Articles
Usability doesn’t stop when you write the content
By Whitney Quesenbery
Published: May 5, 2008
Think about the last web site you worked on. You probably did card sorting for the information architecture. You created paper prototypes to try out different page layouts. You ran iterative usability tests to make sure people could use the site. But what about the information on the site?
Don't Make Me Work Hard!
By Daniel Szuc
Published: April 29, 2008
I have been thinking a lot about this recently in our projects now and over the years as it pertains to improving and simplifying designs and it comes down to this: "Dont Make Me Work Hard!" So ... what are some quick examples of products and services that don't make me work hard?
The Mobile Design Matrix
By Daniel Szuc
Published: April 24, 2008
Recently we worked on the design of a mobile application and to help the Product Team determine the type of activities and tasks people may want to do on their mobile phone using this particular application Apogee created "The Mobile Design Matrix".
Delighting Customers
By Daniel Szuc
Published: April 8, 2008
What does it take to delight customers? Here are a few thoughts you can refer to when working on products to help make them more usable, delightful and profitable for your company. It takes more than just a checklist to make great products, but think of this as something quick you can refer back to when designing for your customers.
User Friendly 2007: Connecting User Experience Communities
By Daniel Szuc, Paul J. Sherman, Jo Wong, and Liya Zheng
Published: March 24, 2008
User Friendly 2007 was held in Beijing on November 23–25, 2007, and—like the previous conferences in Beijing (2004), Shanghai (2005), and Hangzhou (2006)—was a rousing success. UPA China saw the 2007 event as an opportunity to return to Beijing, giving attendees the opportunity to visit the 2008 Olympics host city as it prepares for its moment in the spotlight.
Using the Right Words to Shape the User Experience
By John S. Rhodes
Published – 27 February 2008
Words matter. The words you're reading right now -- on this page -- influence you. They make you think. They cause you to react and respond. They shape your experience, and your life.
To understand the true impact of words on the user experience, we need only look at a small slice of psychology. Let's consider how words shape memories....
Usability Now - an Interview with Daniel Szuc
Published – 10 January 2008
Gerry Gaffney spoke to Daniel Szuc in Hong Kong about the state of usability today. Although we were on the 22nd floor, in the background you can hear the sounds of the Hong Kong traffic.
How Direct Marketing and User Experience Are the Same
By John S. Rhodes
Published – 4 January 2008
I've read several marketing books. In fact, I have an entire library of marketing books. The rooms of my home are full of these books.
Now, you might be wondering why a guy interested in usability and user experience (UX) would be so interested in marketing? The answer is very simple: direct marketing.
Before I explain that point, let me first tell you a couple of things about marketing. The average person sees marketing as a combination of advertising and sales. But, this is no better than saying that Freud or Pavlov fully explains the whole of Psychology.
Design in China - taking a great leap forward
By Liya Zheng
Published – 12 December 2007
The 4th annual User Experience conference in China took place in Beijing this year. The number of local speakers in 2007 increased dramatically from the last year's conference. Both the materials covered in the talks and workshops reflected a huge leap forward for the User Experience community in China. It was echoed in the opening speeches, that China's user experience and design industries are key to the country's economic growth. User Experience practitioners have an exciting future and an increasingly strategic role to fill. A key topic to address when we look into our industry's future is how can Chinese and foreign companies use our talents to help them succeed in the global market place.
Choice Kills Usability
By John S. Rhodes
Published – 20 November 2007
One of the easiest ways to improve usability is by focusing on just one thing. When you present something to the user, be sure that it's just one thing. All too often we try to hard to offer people several options.
The reason many people love Google.com is that it offers just one thing: search. A single-minded focus has enormous implications. Users can clearly understand what Google is about and what it does. Even new users to Google are instantly put at ease because of the outlandish simplicity. If your site or your web page is focused on one thing everyone wins.
Customer Support on the Web: Don't Call Us, We'll Call You
By Daniel Szuc
Published – 5 November 2007
When customers arrive at a Web site, they have goals and tasks they want to complete—for example, buying a movie ticket, transferring money, signing up for a service, applying for a loan, asking for help, and so on. An important requirement for a Web site is the ability for customers to serve themselves, so they can generally complete their tasks without needing to contact Customer Support or ask a friend for help. However, understandably, there are times when customers do need help from Customer Support—by either speaking over the phone or using live chat—so they can solve more complex problems or complete tasks they cannot complete on their own. In such cases, customers need email addresses and phone numbers that let them contact Customer Support directly.
Interview with Douglas Wang (Product Design Manager at Autodesk Shanghai, China)
Published – 27 August 2007
What changes have you seen in Usability in Asia since starting in the Design/Usability field?
"There was a much stronger voice in North America and Europe when I started my career in usability. Along with the popularity of outsourcing to Asia and local Asian IT growth around 2003, especially in web technologies, the awareness of usability has been increasing. The Asian voice of usability is starting to be widely heard. I think Chinese business find more and more value in usability, instead of "pure" technology advances."
Personas: Focusing on getting the design right – Part 2
By Fiona Meighan
Published – 15 August 2007
In Part I of this article, we discussed what Personas are and how they can inform design to ensure products and services focus on customer needs and goals. We also discussed the importance of using primary data about real users to create personas. A hypothetical case study was given for a company called SecureCam who needed to redesign their service, with the view to using personas to assist with this task. In Part 2, the individual components of a persona are described and an example persona relating to the SecureCam case study is provided.
Home Page Design
By Daniel Szuc
Published – 6 August 2007
It is time to review a company home page design. There are a number of stakeholders involved in home page design, and each of them wants a piece of the home page real estate. Are there questions you can ask before approaching home page design that can move it beyond the influence of specific stakeholders in the company toward a common vision? Are there tips to consider when designing a home page? This article will help you better understand how to approach home page design.
Cognitive Walkthrough and Heuristic Evaluation in the Contemporary Design Process
By Liya Zheng
Published – 6 August 2007
The craft of User Experience Design involves many different expertise working together. Some of us work in small teams with generalist backgrounds, others with larger teams of specialists. Regardless of team structure, some age-old usability methods can still help enhance your contemporary Interaction Design work.
The Four Horsemen of Usability
By John S. Rhodes
Published – 16 July 2007
It's been more than 6 years since I wrote about the Four Horsemen of Usability
Back in June 2001, the four web properties that garnered more than 50% of all
the time spent online by U.S. surfers were: AOL / Time Warner, Microsoft,
Napster, and Yahoo.
Reference: http://blog.compete.com/2007/01/25/top-20-websites-ranked-by-time-spent/
Well, times have changed. MySpace, Yahoo, MSN, eBay are the top sites now. Furthermore, the top four only capture about 28% of our time.
Another interesting data point is that Google only gets about 2% of our attention. Is this because they offer up easy access to information people want, and user quickly zoom away?
When you compare MySpace to Google, it seems pretty obvious to me.
MySpace is all about sucking you in and never letting you go. It's a place for
people to interact with other people. Google is an information gateway. It's a
conduit to other web sites.
No matter how many times you hit Google, you don't really spend time and attention there. Indeed, the idea is to find what you want and get away from Google as fast as possible, except for some of their tools like Gmail.
So, what do you think about the Four Horsemen now?
How to Deliver Bad News to Customers
By John Rhodes
Published – 4 July 2007
The intention of usability testing and user experience (UX) research is to help clients and end users. If you want to help people, you must first understand problems and issues. You have to explain the challenges you discover. After all, you can't fix what you don't know is broken. Your clients cannot take action without information. You can't improve something or make it usable without exploring what isn't working.
Walking Through Your Product Design With Stakeholders
By Daniel Szuc
Published – 4 June 2007
You are the lead designer-or perhaps even the sole designer on a product team. You have just completed your product design, and it's time to walk through your design approach with the project stakeholders, including management, developers, and users. What do you need to do to prepare for your presentation?
This article provides some basic tips to help you better prepare to walk through your product designs with stakeholders.
The Impact of Ajax on User Experience – Part 3
Strategies for User Experience Professionals
Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHFP
Vice President - User Experience & Usability
iNautix (USA) LLC - An Affiliate of Pershing
Published – 30 May 2007
As User Experience (UX) professionals, our goal is to help businesses create products that will result in compelling experiences for our users. We achieve this goal by understanding users' needs, the product context and technologies that will empower the product and creating a design solution for the product. Understanding the power of new technologies and future technology trends, limitations and best practices help us to provide the best design solutions.
Interview with Rex Wong (Interaction Designer in Hong Kong)
Published - 10 April 2007
What changes have you seen in Usability in Asia since starting in the Design/Usability field?
"Have seen a boom in the usability field in Mainland China over the past 3 years. As a committee member of UPA China's - Hong Kong Branch I have been involved in the User Friendly conferences since 2004 and since that time have seen huge increases in participants year on year."
Personas: Focusing on getting the design right – Part 1
By Fiona Meighan
Published - 2 April 2007
Target audience: Product Managers and User Experience practitioners who have not yet created their own personas before.
Imagine this... You work for SecureTech Inc., a company that specialises in providing small business owners with a web camera security service called SecureCam...
Registration - Last chance for first impressions
By Gerry Gaffney
Published - 3 March 2007
Registration is often the first real interaction that a user has with an organisation. Perhaps they've browsed a few pages, or they've seen advertisements, but now they're actually ready to come up and say 'hello' and introduce themselves.
Six techniques for advocating design in your organization
By Liya Zheng
Published - 1 March 2007
This article discusses some techniques to help overcome challenges incorporating design into your product development process.
Usability in China: Encore
By Daniel Szuc and Paul J. Sherman
Published - 8 January 2007
The leaders of the China chapter wanted to raise the profile of usability engineering and user-centered design in China and create the biggest usability conference in the region.
The Impact of Ajax on User Experience - Part 2
By Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHFP
HFE Consulting, LLC
Published - 15 January 2007
In Part 1 on "The Impact of Ajax on User Experience" we looked at the positive impacts of AJAX on user experience. In this article, Part 2, we will look at the negative impacts.
Do You Suffer from Familiarity Blindness?
By John Rhodes
Published - December 2006
If you are too close to something then you might ignore it. Similarly, if you are an expert or you have vast experience, then it is possible that you will disregard key items when communicating with others about that topic.
Tag Cloud in Chinese websites
By Rex Wong
Published - December 2006
Tag cloud displays tags in a website which emphasize some of the tags by showing them with larger font sizes, and/or in darker colors. Moreover, tags in a tag cloud are usually arranged in alphabetical order. Tag cloud seems to work in the English world as a means of visualization as well as an extra means of navigation - what about in the Chinese world or more specifically, what about in Hong Kong?
User Friendly 2006 - Usability in China
5 November 2006
This podcast contains four short interviews from User Friendly 2006, the UPA China conference in Hangzhou.
The Impact of Ajax on User Experience – Part 1
By Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHFP
HFE Consulting, LLC
Published - 23 October 2006
Ajax has been a hot topic since Jesse James Garrett coined the term and published the essay "Ajax: A New Approach to Web Applications" in February, 2005. Numerous Ajax-based web applications and development toolkits have been rushing to the internet in the past year.Web-based applications have become richer and more responsive, not only closing the gap with the desktop but also presenting new and fun ways for user-web interactions.
Hong Kong's Octopus Card - A Highly Usable Product
By Gerry Gaffney
Published - 23 October 2006
Users of Hong Kong's public transport system will be familiar with the Octopus card, which I consider to be exemplary in terms of the user experience it offers.
In this brief episode, I talk about some of the things that make it so easy to use.
The Lie at the Heart of Customer Service
By Gerry Gaffney
Published - October 2006
In the years when companies became enamoured with information technology, it often seemed that the individual had disappeared from view.
People became accustomed to adjusting themselves and their actions to fit new technologies. They came to accept 'computer error', which was the customary explanation for many of the problems they encountered when dealing with government agencies, banks, utilities, and other corporations.
Usability in China (podcast with Josephine Wong)
17 July 2006
I spoke to Josephine Wong from Apogee - Usability in Asia about the state of usability in China.
Josephine mentions the "User Friendly" conference. That's run by UPA China.
Usability in Asia (podcast with Daniel Szuc)
9 July 2006
Fresh from the terrific 2006 UPA conference, Tim shares two interviews we know you'll enjoy. First, Tim talks with Giles Colborne, President of the UK UPA chapter. What does the UK UPA chapter do and how does it operate? Next, Tim engages Daniel Szuc from Apogee Usability Asia Ltd. in a freewheeling discussion about usability and Hong Kong.
CEOs and Usability
By John S. Rhodes & Daniel Szuc
Published July 2006
Talking to a CEO about usability can be wonderful or terrifying. The difference between raging success and total failure comes down to understanding exactly what the CEO needs to know and then adjusting your usability message to fit. This article explains how to understand various contexts, and in turn, how to position your usability message.
How Much Effort Does It Take to Create a Great User Experience?
By John S. Rhodes
Published April 2006
How much money does it take to move a project from inception to completion? How do you fully consider the total cost of ownership? How do you know how much time to spend on usability and requirements?
Is Google Advertising Evil?
By John S. Rhodes
Published March 2006
What kind of company is Google? Ask most people this question and the answer you'll likely get is "search." While it is true that Google is a company focused on search, they don't survive through search. Instead, like all companies, they are judged on their profits. And as John Gruber points out, they don't profit from search, they profit by selling advertisements.
How Product Teams Benefit from Usability
By John S. Rhodes
Published 1 March 2006
Product teams can leverage usability in three simple ways. First, usability can disambiguate requirements. Second, it can push a product closer to perfection with a small investment. Finally, usability helps product teams inform the organization about potential and expected support issues.
Language and Usability
By Whitney Quesenbery
Balancing the 5Es
By Whitney Quesenbery
A Report from User Friendly 2005: Shanghai
By Qin Lin
Published February 2006
A Glimpse of China's Future at User Friendly 2005
By Robert Barlow-Busch
Published 20 February 2006
Practicing Usability in Hong Kong
By Eleanor Lisney
Published 26 November 2005
Chinese Home Site Visits – Tips & Hints
By Josephine Wong
Published November 2005
You may only get one opportunity in a home visit and good planning and preparation is important. Here are some tips and hints from recent home site visits in both China and Taiwan.
Choosing the Right Channel for Communicating with Customers
By Daniel Szuc and Whitney Quesenbery
Published October 2005
Technology continues to change the customer service equation. Making the right decisions about which channels to use for marketing, communications and customer service requires an understanding of tasks, users and optimizing the use of each channel. Comparing user needs and channel strengths will help you make the right decision for your business and your customers.
Planning for User Research Success
By Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney
Published August 2005
Planning is crucial if you want your user research efforts to be effective. You need to think about what information you need to gather, and why, before embarking on any research. Good planning, well communicated to the client or project, and followed by careful implementation will ensure your research is effective.
The constant design balance
By Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney
Published March 2005
Usability is about understanding your users, and designing and testing with and for those users. However, there are other competing needs that need to be considered to ensure product success. In architectural and technical drawings, different layers or transparencies are often overlaid to assemble the complete design solution. A similar "design transparency" approach can ensure that product teams are working towards a common goal, gaining a balanced view, and increasing the chance of success.
Customer Support on the web
By Daniel Szuc and Gerry Gaffney
Published 13 February 2005
Customers avoid web-based customer support if information is not relevant, out of date or hard to find. Without a business commitment to addressing these issues, customers will continue to prefer contacting a service representative by phone.
Back to Basics
Published 4 December 2004
Design and optimize products around basic features. The result - you will sell more products and improve the chances of people using secondary features (such as value added services).
Dashboards
Published 15 October 2004
Dashboards allow users to view and access information from a single location, without having to navigate to separate 'silos' to find the information they need.
Usability in Hong Kong
Published 4 February 2002
What is Card Sorting?
Card Sorting is a technique for exploring how people group items, so that you can develop structures that maximize the probability of users being able to find items.
What is Usability Testing?
Usability testing is a technique for ensuring that the intended users of a system can carry out the intended tasks efficiently, effectively and satisfactorily.
The Death of the Flash Splash Screen
For many people the reaction to a splash screen is similar to the reaction of David Jacques, a Customer Experience Consultant in Hong Kong - "For me, a Splash screen is a game: to find the skip button as fast as possible."
Mobility and Usability
Gartner quotes: "More than 50 percent of mobile applications deployed at the start of 2002 will be obsolete by the end of 2002. The lack of sufficiently useful and usable applications will be the biggest barrier to "always-on" consumer acceptance in 2002."
Why do Big Companies Keep on Getting it Wrong?
Many enterprises in Asia have web sites that provide poor customer experience and have low levels of usage. Information is often presented from a business perspective, without sufficient consideration of the customers' needs. The following are some of the common usability issues we have identified...
Usability in HK - Is There a Difference?
Are there differences in the way Hong Kong (HK) users work and interact with web sites? This article is a preliminary insight into some of the observations we have made during usability activities in HK.
Reading List
The Anatomy of Buzz : How to Create Word-Of-Mouth Marketing
- Written by Emanuel Rosen
Emanuel Rosen traces the whole "buzz" movement throughout much of the past ten years, from Blair Witch (a standardized cliche) to Hotmail to Napster. He traces how they grew to the point where everyone knew about them, leading to their phenomenal growth and success.
Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends
- Written by Tim Sanders
...this book teaches you that the best way to get ahead isn't to be a barricuda. It's to be a nice, smart person. If you share what the author calls your "intangable" values (your knowledge, your network, and your compassion) you are most likely to reach success.
Don't Make Me Think
- Written by Steve Krug & Roger Black
The title of the book is its chief personal design premise. All of the tips, techniques, and examples presented revolve around users being able to surf merrily through a well-designed site with minimal cognitive strain.
Weaving the Web
- Written by Tim Berners-Lee & Mark Fischetti
Written in a conversational style, Weaving the Web provides a first hand account of the people and personalities behind the creation of the WWW. In addition to Berners-Lee's account of how the web was created, he provides his thought-provoking vision of the "web of the future."