Wednesday, December 15, 2010
Pyramid of Success
"Success is peace of mind which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable."
Thursday, December 2, 2010
Monday, November 22, 2010
The hierarchy of website user needs
1. Accessibility: The website can be found and used by all people.
2. Stability: The website is consistent and trustworthy.
3. Usability: The website is user-friendly.
4. Reliability: The website is consistently available, without downtime.
5. Functionality: The website offers content, tools and services users value.
6. Flexibility: The website adapts to needs and wants of users.
Thursday, November 11, 2010
How is UX profession different from a BA role, though both work to bridge the gap between IT and Buisness ?
What does it mean to be designing "User Experience" and looking through the lens of the user ?
Do BA's think differently from UX engineers ?
.
.
.
.
Like this, I had several questions in my mind related to UX and BA profession and the technique they use to tackle real time business problems.
Came across this interesting interview article between Laura Brandenburg ( Independent BA consultant ) and Patrick Quattlebaum (Chief Experience Officer at Macquarium ) and yes, It did answer many of my questions.
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/what-a-ba-should-know-about-the-ux-profession-interview-with-patrick-quattlebaum/
Do BA's think differently from UX engineers ?
.
.
.
.
Like this, I had several questions in my mind related to UX and BA profession and the technique they use to tackle real time business problems.
Came across this interesting interview article between Laura Brandenburg ( Independent BA consultant ) and Patrick Quattlebaum (Chief Experience Officer at Macquarium ) and yes, It did answer many of my questions.
http://www.bridging-the-gap.com/what-a-ba-should-know-about-the-ux-profession-interview-with-patrick-quattlebaum/
Monday, November 8, 2010
Thursday, October 14, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Awesome tips on Usability
http://sixrevisions.com/usabilityaccessibility/10-usability-tips-based-on-research-studies/
Monday, October 11, 2010
Visual Design, Information Architecture, and Content in Usability
Following up on my earlier post on User experience, I learnt about three highly cohesive parameters of Usability. Concentrating on just one of these aspect does not assure success of the product and it is necessary to have all of them to work in harmony.
Lets take a hypothetical scenario with a customer Liz to understand it :-
Liz is browsing an e-commerce site to purchase a credit card wallet. Like any other customer, she has multiple questions in her mind and wants to be assured about
the product before making the transaction. Now with the information available on the site, let's see if she buys the wallet or leaves the site after being frustrated.
Liz is looking at the design pages on the site, but can find only the outer portion view of the wallet. She liked the outer design, but is not able to see the back of the product. She wants to make sure that it would also store small changes with a zippered pocket. But due to a limited visual view, she is not able to make this judgement. The next option, in this case could be to look at the product description, but the description is at the bottom of the page under many unrelated selling items and Liz might not scroll to the bottom of the page. Moreover the description section has many irrelevant facts, like how the wallet is constructed from durable leather and a silk blend and is perfect to store all of our daily essentials. Yet it doesn't answer a simple question of whether it can carry loose changes or not.
Next strategy that comes in Liz's mind is "Maybe, if there is a return policy, I'd buy it. Then, if I don't like it, I could return it". Not a bad approach !
But this would help,only if she could find the return policy in the site, which she couldn't. There was no link to it on the product page. That's when she tried searching. Typing "Return Policy" into the Search box produced the error message, stating no results found. Poking around on the site did uncover a link labeled "Help" which produced an unordered Frequently-Asked Questions list. However, apparently returning a credit card wallet is not something frequently asked, because there is no helpful information on that topic.
Liz is frustrated and leaves the site. The sale is lost.
So what did we observe here ?
There is a three-way failure to communicate what the shopper needed to make her purchase. It was a simultaneous failure of the site's visual design, the information architecture, and the content design.
When Liz couldn't easily see the design of the product and she didn't locate the product description, she encountered visual design issues. When she couldn't find the page with the return policy, she bumped into an information architecture issue. And the inadequate product description and unclear policy issues were the content design issues.
Fixing just one of these would not help as the real solution comes from the interplay of these three areas and it is worth giving a thought.
Lets take a hypothetical scenario with a customer Liz to understand it :-
Liz is browsing an e-commerce site to purchase a credit card wallet. Like any other customer, she has multiple questions in her mind and wants to be assured about
the product before making the transaction. Now with the information available on the site, let's see if she buys the wallet or leaves the site after being frustrated.
Liz is looking at the design pages on the site, but can find only the outer portion view of the wallet. She liked the outer design, but is not able to see the back of the product. She wants to make sure that it would also store small changes with a zippered pocket. But due to a limited visual view, she is not able to make this judgement. The next option, in this case could be to look at the product description, but the description is at the bottom of the page under many unrelated selling items and Liz might not scroll to the bottom of the page. Moreover the description section has many irrelevant facts, like how the wallet is constructed from durable leather and a silk blend and is perfect to store all of our daily essentials. Yet it doesn't answer a simple question of whether it can carry loose changes or not.
Next strategy that comes in Liz's mind is "Maybe, if there is a return policy, I'd buy it. Then, if I don't like it, I could return it". Not a bad approach !
But this would help,only if she could find the return policy in the site, which she couldn't. There was no link to it on the product page. That's when she tried searching. Typing "Return Policy" into the Search box produced the error message, stating no results found. Poking around on the site did uncover a link labeled "Help" which produced an unordered Frequently-Asked Questions list. However, apparently returning a credit card wallet is not something frequently asked, because there is no helpful information on that topic.
Liz is frustrated and leaves the site. The sale is lost.
So what did we observe here ?
There is a three-way failure to communicate what the shopper needed to make her purchase. It was a simultaneous failure of the site's visual design, the information architecture, and the content design.
When Liz couldn't easily see the design of the product and she didn't locate the product description, she encountered visual design issues. When she couldn't find the page with the return policy, she bumped into an information architecture issue. And the inadequate product description and unclear policy issues were the content design issues.
Fixing just one of these would not help as the real solution comes from the interplay of these three areas and it is worth giving a thought.
Saturday, October 2, 2010
What is User Experience ?
I have been reading a lot about usability and user experience. Just trying to develop user's perspective about different system's.
The success ratio of any system majorly depends on its usage and that would be high only if the users find it efficient, effective, easy to learn, engaging and error tolerant. These are actually called the 5 E's of Usability.
User experience is all about how does a user feels about a system, which could be a product, service, application or combination of any of these. As soon as user interaction starts with the system, an experience is developed based on the perception and response that results from the interaction. Other definitions of user experience mention that it includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and
accomplishments that occur before, during and after use.
A greater user experience means increased site success and here are the benefits, that we get with it
User Effectiveness
* increased success rate and reduced users errors
* improved ease of use and learning
* increased user productivity and user satisfaction
* reduced support and training costs
* increased user trust in the system
Development Costs
* reduced development costs and time
* reduced maintenance costs
Revenue
* increased product sales, revenue and market share
* increased site traffic and transactions/purchases
* attract and retain more customers
So how do we get started ? How do we get beyond "user friendly" to the true goal of all usability work i.e. to improve the final product.
The first step here is to define the problem statement with a clear objective of what we want to achieve. To be able to do that, we need to perform some user analysis using methods like user interviews, site visits , usability tests etc. Focus should be to learn about who our users are, what are their tasks and goals in using the product.
Using the 5E's to understand users:
For each of the five dimensions of usability (the 5Es), we think about how it is reflected in requirements for each of the user groups. The 5Es are:
Effective: How completely and accurately the work or experience is completed or goals reached ?
Efficient: How quickly this work can be completed ?
Engaging: How well the interface draws the user into the interaction and how pleasant and satisfying it is to use ?
Error Tolerant: How well the product prevents errors and can help the user recover from mistakes that do occur ?
Easy to Learn: How well the product supports both the initial orientation and continued learning throughout the complete lifetime of use ?
In my next blog , I will be sharing more about the techniques of implementing usability in new and already existing sites....
The success ratio of any system majorly depends on its usage and that would be high only if the users find it efficient, effective, easy to learn, engaging and error tolerant. These are actually called the 5 E's of Usability.
User experience is all about how does a user feels about a system, which could be a product, service, application or combination of any of these. As soon as user interaction starts with the system, an experience is developed based on the perception and response that results from the interaction. Other definitions of user experience mention that it includes all the users' emotions, beliefs, preferences, perceptions, physical and psychological responses, behaviors and
accomplishments that occur before, during and after use.
A greater user experience means increased site success and here are the benefits, that we get with it
User Effectiveness
* increased success rate and reduced users errors
* improved ease of use and learning
* increased user productivity and user satisfaction
* reduced support and training costs
* increased user trust in the system
Development Costs
* reduced development costs and time
* reduced maintenance costs
Revenue
* increased product sales, revenue and market share
* increased site traffic and transactions/purchases
* attract and retain more customers
So how do we get started ? How do we get beyond "user friendly" to the true goal of all usability work i.e. to improve the final product.
The first step here is to define the problem statement with a clear objective of what we want to achieve. To be able to do that, we need to perform some user analysis using methods like user interviews, site visits , usability tests etc. Focus should be to learn about who our users are, what are their tasks and goals in using the product.
Using the 5E's to understand users:
For each of the five dimensions of usability (the 5Es), we think about how it is reflected in requirements for each of the user groups. The 5Es are:
Effective: How completely and accurately the work or experience is completed or goals reached ?
Efficient: How quickly this work can be completed ?
Engaging: How well the interface draws the user into the interaction and how pleasant and satisfying it is to use ?
Error Tolerant: How well the product prevents errors and can help the user recover from mistakes that do occur ?
Easy to Learn: How well the product supports both the initial orientation and continued learning throughout the complete lifetime of use ?
In my next blog , I will be sharing more about the techniques of implementing usability in new and already existing sites....
Friday, August 6, 2010
What does it mean to be a true professional ?
I read an interesting article about professionalism on my favorite technical forum We use this term very often in our working environment, but do we really understand the basic factors that differentiate professionals from others. I liked the way author has explained these 10 basic points.
It was a good revision for me and I hope, others would like it too.
1. Put customer satisfaction first
2. Make expertise your specialty
3. Do more than expected
4. Do what you say and say what you can do
5. Communicate effectively
6. Follow exceptional guiding principles
7. Praise your peers not yourself
8. Share your knowledge
9. Say "Thank You"
10. Keep a smile on your face and the right attitude in your heart
It was a good revision for me and I hope, others would like it too.
1. Put customer satisfaction first
2. Make expertise your specialty
3. Do more than expected
4. Do what you say and say what you can do
5. Communicate effectively
6. Follow exceptional guiding principles
7. Praise your peers not yourself
8. Share your knowledge
9. Say "Thank You"
10. Keep a smile on your face and the right attitude in your heart
Thursday, June 10, 2010
Caffeine : New search index from Google
Google announced the completion of new web indexing system "Caffeine" this week.
This is what Google says about it:
Old index system had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, the entire web would need to be analyzed, which meant there was a significant delay between when a page was found and when it is available as a search result.
With Caffeine, web is analyzed in small portions and search index's are updated on a continuous basis, globally. As new pages or new information is found, it is added to the indexes, which helps in finding fresher information than ever before. Apart from this, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.
This is what Google says about it:
Old index system had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, the entire web would need to be analyzed, which meant there was a significant delay between when a page was found and when it is available as a search result.
With Caffeine, web is analyzed in small portions and search index's are updated on a continuous basis, globally. As new pages or new information is found, it is added to the indexes, which helps in finding fresher information than ever before. Apart from this, every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel.
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Stable version of Chrome released today
with new bookmark synchronize features, extensions, incorporation of HTML5 features etc..
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chrome-stable-release-welcome-mac.html
http://chrome.blogspot.com/2010/05/new-chrome-stable-release-welcome-mac.html
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
Five Ways to Guarantee Your Failure as a Web Professional !!
I found this interesting !!
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/five-ways-to-guarantee-your-failure-as-a-web-professional/
http://sixrevisions.com/project-management/five-ways-to-guarantee-your-failure-as-a-web-professional/
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Six hat thinking !!
The main difficulty of thinking is confusion. We try to do too many things at once and it is really not possible to think in different directions at the same time. Emotions, information, logic, hope and concept all crowd in on us and It is like juggling with too many things at the same time.
After reading Six hat thinking by Edward de Bono, I realized that there is a very simple concept which allows a thinker to do one thing at a time. There are five distinct states in which the brain can be sensitised. In each of these states the brain identifies certain aspects of issues being considered (e.g. emotional view, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts). In order to make it easier to work with these states, the use of coloured hats as metaphors for them is used and putting on any one of these hats defines a certain type of thinking.
The best part of this method is that, we can separate emotion from logic , creativity from information and so on.
Here is a brief description of each of the hats and the thinking processes that they represent :-
1.White (Facts & Information): White is neutral and objective. It is concered with objective facts and figures.
2.Red (Feelings & Emotions): Red suggests anger, rage and emotions. It gives our emotional view.
3.Black (Critical Judgment): Black is sombre and serious. It is cautious and points out the weaknesses in an idea.
4.Yellow (Positive): Yellow is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking. It is exactly opposite of black hat and looks for the reasons in favour of something.
5.Green (Creativity ): Green indicates new ideas. It is based around the idea of provocation and thinking for the sake of identifying new possibilities.
6.Blue (Control): Blue hat is concerned with control, organization of the thinking process and use of the other hats. This is the hat under which all participants discuss the thinking process.
After reading Six hat thinking by Edward de Bono, I realized that there is a very simple concept which allows a thinker to do one thing at a time. There are five distinct states in which the brain can be sensitised. In each of these states the brain identifies certain aspects of issues being considered (e.g. emotional view, pessimistic judgement, neutral facts). In order to make it easier to work with these states, the use of coloured hats as metaphors for them is used and putting on any one of these hats defines a certain type of thinking.
The best part of this method is that, we can separate emotion from logic , creativity from information and so on.
Here is a brief description of each of the hats and the thinking processes that they represent :-
1.White (Facts & Information): White is neutral and objective. It is concered with objective facts and figures.
2.Red (Feelings & Emotions): Red suggests anger, rage and emotions. It gives our emotional view.
3.Black (Critical Judgment): Black is sombre and serious. It is cautious and points out the weaknesses in an idea.
4.Yellow (Positive): Yellow is optimistic and covers hope and positive thinking. It is exactly opposite of black hat and looks for the reasons in favour of something.
5.Green (Creativity ): Green indicates new ideas. It is based around the idea of provocation and thinking for the sake of identifying new possibilities.
6.Blue (Control): Blue hat is concerned with control, organization of the thinking process and use of the other hats. This is the hat under which all participants discuss the thinking process.
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