 
 
User-centered design can be characterized as a multi-stage problem solving process that not only requires designers to analyze and foresee how users are likely to use a product, but also to test the validity of their assumptions with regards to user behaviour in real world tests with actual users. 
 
Such testing is necessary as it is often very difficult for the designers of a product to understand intuitively what a user of their design experiences, and what each user's learning curve may look like. The main difference from other product design philosophies is that user-centered design tries to optimize the product around how users can, want, or need to use the product, rather than forcing the users to change their behavior to accommodate the product. 

Web Site Usability

Web Site Usability
Web usability is an approach to make a web site easy to use for a user, without the requirement that any specialized training is undertaken or any special manual is read. Users should be able to intuitively determine the actions they need or can perform on the web page s, e.g., press a button to perform some action.
 
Some broad goals of usability could be: present the information to the user in a clear and concise way, give the correct choices to the users in an obvious way, remove any ambiguity regarding the consequences of an action (e.g. clicking on delete/remove/purchase), place important items in an appropriate area on a web page or a web application.
 
When you designed your web site, you want to promote it everywhere with big bold letters saying, "Hello everybody! Come and look at my web site! It is just great!" When you submit your web site to forums for web site reviews, you may write, "What do you think of my web site?"
 
This is the big mistake to ask someone to look at your web site. There is never a single answer. To understand if your web site meets its usability requirements, ask people to try it out. They should be able to answer the following questions: what is the purpose of this web site? what can I do here? what needs does it fulfill?

What is Usability and How Does it Relate to Business?

Your business is relying more heavily on technology than it ever has, and it is likely to continue in that direction. But in order for your technology to work for your business and make it successful, there must be at least some degree of usefulness to your technology. That may sound like a no-brainer at first, considering that it is the entire reason your business has adopted technology. However, a surprising number of enterprises fail to adhere to usability and user design principles. Usability, as it suggests, is the field of studying a document’s usefulness to the user. How easy is the website to navigate? Is there enough white space? Is information structured logically? Are elements easy to find? These are just some of the questions a usability test might attempt to answer.

What is Usability?

What is Usability?

Usability is the ease of use of a system or a web site. It is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. If users either find a system difficult to use or find problems with it, then user adoption of this system is going to be extremely difficult.

Usability is a quality attribute that assesses how easy user interfaces are to use. The word "usability" also refers to methods for improving ease-of-use during the design process.

Usability is defined by 5 quality components:
  • Learnability: how easy is it for users to accomplish basic tasks the first time they encounter the design?
  • Efficiency: once users have learned the design, how quickly can they perform tasks?
  • Memorability: when users return to the design after a period of not using it, how easily can they reestablish proficiency?
  • Satisfaction: how pleasant is it to use the design?
There are many other important quality attributes. A key one is utility, which refers to the design's functionality: does it do what users need?