Category Archives: Usability

A usability screen recording tip

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For those of you who don’t know, a formal usability test involves a person sitting down at a computer and doing predefined tasks on a website and the screen as well as the person being recorded.  We look at how fast it takes to do a task, where they did well, and where the website failed to help the person.  It is a huge eye opener for many. For an overview I recommend Steve Krug‘s fine book Don’t Make Me Think: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability.

So I’ve been doing a major usability project for a client and happily using screenflow for recording my sessions on my MacBook Air.  I really prefer taking the testing to the person’s own environment or at least a neutral environment where they will feel less like a ginea pig and more like just a person using a website, albeit in a structured way.  Let me say that unless you are going to use Morae (which is highly recommendable especially for large scale testing where you want statistically relevant time to completion and failure rates on tasks, although windows only and fairly expensive) I would go with screenflow instead of camtasia. There is at least a couple reasons for this.  One is that recording is super simple, and even on me less-than-super-powered air it never hiccups, slows, or has any problems with recording the WHOLE screen as well as the webcam.  The real beauty of Screenflow though is when it comes time to watch or edit videos.  You can move around the two media sources (the screen and the camera), you can easily zoom in on part of the sceen if you want, make clicks visible and audible, blur parts of the window, change opacity and I’m sure more.  Some of this is possible in Camtasia, but it is really straight forward in screenflow.  The other thing I really like is using it on a mac laptop with built in isight.  It is VERY unobstrusive.  The participant is less likely to be self-conscious, even at the start when most people are without a visible camera pointing at them.  I understand you can even hook up another camera, though I have not attempted to do such.

OK now for the big tip, something I’ve learned which has helped, and would apply to any screen recording: Use a monitor that is larger with higher resolution when reviewing footage and editing video.  This makes it much easier to see al the fine textual details on the screen as well facial expressions that can be very small otherwise.  I do this quickly and easily by plugging in an external monitor, but you could conceivably put them on a share on the computer and open it through the network or copy it, though these are large files and that would be cumbersome and tiring.

I like to take notes as I watch, and taking notes on an open document one the smaller sceen is a nifty way to keep it all there, plus I type much faster than I can write by hand.

That is all for now, carry on.

Usability Challenge 2008 Solution

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It’s true, today is the Usability Challenge 2008.  I have chosen this page:

Higher Education Resources

This is part of an ongoing project I am working on with the Lumina Foundation for education.  This page is a new way of visualizing and finding a large amount of information.

Lumina has amassed a large amount of publications over the last several years that all are related to their mission which is helping people achieve their potential though education.  People who work in this area directly with youth and adults who want to go back to college are called college access professionals, and my hat is off to these hard working people.  Of course there are plenty of researchers who also work in this are, usually in education departments.  I have met many in both groups.  What all these people including Lumina’s staff members rely on is high quality resources like the ones that have been gathered, but how does one search through these?

Instead of search all of the resources have been tagged (with multiple tags for each item, usually including the year of publication).  These tags have been presented in a tag cloud, where larger text means more things with that tag.  The really new thing is that if you click on one item, it shows you how many things are in that tag, and you may keep on clicking on tags to narrow your results.  The total number is shown at the top on view results tab.  When you are ready you can click on that tab and see all the items.  It is a very cool way of browsing, and the reaction of people once they understand how to use it is very positive.  The problem here is that it is a new convention, with very few affordances.  There is a “view demo” but most users don’t see it, and many users often have the volume down on their computer even when the video comes up.

The solution I am proposing for this particular page is a short lightbox popup that shows the user to click on a tag, then a second and then click view results, showing it graphically, textually and then quickly fading to a point on the screen with a question mark on it.  Clicking on the question mark will replay it slower and have the option for sound as well as givign a link for an even lengthier explanation (which would be around the length of the current demo).

It will be important to use cookies so that once a user has successfully clicked on the view results tab the lightboxed pop-up will no longer show, and that the whole strategy be evaluated regularly to see if it can be improved and when people understand it well enough we can eliminate the lightbox, but keep a pulsing question mark or something like that.

I am also emailing the results of this to Lumina so that it can be implemented. Usability Challenge 2008 is in the can.

Usability Challenge 2008

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On August 1 2008 a fun event is happening, the Usability Challenge.  In order to participate all one must do is identify a usability challenge, design a solution and share it with someone who can implement it.  I will in fact be participating as I have several uability problems I am working on for clients and they can and will implement them.

This is a call out to all the other usability people to take on the challenge and make the world more usable.

Usability in the age of UX (Part 2)

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I know it’s been over 2 months since I started part one in this series, but my life has been very busy, but I’ve had many opportunities to think about this and other issues at CHI2008 and in my work.

I’ve been doing some consulting and usability work for medium-sized organization. Part of that work has included some usability work, and I have tried desperately to incorporate some UX ideas and methodologies as well, with very limited success.

What seems to be the theme in all that I do is that usability ends up being post design phase work, and UX MUST be part of the design phase, preferably in the earliest conceptual phases in order for it to really work. As an outside consultant or evaluator it is almost impossible to implement any meaningful UX ideas or methodology no matter what phase of the work you are brought into if the organization is not open to it and/or does not understand the power of it.

Almost everyone has a vague idea of what usability is, and it is generally thought to be positive, although there are a lot of misconceptions about it. It is easy enough to run usability tests at all phases of design and implementation and have significant ROI on it in terms of improvement of the product, bottom line (if applicable), and client satisfaction.

So what is usability in the age of UX? I guess the easy answer for me is that it is that usability is part of 2nd wave HCI, and UX is part of 3rd wave HCI. Those of us working in 3rd wave cannot forget about 2nd wave ideas and methodology, as they are vital, but the promise of 3rd wave is that there is so much more beyond it.

I’ll post more on being a Luddit later (from part 1).

Usability studies on a book?! YES! from UXmatters

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 From UXMatters

This is an interview from a new publisher who is printing books in the UX and Usability area.  They conducted a Usability study on a book, yes a printed book.  It just goes to show what you think you know about how people use and own things is not usually true.  User studies of all kinds will give you valuable data on all these kinds of things.  Does anyone think Amazon did this with the Kindle? Some maybe, clearly not a lot.