User

Finding Out What They Think: A Rough Primer To User Research, Part 1

[In this first article in a new series, college professor and user research Ben Lewis-Evans takes a look at different methods of game user research, offering up a handy guide to different ways you can collect useful information about your game.]

This article, and its forthcoming followup, is intended to give a rough idea to developers of several different methods that can be used in games user research.

However, many, many books have been written on research methodology and I cannot cover everything. Therefore these two articles cannot be taken as completely comprehensive.

In the first of the articles I will be covering a few general points about Games User Research and then discussing three methods, focus groups, heuristic evaluation and questionnaires in some detail.

By |Education, Gaming, HCI, Psychology, Simulations, Usability|2 Comments
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Bloomingdale’s Virtual Reality Windows Let Shoppers Try On Shades Without Wearing Them

System gives a screen test on how you’ll look with the latest designer eyewear

Window shopping is taking on a new meaning at Bloomingdale’s.

As they get ready for summer, busy New Yorkers now can try on sunglasses without stepping inside the store.

Virtual-reality technology projects designer shades onto shoppers who simply stand in front of the Lexington Ave. windows.

By |Communities, HCI, Psychology, Serious Games, Simulations, Usability|0 Comments
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Buttons Were An Inspired UI Hack, But Now We’ve Got Better Options

Josh Clark on the future of touch and other types of UI.

If you’ve ever seen a child interact with an iPad, you’ve seen the power of the touch interface in action. Is this a sign of what’s to come — will we be touching and swiping screens rather tapping buttons? I reached out to Josh Clark (@globalmoxie), founder of Global Moxie and author of “Tapworthy,” to get his thoughts on the future of touch and computer interaction, and whether or not buttons face extinction.

Clark says a touch-based UI is more intuitive to the way we think and act in the world. He also says touch is just the beginning — speech, facial expression, and physical gestures are on they way, and we need to start thinking about content in these contexts.

By |Education, Gaming, HCI, Psychology, Usability|0 Comments
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Pros and Cons of Major CMS Systems

Many companies approach us and ask, “I want to maintain and update my own website. What CMS system do you suggest?” When reviewing content management systems (CMS) with clients, we go over the pros and cons of the most popular systems, and evaluate their background and website capabilities to ensure that the correct CMS system is selected for your company. Sometimes a CMS system is not the solution for a company, and an affordable monthly maintenance program is more appropriate.

Following, we discuss the pros and cons of three major CMS systems: Drupal, Joomla, and WordPress.

By |Development, HCI, Social Media, Usability, Web Marketing|8 Comments
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Did Your Shopping Cart Survive the Holiday Season?

From 2005 to 2010, Cyber Monday sales (the Monday after Thanksgiving) have more than doubled, as illustrated. A recent article from the Wall Street Journal showed an increase of 22% in sales on Cyber Monday in 2011, compared with the 2010 holiday season.

According to research firm Score, Inc., the 2011 holiday season saw a 15% increase in web sales over 2010, for a total of $35.5 billion in online sales (while overall holiday spending was up just 3.8% from 2010).

The holiday season is not just about selling products to your customers. It also involves keeping those that come for the first time, and keeping them there. As said by Jakob Nielsen, “It’s an old lesson: It’s much easier to close additional sales with existing customers than to acquire new customers. People who’ve proven willing to give you money will often give you more. This is true for all sales channels, but it’s particularly crucial for e-commerce because the first order proves your credibility if you effectively handle follow-up and delivery.”

By |Development, HCI, Psychology, Social Media, Usability, Web Marketing|3 Comments
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Overloaded vs. Generic Commands

Summary: Overloading different outcomes on similar commands can be confusing. Using the same command for multiple actions enhances usability if the results are conceptually the same.

One way to manage interaction design complexity is to have commands serve double duty. There are two ways of doing this, with different usability implications:

  • Generic commands use the same command in different contexts to achieve conceptually the same outcome, even though details of the specific effects might differ.
  • Overloaded commands use variants of the same command to achieve different outcomes — sometimes depending on the context and other times depending on where the command appears on the screen.

I discussed generic commands in depth in an earlier article. The most famous generic command these days is the pinch-zoom gesture, which works in most touchscreen user interfaces. In fact, the command is so pervasive that users expect it to work universally — and are sorely disappointed when they encounter an application that doesn’t support it.

By |Collaboration, Education, HCI, Psychology, Usability, Web Marketing|0 Comments
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Accuracy vs. Insights in Quantitative Usability

Summary: Better to accept a wider margin of error in usability metrics than to spend the entire budget learning too few things with extreme precision.

Last week, I made a slide for the new User Experience (UX) Basic Training course with the recommended number of test users for different types of studies. I like teaching foundational courses because they afford me just this kind of opportunity — to distill 25 years of usability process research into a single table. Patterns crystallize when complex topics are condensed to the essence.

By |HCI, Usability, Web Marketing|1 Comment
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Are Your Users S.T.U.P.I.D?

How good design can make users effective

It is an honest question: how smart are your users? The answer may surprise you: it doesn’t matter. They can be geniuses or morons, but if you don’t engage their intelligence, you can’t depend on their brain power.

Far more important than their IQ (which is a questionable measure in any case) is their Effective Intelligence: the fraction of their intelligence they can (or are motivated to) apply to a task.

Take, for example, a good driver. They are a worse driver when texting or when drunk. (We don’t want to think about the drunk driver who is texting.) An extreme example you say? Perhaps, but only by degree. A person who wins a game of Scrabble one evening may be late for work because they forgot to set their alarm clock. How could the same person make such a dumb mistake? Call it concentration, or focus, we use more of our brain when engaged and need support when we are distracted.

By |Gaming, HCI, Psychology, Usability, Web Marketing|0 Comments
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Microsoft’s Vision for Future Productivity

From Microsoft’s Office YouTube Channel:

Watch how future technology will help people make better use of their time, focus their attention, and strengthen relationships while getting things done at work, home, and on the go. (Release: 2011)

There are some interesting concepts in the video involving augmented reality (adding visualizations to one’s environment), new user interfaces and user collaboration, and “Web 3.0″ style communication: where relevant information finds the user at the appropriate time (an intelligent filtering of the overwhelming information now being generated by “Web 2.0″ technologies such as social media).

By |Collaboration, Communities, HCI, Psychology, Simulations, Social Media, Usability|1 Comment
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Mobile UX Sharpens Usability Guidelines

Summary: Many guidelines are similar for mobile and desktop design, but their mobile interpretation is much more unforgiving.

My recent column Mobile Content: If in Doubt, Leave It Out advised site owners to eliminate secondary material when writing for mobile users. Many tweets, blog postings, and other comments on the article all expanded on this theme: Yes, do cut the fluff from mobile content, but also cut secondary content when writing for desktop websites.

In one way, I can only agree. Since 1997, conciseness has been a key guideline when writing for the web. People don’t read a lot on the web and leave in a few seconds if a site doesn’t communicate its value clearly. These findings lead to more detailed guidelines, such as emphasizing the first 2 words of nanocontent (e.g., headlines and search engine links).

So yes, cut the blah-blah from your desktop site.

By |HCI, Psychology, Usability, Web Marketing|3 Comments
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