A-B testing is done on live site, thus it gives you the live impact of the new design or new features. Two options are compared with the help of statistical data (e.g. no. of clicks).

Benefits:

1. It measures the actual behavior of your customer under the real world. Based on the test results, you can determine option A works better than option B.
2. It can measure very small performance differences between design options.
3. Its cheap.

Limitations:

1. It works for fully implemented designs.
2. Can only test one page element or design at a time

A-B test can be conducted in many ways. Different web scripts can be written to present different designs to different User groups. Some third party tools and scripts are also available.

Nielson listed ten general principles for usable user interface, which are called as “Heuristics”. Following are those Heuristics:-

1.   Visibility of system status 
      The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback withinreasonable time.

A good example of this is Adobe Photoshop startup screen in which you can see a list of creators, copyright note and on top it gives you the status like “Initializing”, “Reading brushes”, “Reading Preferences”, etc. So while starting, it informs user what the application is doing.

2. Match between system and the real world 
     The system should speak the users’ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order. reasonable time.

Avoid using system, developer jargon, understand users language and present information in a way which user understands. This is particularly while displaying the error messages. Present information on system/website in appropriate order, most important information of top, then less and then least important at bottom. Use colors, different font size and some graphics to show the importance to the information.

 
3.User control and freedom
    Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked “emergency exit” to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo

Provide option to escape from unwanted state.  Simple and effective solution is by providing “Undo” / “Redo” options

 4. Consistency and standards
     Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.

Keep consistent experience throughout the system. Use industry standards, patterns for UI components, form controls, labels, etc.

5. Error prevention 
     Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.

Provide confirmation option before performing critical actions.

6. Recognition rather than recall  
     Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible.  The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.

Keep important information, actions obvious to users. User appropriate UI component to present hierarchical data. Provide icons which will help user to recognize the term/object.

7. Flexibility and efficiency of use  
     Accelerators unseen by the novice user may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.

Provide frequently accessed/used information, actions first when user access system next time which speed up user interaction.

8. Aesthetic and minimalist design  
     Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.

Avoid cluttered page design. Provide only what user wants. Add other information only if it adds value.

9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors  
     Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.

Provide usable error message. A good, usable error message should tell user about what has happened, error cause (why) and how to recover from error (where to go).

10. Help and documentation  
     Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation.  Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.

Provide quick and accurate help. Generally user come up with questions like “Where is”, “What is”, “How do I”, etc. giving help in Q&A form is very effective. A good example is help in eBay.com. Also providing context-level help in forms helps user.

In above principles, there could be category specific principles also.

Heuristic evaluation is conducted by a “Evaluator”. Evaluation can be done by individuals or by group of evaluators. Evaluator typically does not perform any task, so it is more suited at the early phase of usability engineering.  After conducting Heuristic, evaluator generally has a list of usability problems with reference of usability principles.

Apart from above list, there are many resources for the usability principles.Usability.gov has a good list of usability principles. You can find it here: http://www.usability.gov/pdfs/guidelines.html . ISO also has a Heuristics called as ISO 9241.

It was open book, multiple choice exam having both straight forward and scenario based questions.

To crack exam, one needs to have good understanding of the concepts and should have well organized study material. Time management is also very important. You get 180 minutes and 100 questions on four sections. Prior to exam if you distribute time properly, then it helps a lot.

Its good now to see Certified Usability Analyst added to my profile!

www.adaptivepath.com/blog  – Very informative, lot of topics, news, presentations – a must read!

www.boxesandarrows.com – Design process, idea, news, articles, interviews

www.infodesign.com.au/usabilityresources – Nice usability resources

www.uselog.com – usability of applications, products, websites, mobiles, etc, a good reading

www.usabilitypost.com – regular read

But I found it frustrating with Skype while providing new password. Skype has very clean, simple design for changing your password. It ask you for new password and re-enter new password for confirmation, that’s it.

It has password checker facility. Once you enter password, it checks password complexity and ask you to provide new password if your password is simple. There is a clear instruction saying “Passwords should be at least 6 characters long, including 1 number and 1 letter.”

I entered a complex password (more than 6 characters including 1 number and 1 letter) but Skype didn’t accept it. I tried more complex for 8-10 times, I tried my best to create more complex passwords with all possible combinations, but still Skype asked me to provide more complex password. Finally I gave up, and close my browser.

In such situations solution could be, Skype should allow me to proceed with my password and just warn me about low complexity or give me some tips or sample passwords that

I can modify and use/ refer to create new or generate some passwords which will be complex enough according to Skype password checker, but at the same time should be easy to remember for me.

A simple solution could be –

For example, I’m looking for a BMW 5 series, I type keyword and search. Now I can filter results by color I want. 

I use Microsoft Visio 2003 for creating wireframes. While working on a complete task flow I create multiple wireframes covering every screen in flow. Most of the time it happens to me that there is some textual change or placement of some component has to be changed at the global level (Navigation/Header/Search, etc), at this point I need to update every page/screen. I either copy-paste or manually change it. Problem is with alignment and its time consuming. I always thought of some kind of “template” feature in Visio for this.
But now I got one way to do this.
It’s pretty simple.

1. You create on screen/template (like we create template in Dreamweaver) in one tab.
2. Go to “Page Setup” from File menu
3. In “Page Property” tab, set the type of page as “Background”
4. Complete you design, copy it create new tab and paste it as a “Background”
5. That’s it, if you want to change something across the pages/screens, make changes in the first screen (template) and it’ll be reflected in all the pages.

However there is one negative side, you cannot select the template page in any other page. i.e. If you select all the screen, template content won’t be selected.

A Paper Prototype essentially is a very basic, draft version of your website [or particular screen(s)].  In User Centered Design process, Paper Prototype is part of Rapid Prototyping which comes after User needs, goals, tasks and also used for Usability Testing.  Paper prototype is used in various phases of design process, it is used at the initial stages like conceptual design, screen design, screen flows and in Usability Testing, particularly in formative testing (at the initial design stages).

Creating a paper prototype is fairly simple, you just need user’s tasks list, flow which describes how user is going to perform the task, some papers, pencils & markers. Look at the flow/task and decide, brainstorm for conceptual design, draw rough layout, decide form controls, placement of these controls, content, interaction, no. of screens/popup etc. You don’t need to consider the website’s / applications main layout, navigation at all. Paper Prototyping should be iterative so create multiple design options to get the best one.

Generally Paper Prototype is used in–

1. Concept Design in which designers sketch out possible approaches for problem/task/flow in a brainstorming environment.
2. Interaction Design in which designer sketches for multiple pages/screens for a particular task flow. Here we can use some post-it notes to manage multiple sketches.
3. Screen Design deals with the screen level designers decide the layout, placement of group (controls, information), decide controls to use, etc
4. Usability Test where you validate your ideas, design options with users.

Paper Prototypes are used to clarify user goals/needs, to locate potential usability problems in initial design phase, to decide the conceptual design approach, deciding interaction, etc.

Some of the benefits of Paper Prototype includes -

• You validate your designs through Paper Prototypes in early design phase which gives you user feedback before you invest in development.
• Promotes rapid iterative design process, you can experiment with your many ideas rather than just one.
• Promotes communication within development team, users and stakeholders. 
•  Does not require any technical skills.
• Quick and cheap

However there are some limitations 

•  Sometimes difficult to test with users (difficult to show interaction, loading time, effects, etc) 
•  limited

Though Paper Prototypes are rapid, basic and rough in nature there are some tools available in market to make it more better. These sketches can be made attractive by following some simple tips. There are some screen layout with grid printed on it are also available which makes it easy to create good looking prototypes. You can download It at http://konigi.com/tools/graph-paper

User Centered Design(UCD) is an approach of designing user interface keeping users (and business) in mind. UCD focuses on User’s goals, environment, needs.

Following diagram gives a brief idea of UCD process. There are various processes available today. I’m trying to focus on some important phases of UCD by using the below diagram.

UCD Process

At broad level, UCD consist of three phases- Research, Design and Testing. Research is all about understanding Users, their needs, what they

expect, what they think, data gathering, etc. Design is about designing screens from concept to detailed and Testing is testing whether design works

for real users in real environment.

Following points gives some more information of all the phases of UCD:

Note: I’ll refer Web site/Application/Desktop/mobile app with one word i.e. system.

1.       Research

Research start with knowing who are the users, what they (will) do with the system (high level), what business wants from the system, are there any constraints, what are

the branding values, etc. This all information is documented and is called as Design Strategy. We validate this by sharing it with stakeholders.

Next step is to create User, Task and Environment profiles. Profile describes the information about Users, Tasks and Environment. Profiles generally cover all audience of system.

Putting all the profiles together, a Persona is created which is a fictitious user of the system and we design for that persona. In other words, persona represents a user group. There could

be more than one personas depending on the system. After this we actually talk with users through various data gathering methods like Interviews, Observation, Focus Group etc. and refine the persona. Scenarios are basically used to get the requirements. It could be used as extreme conditions where system should work. It’s more like a story which has some conditions, situations.

After talking to users, we have a task list that they perform. Now these tasks are grouped together depending on their priorities, type, importance, user role then they are optimized. This is called Task Analysis. Primary Noun Architecture helps you to build the navigation of the system. It is done by looking at the tasks and finding out the primary nouns in it. This is applicable in task based systems where navigation is task based. If it is a content system, then Information Architecture technique is used, in which Card Sorting method is used to group the information and create navigation.

2.       Design

Design phase start with deciding the design framework in which lot of things are decided like type of system (desktop, web, mobile) and type of navigation (consistent,  non consistent), etc.

After this a low level / low fidelity sketches also called as Paper Prototypes are created. To be on right track these prototypes are validated with the users/stakeholders. Once approved, high fidelity wireframes are created and again validated. Design phase ends with content and visual design. These two phases again have sub phases/steps.

3.       Usability Testing

After designing its time to check/test whether design works for real users in real environment. So Usability Testing is performed. Very basic idea of this test is give the system to the users and ask to perform major task and see whether user is able to perform it with ease or not (this is applicable for task-based system).  Or for content systems, we test whether user finds the information that he is looking for. Result of Usability Testing is documented. There are few formats available online, or you can create your own also. Problems found in testing are fixed in Research or/and Design phase. There are various techniques and methods available for testing.

Last month I’ve completed Usability training from Human Factors International (HFI) in Mumbai.
HFI is usability consultant which provide training and certification also. My overall experience
was good. I learned lot of new things, User Centered Design (UCD) Process, design guidelines, etc.
After successful completion of HFI test, I’ll be awarded as “Certified Usability Analyst” (sounds cool, isn’t it?)

Now I’m reading through the reference material given by HFI and some other Usability/Design books
and trying to create some useful notes on various topics. In coming posts I’ll put these notes.