top usability tips you don’t know about - siuc 2011
DESCRIPTION
Best practice in web usability. Presented by Tanya Lang from Peak Usability at the Squiz International User Conference 2011 in Sydney.TRANSCRIPT
1
Usability - Our top 5s
Presented by Tania Lang Principal at Peak Usability 31st August 2011
Outline
Top 5 user experience methods
Top 5 user experience tools
Top 5 usability tips you may not know about
Top 5 user experience methods
1st method
Affinity diagramming – How to
Brainstorm Sort and group Label & prioritise
Affinity diagramming - Benefits
#2: Card sorting
See Peak Usability Articles
#3: Leading practice review
#4: Collaborative design workshop
Source Flickr AlphachimpStudio
#5: User observation
Don’t listen to your users
Top 5 user experience tools
#3: Chalkmark – Online testing tool http://www.optimalworkshop.com/chalkmark
14
Results
#3: Chalkmark – Online testing tool
Look at the following website for 5 seconds then I will ask you a question
#4: Fivesecondtest Results
#5: Naview - IA testing - Results www.naviewapp.com/
Results
Top 5 usability tips you may not know about
Which way to the ladies toilet?
The human brain tends to create groupings.
Gestalt theory
Proximity users group objects appearing
near one another
Similarity users group objects with
similar visual characteristics Source: http://www.uie.com/articles/visible_narratives
Gestalt Principle of Proximity Users ignore instructions, text, buttons and ‘Help’ links if they are too far away from relevant page fields and functionality
e.g. important password instructions by most users
Use similar visual treatment or colour or close proximity to communicate items are related or belong together
Continuity and Similarity
Similarity
…back to the loo
3
3 Search
2 2 In-page links
1 1 Menu bar / tabs
4
4 Site map
How users find stuff
Cater for different navigation behaviours or some of your users will not find stuff and get lost.
Imagine you are an Australian Super member and you want to find out what fees you are currently being charged. Where would you go?
Congratulations. You are the 1000th visitor to this site and just won a $1000 deposit for your account.
Think about WHERE to promote ‘things’ (maybe not the home page?) …and try NOT to make important messages look like banner ads
Where to now?
No dead ends!
Think about where your users would like to go next for every page on your site and provide crosslinks.
Provide crosslinks for users who may have navigated to an incorrect but related page
…or who have completed their tasks and may be interested or open to related content
Cross linking – Our training page
Don’t show all users all content or options. Show users basic or important stuff that will be frequently used by most users and hide content, fields or features used infrequently or by only a small number of users.
Mental models Internal representations of a person’s current understanding of something derived from experience with the world
Need to ensure you understand your You need to ensure you understand
your users’ mental model to develop easy to use and intuitive systems
Contact details and additional resources
Tania Lang Peak Usability
www.peakusability.com.au
07 3839 9593
Brisbane, Australia
Twitter: @peakusability
http://www.peakusability.com.au/resources/