Perfect your UX sales patter

Ok so you don’t have to suddenly become a salesman once you’re working in-house but it is crucial to be able to sell and evangelize UX because unlike an agency or consultancy you don’t have a sales and marketing team doing this on your behalf. This means at the very least letting people know that UX people like yourself exist within the organisation, outlining the sort of work you do and spelling out why UX is so important to the organisation in the first place. For tips on selling UX within your organisation take a look at my Selling UX article and pick up a copy of Selling Usability – User experience infiltration tactics and Undercover User Experience Design. Both books are stuffed with hints, tips and advice for how to get those user experience refuseniks within your organisation to ‘see the light’.

Work on your business cases

Agencies and consultancies generally don’t have to worry about writing businesses cases for UX because they’re usually brought on board once a business case has been put together. It’s a different story if you’re working in-house as you might need to put a business case together to outline why UX work should be undertaken for a project. If this is the case try to show the ROI (return on investment) for UX work and remember that people are not going to buy in to user experience because it’s the right thing to do, they will buy in because of what it can deliver to the organisation.

Love thy neighbour

Ahh - look at the cute kitty tenuously illustrating that good working relationships are essential for in-house UXers

Building good internal relationships are key for in-house UXers because not only will you probably be working with the same people week in week out, you’ll also want to win allies for the UX crusade within your organisation.

Broaden your UX skill set

A lot of agencies and consultancies have specialists for different UX disciplines, such as user researchers, information architects, usability testers, interaction designers and content strategists to name but a few. This is a luxury rarely afforded in-house where it’s often down to you to carry out the lion share of the UX work for a project (which is a good thing – variety is the spice of life). This is why it’s important to have a broad UX skill set, to be a jack of several trades, and a master of some. To find out more about the sort of skills that I think are important checkout my What makes a good UX designer? article.

Increase the UX project mix

Working in-house you often don’t the opportunity to work on the same breadth of projects as you might if working within an agency or consultancy. A good way to increase the mixture of UX projects you get to work on is to try to initiate some internal design projects (think Google labs if you can swing it) and to utilise your UX design skills elsewhere with the organisation. For example, you might make some suggestions for improving the company Intranet or try to get involved with products where UX design has traditionally not been carried out (internal systems are perennial examples of this).

Keep your UX skills up-to-date

It’s perhaps not as easy to be exposed to the latest UX thinking, techniques, methods, debates and discussions when working within the in-house company bubble, which is why it’s really important to keep your UX skills fresh and up-to-date. Make sure that you find the time to read UX books and blogs (like this one!), attend as many UX events, conferences and training courses as you can and never pass up the opportunity to connect with fellow UXers (see below).

Connect with fellow UXers

UX conferences and events are a great way to connect with fellow UXers

It can sometimes be lonely working in-house (cue the violin music). You might work within a small UX team or even be the sole UXer within your organisation and so might be starved of like minded company. This is why it’s important to get out there and connect with fellow UXers as much as possible. You’ll feel better for sharing ideas, discussing problems that you’re experiencing and generally talking UX. You could hook up with a local UX group; join a UX discussion group such as UX exchange; or even persuade your manager to let you attend a UX conference (you’ll be amazed at where continual nagging can get you). You’ll be surprised at how much UX related stuff there is out there for you to get involved with.

Be realistic about the design process you can undertake

For any in-house UX project it’s important to be realistic about the design process that you can undertake because whilst a design consultancy such as Cooper might be able to sell and subsequently follow an extensive UX design process – you’re unlikely to be able to do this in-house (at least not initially). Often there simply aren’t the resources, know how or appetite to do this in-house and you’re only setting yourself up for monumental disappointment if you think that you’re going to be able to replicate what they do. Try to find a design process that fits your organisation’s way of doing things and be realistic about how much UX design work you’re likely to be able to fit in.

Focus on delivery, not deliverables

To quote Cennydd Bowles and James Box from their excellent Undercover User Experience Design book, “We believe in delivery, not deliverables. Some people practice user-scented design, not user-centred design. They churn out documents – sitemaps, wireframes, specifications – but they’re not interested in what happens next. UX is a mindset, not a process – it lasts all the way until the site is live, and after”. A UX designer should be judged by their designs and delivery, not their deliverables and whilst an agency or consultancy might feel compelled to produce exquisitely beautiful documents to make their clients gasp in delight, you hopefully shouldn’t have to. That’s not to say that your deliverables shouldn’t look professional, but don’t spend any more time on deliverables than you really have to. Ultimately it’s delivering the right user experience to the end user that counts.

Recognise when to bring in outside help

If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire...Some outside help. Da da daa, da da da

It’s not always possible or indeed desirable to do all UX work in-house and it’s important to recognise when bringing in some additional UX resources makes sense. It could be that you need help with the UX workload, want to bring in a particular specialist or simply because some stakeholders will respond more favourably to someone from outside the organisation telling them news they don’t want to hear. Whilst outsourcing some aspects of UX can certainly make sense be careful with what you outsource. For example, whilst outsourcing activities such as UX training and usability testing can work quite well, you really want to keep the core of the UX design work in-house.

Create an in-house UX community

Even though there might not be too many fellow UXers within your organisation it doesn’t mean that you can’t create and foster a community of people who share your interest and passion for user experience. You’ll be surprised at the number of people that are likely to show an interest in learning more about user experience, from developers and business analysts to project managers and technical authors. There are many ways that you can help create and foster a strong in-house UX community – here are just a few suggestions to get you started:

• Set-up regular get togethers to discuss different aspects of UX.
• Arrange UX knowledgeshares and try to get external speakers to come in to talk about a particular UX topic.
• Set-up an internal UX blog or newsletter.
• Organise a UX book club.
• Set-up an internal UX mailing list where people can post UX related questions.
• Organise trips to UX related events and exhibits.

Utilise a UX resources library

Most agencies and consultancies have the benefit of years of accumulated UX templates and example deliverables to utilise, so why not set something similar up within your organisation? If you think that something might be reusable then stick it in the library because you never know when something might come in handy for a future project.

Don’t stop til you get enough

Follow Michael Jackson’s sound advice and “Don’t stop til you get enough”, enough of whatever your performance indicators (a.k.a. KPIs) are that is. Working in-house you should not only be able to see your designs through to delivery but also should be able to continue to assess and improve them once they’re out in the real world. To find out more about the importance of continually improving the UX of your product, and how you might go about doing this take a look at my Evolutionary UX design article.

Don’t give up (good things come to those who wait…)

It can often be very frustrating working in-house when there is a constant push back on carrying out UX work. It can seem like a continual battle to get UX included on projects – but try not to get too disheartened and recognise that organisational change happens very slowly (we’re talking light years in some places). Taking an organisation from UX newbies to old hats takes an awful lot of time and effort (not to mention blood, sweat and tears) so try not to give up too early because good things come to those who wait…

Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services

Kim Goodwin (2009), 768 pages

If you only buy one UX book make this it. Designing for the Digital Age is nothing less than a UX design how-to-manual covering everything from assembling a design team and carrying out user research to designing interfaces and critiquing a design. It’s very comprehensive and goes into a lot of depth for each of the design stages covered (research, modelling, requirements etc…) so there’s always loads there to delve into.

Undercover user experience design

Cennydd Bowles and James Box (2011), 192 pages

Undercover user experience design claims to teach you how to do great UX work with tiny budgets, no time and limited support (sound familiar). I’m a big fan of the book because not only is it chock full of lots of practical and pragmatic advice, at only 192 pages long it also doesn’t take too long to go through. Being quite short this book doesn’t go into a great amount of depth for each of the topics but is a great way to get ideas for what you could be doing and for looking at where you can go to find out more.

A Project Guide to UX Design: For User Experience Designers in the Field or in the Making

Russ Unger and Carolyn Chandler (2009), 288 pages

A Project Guide to UX Design is a really good book for those new to the field because it covers a lot of the UX roles out there (information architect, user research, interaction designer etc…) and explains what a typical UX design project looks like and how it might be run. The book doesn’t go into a huge amount of detail for the various UX tasks and techniques covered, so whilst there is more than enough there for UX newbies, grizzled UX veterans might find it a little lacking in depth.

Don’t Make Me Think!: A Common Sense Approach to Web Usability

Steve Krug (2005), 216 pages

Don’t Make Me Think might be getting a little bit old now (at least in web design book terms), but don’t let that put you off it because it’s a cracking book and a great introduction to web usability. I love Steve Krug books because they’re so entertaining and so easy to pick up and read (its one of the few UX books you’ll probably find yourself chuckling to). Whilst the book doesn’t cover a huge amount of ground (Steve intentionally made it short enough to be read on a long flight) it’s a great first read for anyone interested in learning more about web usability.

Rocket Surgery Made Easy: The Do-it-yourself Guide to Finding and Fixing Usability Problems

Steve Krug (2009), 168 pages

Every UXer should have usability testing in their arsenal of superpowers and whilst there are more comprehensive books on the subject (such as The Handbook of Usability Testing), Rocket Surgery made easy does arguably the best job of teaching you how to carry out usability testing in the real world (that is typically with no lab, little time and next to no budget). As with all Steve Krug books it’s really easy to read and is choc full of good advice and know how. There’s even an accompanying demo usability testing video that you can view for free on YouTube – whoopee!

The Non-Designer’s Design Book

Robin Williams (2008), 215 pages

In a previous article (What makes a good UX designer?) I argued that every UX designer should know at least a little bit about graphic design because how something looks is so integral to the overall user experience. The non-designers design book provides a good introduction to lots of design principles, such as proximity, alignment and contrast and can help any UX designer make their designs look that bit more professional (not to mention beautiful).

Selling usability – User experience infiltration tactics

John Rhodes (2009), 246 pages

Unfortunately within a lot of organisations UX design is still often seen as somewhat of an unnecessary luxury (although thankfully this outdated view is changing). An important part of any UX professional’s job is therefore being able to sell UX. This gem of a book contains loads of ideas, suggestions and tactics for selling UX within an organisation and is written in a style that makes it very easy to pick up and read (I especially love the quotes at the start of each chapter such as, “Victory has a thousand fathers, but defeat is an orphan”, John F. Kennedy).

Designing Interfaces – Patterns for effective interaction design

Jenifer Tidwell (2011), 576 pages

Although there are loads of design pattern websites out there (checkout this nifty design patterns search that covers most of them) nothing beats being able to leaf through a nice glossy book to get inspiration. Designing Interfaces fits the bill perfectly. The book includes loads of really useful design patterns (with an emphasis on the web) and for each one includes lots of examples and outlines what it is, when it might be used, why it is effective and how to utilise it.

Related articles

• So you wanna be a user experience designer – UX books (Whitney Hess)
• Usability and Interface Design Books (Smashing Magazine)
• Recommend books for your user experience and usability library (UX Booth)
• 20 User experience books you should own (UX by Design)
• The core UX reading list (Man with no Blog)
• Keep on Learning – Essential UX reading (52 weeks of UX)

1. Leaving usability issues to later releases

Don't put off fixing important usability problems

You know in some ways user experience is a lot like DIY (bear with me here). As any home owner will tell you there are always a million and one things that need to get fixed and improved around the house, from dripping taps and scuffed walls to dodgy light sockets and creaky banisters. If you’re like me you’ll make a big list of stuff that needs doing and then decide to do it all some other day because you’ve found something much more interesting to do. Well the same is also true of usability issues. You often have a bunch of stuff that has been flagged up as causing users problems but somehow they never get fixed because a fancy new feature is seen as more important, or there simply isn’t time to get it fixed for the next release. The issue invariably falls by the way side and gets lost in the mists of time, never to be resolved (sob). Rather than leaving usability issues to later releases try to ensure that you test early and often so that you can get them fixed in time, or even delay a release if the user experience isn’t up to scratch. If an issue really can’t be fixed in time for the next release then make damn sure that it makes it in for the next one because as Neil’s (unofficial) first law of usability issues tells us, the longer you leave a usability issue the less chance there is of it ever getting resolved.

2. Coming to the design battle discussion unprepared

Make sure you come to the design discussion prepared for battle

I’m sure that you’ve been in a few heated design battles, erm I mean discussions in your time. They usually involve either something seemingly really minor, like the colour of hyperlinks or something very highly prized, like real estate on a homepage. Voices usually get raised, people become very animated and swords are often drawn ready for combat (metaphorically of course). In such circumstances it’s always worth ensuring that you’ve come ready for combat, preferably with lots of evidence to back up your position. This might be in the form of user feedback, analytics data, research findings or even just a really good reason for why a particular design is a good idea. People find it much harder to argue against facts, figures and findings than just opinion and conjecture, so try to bring these to the table and hopefully you’ll come out of the battle, I mean discussion victorious.

3. Failing to explain UX terminology

Like most disciplines user experience has its own set of secret terminology to maintain that all important cloak of mystery. Do you think your average business person knows precisely what wireframe are? What about a contextual enquiry or a heuristic evaluation? It can be all too easy to use UX terms without releasing that people are not going to know what they mean, or even worse will misinterpret them. For example when you talk about wireframes, they might think that you’re referring to the finished visual design, so are going to be a little surprised when you come back with something as colourful as an old black and white movie. This is why it’s so important to explain UX terms that are used (or even use terms that people are likely to be familiar with), to communicate exactly what UX deliverables such as prototypes, wireframes and personas are and to set expectations upfront. This way you can keep misunderstandings, not to mention nasty shocks and surprises to a minimum.

4. Being overly negative

Eeyor the new UX designer struggled to get people to listen to what he had to say

Remember that feeling you got when you received a piece of school homework that you’d spent ages and ages on only to get a rubbish mark? Pretty disheartening wasn’t it (and to all those would said ‘no’ – you’re lying). Well that’s the same feeling that people get when you tell them that the design they’ve spent ages lovingly crafting sucks (although hopefully not in those exact words). A great deal of user experience design involves critiquing, evaluating and testing designs, whether its as part of usability testing, design critiques or simply delivering your two pennies worth about a quick UI sketch. It’s therefore no surprise that often UX designers find themselves delivering bad news. Pointing out problems, potential issues and improvements is of course vitally important but remember to not be overly negative because this can sometimes be counter productive. Only delivering bad news can not only reduce recipients of said news to a sobbing mess but also increase the likelihood of resistance to your feedback. No one likes hearing only bad news so also be sure to point out what’s good about the design – what works well and what improvements can be made. By outlining what’s good about a design as well as what’s bad you’re more likely to get buy-in and avoid the reputation for being the office Eeyore.

5. Becoming too attached to a design

Your team has spent ages working on a radical new design for an application. Everyone in the team thinks that it’s the bee’s knees, expect unfortunately the users who where less than forthcoming in their praise during some usability testing. Do you keep hold of your pride and joy and tell yourself that those pesky users don’t know what’s good for them, or go back to the drawing board? In situations like this it can be very difficult to ditch a design that you’ve spent a lot of time working on (and probably become very attached to) but often this is precisely what you should do. It’s a mistake becoming too attached to a design because ultimately you must be able to assess each design objectively. If user feedback is indicating that a design isn’t working then don’t be afraid to change it. Of course this is again why getting early and frequent user feedback is so important and it’s also why coming up with a number of different designs is such a good idea. Take a leaf out of Apple’s design book and come up with a number of designs which you can then whittle down to the one that works best. This sort of design Darwinian selection not only leads to the survival of the fittest design but also generally stops you becoming too attached to a particular design, simply because it’s the only one you’ve got.

6. Buffing and polishing deliverables until they sparkle

A good designer (or design team) should be judged on their design, not their deliverables. Unless you’re sadly not able to see a design through to delivery and as such your end goal is a set of deliverables (for example you’ve been brought in just to deliver a design spec) then it’s a mistake to spend any more time on deliverables than you really have to. Sure you don’t want documents with lots of typos and wireframes that look like they’ve been put together by a five year old (although I’ve seen plenty of wireframes where a five year could have probably done a better job) but certainly don’t spend more time making your deliverables look good than actually creating them in the first place. Take a leaf out of Cennydd Bowles and James Box’s Undercover User Experience design manifesto and focus on delivery, not deliverables. Ultimately deliverables are only a means to an end, it’s the delivery that really counts.

7. Starting from scratch

The design team questioned whether 'starting from scratch' was the right approach

A lot of UX design is about creating stuff. Creating prototypes, creating documents, creating designs and so on. Whenever you’re creating something you’ve got to start from somewhere but it’s certainly a mistake for that somewhere to always be from scratch. Rather than creating a persona from scratch see if there is a template out there you can use (like this persona template). Rather than creating a set of scenarios from scratch see if there are some example scenario documents out there you can borrow the format of. Rather than creating a new design from scratch see if there are some design patterns out there you can utilise. Sometimes of course you really do have to start from scratch, but really this should be the exception rather than the rule.

8. Failing to dot the I’s and cross the T’s

When it comes to user experience often the devil is in the detail. A user’s experience is made up of a thousand tiny details, from a mouse click here to a piece of text there and if those details are a bit slap dash in parts they will eventually build up to one crappy overall user experience. This is why it’ so important to make sure that all those tiny details are as intended and as they should be. That copy doesn’t contain any typos or spelling mistakes. That text casing is consistent. That elements are properly aligned and so on. Don’t think that you can rest easy because everything will be picked up by the test team, or perhaps the development team because their focus is usually on the functional side of things, not the UX side of things. Ultimately the design team should be responsible for the UX design, therefore poor attention to detail not only reflects badly on a website or application but also the design team behind that website or application.

9. Letting information about users slip through the cracks

How much information do you have available about your users? Probably more than you think. There’s the customer satisfaction survey that was run last year that you weren’t aware of. There’s the persona research that was undertaken for a different project. There’s the report from a usability testing consultancy that’s gathering dust somewhere (you get the idea). Often user research, usability testing and UX design work is carried out by different teams within an organisation, or even farmed out to different suppliers so it’s no surprise that the information can become very fragmented. Often really valuable information about users gets lost in the ether because teams don’t talk to one another, don’t organise their user information or simply don’t bother to retain it from project to project. This is why it’s such a good idea to have regular discussions between teams and to have a place where information about users can be shared, stored and discussed (such as a Sharepoint or Basecamp site).

10. Over analysing every design decision

There’s a now infamous story from Douglas Bowman about Google testing 41 different shades of blue to see which one performs best for a particular design. Now this surely takes over analysing every design decision to the extreme but don’t make the same mistake of using A/B testing, or user testing as the only means of making a design decision. Sure it’s great to get some feedback for a design but often you just have to make a call and go with you’re UX design gut instinct – and if that fails you can always ask the magic eight ball.

Related articles

• 10 UX mistakes to avoid (UX for the Masses)

1. Leaving it too late to get UX onboard

What can happen when design isn't considered from the start...

Arrr! Customer feedback has come back saying that the new design is too damn difficult to use, quick get the UX guys and girls on the case to sort it out. Sound familiar? UX designers are often parachuted into a project at the last minute in an attempt to sort out a dog’s dinner of a UI. Unfortunately by this time it’s usually too late to do much and certain too late to get the full benefits of UX design. The ROI (return on investment) for usability and UX is generally greater the earlier it’s spent on a project. Ideally that means getting UX onboard from the very start to undertake such activities as:

• Investigating user requirements and carrying out user research.
• Gathering user insights and generating design ideas based on these.
• Testing and gathering feedback for any existing systems.
• Validating requirements and testing possible designs before they are actually built.

2. Assuming that other people give a damn about UX, or even know what it is

I’m assuming that because you’re reading this article you hopefully already know a thing or two about UX and usability (or soon will!). You also hopefully care about delivering a good user experience to your users. Well sadly not everyone knows what UX is and certainly not everyone gives a damn about it. Of course people care about their users (at least I hope they do) and the experience they deliver to them but don’t forget that UX design is a means to an end, not the end itself. People shouldn’t need to care about the process but they should care about the results. This is why it’s so important to sell the benefits of UX design and to educate people so that they know what UX design involves, what the outputs are and why it’s so important. There are loads of good ways to sell UX and to educate and evangelize, from knowledge shares and presentations to blogs, case studies and introductory videos.

3. Leaving it to the last minute to get user feedback

Arrr... Why didn't we test this design with users earlier?

User feedback can sometimes feel a little bit like revision for a big exam. You know that you should be doing it as early and as often as possible, but somehow you end up cramming the night before, when really it’s too late to make a lot of difference. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that you have to wait for a working version of a design to get user feedback when paper prototyping and rapid prototyping allows you to test a design long before it’s built.

4. Spreading the UX sauce too thinly

If like me you work as part of an internal UX team you’ll probably find that there are a million and one websites and applications that are in urgent need of a bit of UX TLC (tender loving care). The temptation is to try and improve as many as possible but this can often be a mistake as all you end up doing is spreading your resources too thinly and ultimately making little impact across a multitude of websites and applications. Instead it’s better to be a bit more selective and to focus your efforts on those websites and applications that must deliver a really good user experience in order to succeed. This allows you to make the most of your limited UX resources and to hopefully get the biggest bang for your UX buck.

5. Creating a UX fiefdom

The internal UX team went a step too far to protect their fiefdom

For those unfamiliar with the term a fiefdom is, "something over which one dominant person or group exercises control" (The free dictionary). Sometimes internal UX teams can create their own UX fiefdom because they refuse to let go of any UX design work and crush any attempts to open it up outside of the group. Of course having a group over seeing UX design to make sure that it’s done properly makes a lot of sense, but UX design should be something that’s open to all, not just a select few. There’s no reason for example why someone with a bit of assistance and know how can’t carry out activities such as usability testing, expert evaluations, user interviews and UI design to name but a few. Opening up UX design to the masses (see what I’ve done!) not only prevents a fiefdom from forming but also allows the UX experts to better utilise their own time, so really it’s a win win situation!

6. Having separate UX researchers and designers

A lot of organisations have separate UX research and design teams, or might send the research and design components of a project out to different suppliers. On one hand this makes a lot of sense because you obviously want those people skilled in research carrying out the research and those skilled in design carrying out the design. However I think that often doing this means that a lot of the important research insight can get lost in translation as one team communicates findings to the other. Research also shouldn’t be carried out for its own sake and it’s important that any design research is able to feed into and influence the ultimate design. This is why I would advocate having the same team carrying out both the UX research and design. Of course within that team you might have research and design specialists but you want the continuity and know how that having the same team involved throughout can bring.

7. Jumping straight into design

When considering a new product or website, or thinking about how an existing one can be improved it can be very tempting to start designing straight away. "This is how this screen might work". "This is what we should have on the homepage". Whist it makes sense to certainly start thinking about the design from the start it can be a mistake to jump in too early without first considering the bigger picture and hopefully carrying out a bit of research first. It might turn out for example that a feature you’ve spent considerable time designing isn’t in tune with how users want to work, or even worse might not even be required in the first place!

8. Creating overly elaborate prototypes and wireframes

With increasingly powerful rapid prototyping and wireframing tools out there, such as Axure, Omnigraffle and Microsoft Sketchflow it can be tempting to spend lots of time on an elaborate pixel perfect (or close to) version of a prototype (or set of wireframes), getting it really slick and modelling more and more of the intended interactions. This can often be a mistake because you end up spending too much time and effort on a prototype that is only going to be thrown away anyway. Unless the prototype will become the production system (which I think is generally a bad idea anyway) or it really needs to model every interaction in excruciating detail (i.e. it’s bound for the off shore sausage factory) then don’t spend any more time than is necessary on a prototype. Don’t forget that a prototype is only a means to an end, not the end itself so think twice about exactly how much detail and how polished it really needs and produce something that is good enough, but no better.

9. Blindly copying other designs

Be wary of simply ripping off another design

An all too common UX mistake is to copy another design, assuming that a great deal of thought, research and testing has gone into it. Well of course this might have been the case, but usually it isn’t. By blinding copying another design you might also be copying the same issues, problems and short falls in that design. Whilst of course it makes sense to utilise design patterns and to borrow the best bits from other designs you need to think long and hard about how that design might perform and ideally put it to the test. Something like A/B testing is a great way to do this, or simply run the design by some users and see how it fares.

10. Not setting any UX standards and guidelines

In the same way that it’s important to have building standards in place to ensure that a building is built and maintained correctly, it’s also a good idea to have UX standards and guidelines in place to ensure that good UX design principles and practices are followed. Without these it’s all too easy for bad UX design to proliferate and for lots of inconsistencies to creep into designs. Of course having UX standards and guidelines that are overly prescriptive or too exhaustive is also a mistake but it certainly makes sense to have standards and guidelines that cover areas such as the design process to follow (or at least loosely follow), design patterns to use, design principles to adhere to and user feedback loops to incorporate.

Related articles

• Top Ten UX Mistakes on Consumer Websites (Bolt | Peters)
• The Top Ten Mistakes UX (User Experience) Leaders Make (TibetanTailor)
• Top 10 Mistakes in Web Design (Jakob Nielsen)
• 10 most common misconceptions about user experience design (Whitney Hess)

What are word clouds?

Word clouds are simply a way of visually displaying a bunch of text as a shape. Usually that shape is a cloud, although plenty of word cloud generators such as Tagxedo now let you choose different shapes (like a square, love heart or even Abraham Lincon!). The frequency (or importance) of each word or phrase within the text is usually shown by its size. The more a word or phrase occurs in the text, the larger it will be within the word cloud. For instance, the word cloud below was generated using Wordle by examining the text for all UX for the masses articles. You can see that words such as ‘usability’, ‘users’ and ‘website’ crop up quite a lot.

Word cloud showing all text for this website (created using Wordle)

How do I create word clouds?

Creating word clouds is ridiculously easy as there are loads of good word cloud generators out there. Two that I can certainly recommend are Wordle and Tagxedo. Both allow you to copy and paste in text to create a word cloud, or to use an RSS feed. One thing to be mindful of is that in order to retain phrases, such as ‘UX design’ you generally need to replace spaces with the tilde symbol (‘~’). For example ‘UX for the masses’ would need to be input as ‘UX~for~the~masses’.

To make things a bit easier I’ve created a useful Excel spreadsheet that spits out the text for creating word clouds. All you have to do is enter (or paste in) a list of words / phrases with a corresponding weight (e.g. number of instances, % of instances, level of importance etc…). For example:

The spreadsheet will insert tilde symbols (‘~’) to preserve phrases and will output the right number of words / phrases to match the weightings. There is also a worksheet for utilising the advanced Wordle features that allow you to specify the colour for individual words and phrases (for the more hardcore word clouders out there).

If the word cloud generator doesn’t allow you to export the results as an image (shame on you Wordle) then you can simply screen grab the results using a tool such as ScreenHunter, or save it as a PDF using a tool such as CutePDF.

• Download word cloud text generator (ZIP, 1.51Mb)

Suggestions for using word clouds

Here are some of the ways in which I’ve used word clouds in the past.

To show analytics information

Word clouds are great for showing analytics information and because you can usually export analytics reports to a CSV file it’s dead easy to plug the terms straight into the word cloud text generator.

The sort of analytics information that might be shown as a word cloud includes:

• Inbound searches (i.e. search engine searches that lead into a website).
• Internal searches (i.e. searches within a website).
• Most popular content.
• Most popular entry and exit pages.
• Visitor information (e.g. country of origin).

As an example of the sort of thing you can do the word cloud below shows the most popular Google searches that have resulted in visitors coming to this website.

Most popular inbound Google searches for this website (word cloud generated using Wordle)

To show user feedback

Word clouds are great for showing user feedback, such as survey and interview results (assuming a good sample size, such as more than 20 participants). The sort of user feedback that might be communicated using word clouds includes:

• Likes and dislikes for a product.
• Common issues with a product.
• Reasons for coming to a website.
• Chosen product descriptors (e.g. frustrating, professional, convenient) as captured using something like Microsoft’s product reaction cards (Word).

To show product usage information

Word clouds can also be used to show product usage information, such as how often features are used, or how popular content is on a website. For instance the word cloud below shows the various articles on this website by popularity (determined by number of views).

Articles on this website by number of views (word cloud generated using Tagxedo)

To show user information

Why not show information about users or their personas using word clouds? The sort of user information you could show includes:

• The different types of users (the larger the text, the bigger the overall proportion of this user group).
• Demographics information (e.g. country, language, occupational groups etc…).
• User needs and requirements (e.g. simplicity, reliability, speed, flexibility, easy to use etc…).

For instance, the word cloud below shows which countries visitors to this website have come from.

The country of origin for visitors to this website (word cloud generated using Wordle)

To show user stories

If you’re utilising user stories then you could even show them as a word cloud. The larger the user story, the more important it is to users. For example, the word cloud below shows some possible user stories for an ecommerce website.

Possible user stories for an ecommerce website (word cloud generated using Wordle)

Related articles

• Welcome Back Wordle… Plus 7 Other Free Word Cloud Generators! (Michael Gorman)

Form design

Keep forms as short and simple as possible

A good rule of thumb when it comes to form design is to try to keep your forms as short and simple as possible, but no simpler. Try to remove any unnecessary questions and try to simplify complex questions as much as possible. A good way to do this is to run through the form and ask yourself, “Do we really need to capture this information?”. If the answer is ‘probably not’ then resolve to remove that item from the form.

Don’t make users think any more than they have to

Ask me the month and year I bought my last car and I could probably tell you. Ask me the exact date and I wouldn’t have a clue. Try not to make users think any more than they have to when filling out your form by ensuring that questions are clear, unambiguous and as easy to answer as possible (unless of course you’re designing a quiz). For each step of the form ask yourself “Is it clear what users need to do and will they be able to do it?”. If the answer is no then you’ll need to change that part of the form.

Make forms as standard as possible

Your users will have filled out countless forms prior to yours so it makes sense to try to make your form as standard as possible. This means using existing form design patterns, such as a recognised address format, postcode look up and error reporting (checkout my design patterns search for an easy way to find form design patterns). Designing a form that is unlike any other might make for a very interesting design but is likely to leave your users scratching their heads.

Let users know what to expect

For many forms it’s important to let users know what is in store for them, such as how long the form is likely to take and what sort of information they will need to hand. After all, you don’t want users getting half way through your form only to realise that they don’t have all the information that’s required.

Form layout

Break complex forms up into bite size chunks

For more complex forms it’s often a mistake to try to do too much on the one page, or the one form. Instead consider breaking up the form into bit size chunks, much in the same way that most online checkouts are broken down in to steps (delivery address, billing address, payment etc…). Make sure that sections are clearly labelled and that related information, such as delivery details are captured together.

Show the user’s progress

For longer forms it’s important to let users know where they are in the form and how much further they have to go. This might be as simple as outlining the step they are currently on (e.g. step 1 of 4), displaying the percentage complete or displaying a progress bar showing the steps completed and the steps still to go.

Make forms easier to scan

Make your form easy for users to quickly scan by using white space, headers and other graphical elements to clearly differentiate form sections. Headings should be descriptive, succinct and should stand out on the page so that users can quickly see what information they need to enter.

Utilise progressive disclosure

For complex forms it can be confusing and potentially overwhelming for users to show all the inputs straight away. Instead it’s a good idea to progressively disclose form elements so that they are revealed only if and when required and within context. For example, if a drop down has an ‘other’ option which requires entry into a text field, it’s a good idea to only show that text field when ‘other’ has been selected.

Labels

Use the user’s terms and names

It’s important when considering labels that names and terms are used that users will understand and recognise. Try to avoid using your own terms as something that might make sense to you might not make sense to your users.

Use succinct and descriptive labels

Form labels should be short, clear and descriptive. If extra information, clarification or context is required use help text to do this rather than long rambling labels.

Place labels next to inputs

Eye tracking studies have shown that placing labels next to inputs (e.g. above or to the left – i.e. right aligned) make it easiest for users to read and associate labels with fields (taking advantage of the Gestalt law of proximity).

Distinguish required and optional inputs

It’s important to distinguish the required inputs on a form so that users know what information that they must enter. The standard convention is to use a ‘*’ to distinguish required fields. For example, ‘Name *’. Don’t forget to also include text at the top of each form page stating that the asterisk signifies a required field.

If most of the fields on a form are required with just 1 or 2 optional then it often makes more sense to highlight optional fields, rather than required fields. A good way to do this is to append the labels for optional inputs with ‘(optional)’, such as ‘Mobile number (optional)’. Short forms, such as a password reset form might have all fields required, in which case it’s usually not necessary to highlight required fields.

Inputs

Use appropriate inputs

It’s important to choose the right sort of input for the information being captured. For example, radio buttons are a good idea where a small number (e.g. 2-6) of mutually exclusive options are available (i.e. only one can be selected), whereas a dropdown is more appropriate where a larger number of options are available (or where space is an issue). The Microsoft Windows UX guide has a really good run down of many of the different input controls available and their appropriate usage.

The length of text fields should also reflect the format and expected length of text input. Short inputs such as postcodes should have a short text box, where as longer inputs, such as email addresses should have a larger text box. A good way to test that appropriate sizes have been used is to go through your form entering some expected values. Text boxes should be large enough to show most if not all of the text entered.

Have a logical order of inputs

Your form should have a logical order of entry. It would be most unusual for example to ask users for their address and then their name, as it’s usually the other way around. It’s also a good idea to group related inputs so that users are entering related information in the one place. For example, you might group contact information together (name, email address, telephone number etc…) or preferences together. For larger forms inputs might be grouped into clear sections with headings.

Use smart defaults where appropriate

Smart defaults simply mean that inputs are set to a sensible initial value so that a significant proportion of your users don’t have to do anything. For example, if most of your users come from the UK and you have a country select dropdown, it might be a good idea to default the country to ‘UK’ (or at least have it at the top of the dropdown).

Smart defaults can be really useful but be mindful of users inadvertently submitting default values because they don’t realise that a value has already been selected.

Consider the order and grouping of options

Where multiple options are available for users it’s important to consider the best order in which to list them and whether grouping options would make sense. For shorter lists it’s usually best to order by estimated popularity, with the most likely to be chosen option first and so on. Longer lists (e.g. country select) are usually best ordered alphabetically or grouped, for example using the OPTGROUP element to group options within a dropdown.

Be flexible about formatting

Try not to be too picky about how users enter information into your form as there is nothing more annoying than a form that requires information to be entered in a very specific format. For example, if you’re asking for a date the form should ideally be able to accept both shorthand (e.g. 11/5/11 – in the UK, 5/11/11 in the US) and long hand versions (e.g. 11/5/2011 – in the UK, 5/11/2011 in the US).

Allow users to tab through inputs

Many users will utilise the Tab key to move between inputs on a form as it can be much quicker than moving the cursor to the next input with the mouse. It’s therefore a good idea to check that tabbing between inputs is possible for your form and that inputs are tabbed in a logical order. The TABINDEX element can be used to specify tabbing order within a web form if the default order is all over the place.

Help

Address common user queries and questions

Users are bound to have lots of queries and questions when it comes to filling out your form. What does this refer to? Why am I being asked for this information? Hopefully you’ve captured some of these during usability testing but even if you’ve not yet carried out any usability testing you can still probably have a good guess at some of the queries that might crop up.

A good way to address common user queries and question is to show some help text when an input has focus. You won’t need to include help text for every input, just those where users might need a little help or clarification. Help text should be short and clear. If a user might need extra help then it’s usually better to link to more information, or to include some additional FAQs, rather than overload the form with help text. MoneySupermarket.com’s car insurance quote form (as shown below) is a really good example of addressing common user queries using on focus help text and FAQs.

Moneysupermarket.com addresses common user queries and questions for it’s car insurance quote form by using on focus help and FAQs.

Keep help text succinct and easy to understand

Whenever writing help text for a form it’s important to keep it as succinct and as easy to understand as possible. After all, users won’t want to have to read an essay to work out how to fill out your form. Help text should be written in plain English, avoiding the use of jargon and gobbledygook (love that word). Terms used should obviously also be ones that users will understand.

Errors

Highlight all errors

If there are errors on the form following an attempted submission then these should all be reported, ideally with each input at fault also individually highlighted. A good way to do this is to show error messages at the top of the page listing all the errors and then show additional error messages above or below the inputs at fault. It’s important not to just report the first input with an error because there might be others that need fixing and you will want your users to hopefully fix all their errors before re-submitting the form.

Use clear, actionable error messages

Error messages should be clear and actionable. For example, don’t just report that there is some information missing, state what that information is. Similarly don’t just report that an input is not in the correct format, outline what the format should be. It’s important that users not only know why an error has been reported but also how they can fix it.

Utilise real-time validation

For some inputs it can be a good idea to utilise real-time validation, perhaps using JavaScript or AJAX to validate inputs prior to submission. For example you might check that an input is in the correct format, that a user name has not already been used or that two email addresses entered are exactly the same.

Actions

Make primary call to actions clear

Primary calls to action on the form, such ‘Next’ or ‘Submit’ should be clear and should ideally stand out on the page. A good way to do this is to make the primary action a button and other actions, such as ‘Back’ or ‘Cancel’ links. Alternatively you could use a different colour or visual styling for the primary call to action button.

Provide feedback to users

It’s important to provide users with feedback following an action. For example, you should provide feedback following submission of the form or during some sort of lookup. For operations that can take a little while the now ubiquitous swirling circle is a good way to show that something is happening, or alternatively showing a progress bar or percentage complete. Let users know whether their action was successful or not and what their next steps are. If their action was unsuccessful don’t forget to outline why this was and what the user can do about it.

Make reusable and very complex forms saveable

It’s a really good idea to make very complex or very long forms, such as job application forms saveable, so that users can save their progress (or have it automatically saved for them) and return to their form at a later date. The same also applies to reusable forms. These are forms where users are likely to need to retrieve, edit and resubmit their form at some point in the future. Insurance quote forms are a good example of reusable forms.

Avoid including a reset button (unless having one makes sense)

You still see an awful lot of reset / clear buttons on web forms these days, usually tantalisingly close to the ‘Submit’ button so that a user can easily inadvertently clear their form rather than submitting it. Unless users are likely to need to be able to reset their entire form, such as for search filter or advanced search forms resist the temptation to include a reset button – 9 times of out 10 it’s a potential hindrance rather than being helpful.

Other considerations

Make forms accessible

Making sure that your form is as accessible as possible is a no-brainer because it opens it up to the largest audience possible. Usability and accessibility also go hand in hand as usually the more accessible a form is, the more usable it is as well. I’ve listed some useful articles for making forms accessible in the related articles section as making forms accessible is a substantial topic in its own right.

Carry out usability testing

As they say the proof is in the pudding – how can you tell how usable a form is without testing it with real users? Ideally you should be carrying out moderated usability testing, either face-to-face or remotely using a screen sharing tool (checkout my list of 25 great free UX tools for a few free ones you could use). If getting time with users is likely to be very difficult then you could also carry out unmoderated remote usability testing using a tool using as Loop11 (take a look at my remote user testing 101 presentation for more about remote usability testing).

You don’t even need a working form to carry out usability testing. You could carry out some early paper prototyping to test out sketches or rudimentary mock-ups of your form, or put together a rapid prototype using one of the many rapid prototyping tools out there.

Set-up and track form analytics

Once a form is actually being used in the big bad world you’ll want to see how users are fairing and whether it’s performing as expected. Capturing live usage data using a tool such as Google analytics allows you to monitor key performance indicators (KPIs) such as conversion rates and drop out rates and to capture important information such as common form submissions errors (e.g. missing fields) and common user journeys in and out of the form.

Related articles

• Forms that work: Designing web forms for usability (Caroline Jarrett)
• Web Form Design: Filling in the Blanks (Luke Wroblewski)
• Sensible Forms: A Form Usability Checklist (Brian Crescimanno)
• Web Form Design Patterns: Sign-Up Forms (Smashing Magazine)
• Creating accessible forms (WebAIM)
• Accessible forms: Guidelines, examples and accessible JavaScript tricks (webSemantics)

1. Would you recommend <website / product> to a friend?

This is a great way to find out what users’ opinion of a website or product is. After all, someone is unlikely to recommend something that they don’t rate themselves. Rather than just capturing a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ response consider providing ‘Yes, I’d recommend it because…’ and ‘No, I wouldn’t recommend it because…’ as possible answers with text boxes below each (or show the relevant text box on answer) so that you can also find out why users would or would not recommend it.

2. How would you describe <website / product> in one or more words?

This is a good question for capturing perceptions of a website or product. You could allow users to enter their own words or chose one or more from a list, such as the 118 used in Microsoft’s product reaction cards (Word). A good way to analyse the results of this question is to use a word cloud generated using a service such as Wordle.

3. If <website / product> were a car, what car would it be?

A bit of a wacky one but by asking users to compare your website or product to something else you can investigate their perceptions of it. For example, do they compare it to a beautiful and desirable Aston Martin DB9 or a bland and boring Toyota Corolla (sorry Corolla drivers out there)?

4. How does <website / product> compare to <competitor>?

A great way to investigate the strengths and weaknesses of a website or product is to ask users to compare it to something similar that they have used. In addition to asking how the two compare you might also ask ‘Which do you prefer?’ to find out more definitively how your website or product stacks up to the competition.

5. If you were to review <website / product> what score would you give it out of 10?

With most online shoppers being familiar with customer reviews and ratings why not ask users to review your website or product? You could ask for an overall rating or ask them to rate specific areas. I prefer to use a 10 point score rather than 5 point because it gives participants more flexibility. It’s also a good idea to ask ‘Why have you given this score?’ so that you find out the rationale for a rating.

6. What do you find most frustrating about <website / product>?

A lot of websites and products focus on pilling on more and more features, rather than ensuring that existing features work really well. Asking what currently frustrates users is a great way to investigate how existing features can be improved. You can ask what users find most frustrating or alternatively ask for their top 3 frustrations.

7. Overall, how easy to use do you find <website / product>?

Standard usability questionnaires such as CSUQ, SUS and QUIS are really good for evaluating the usability of a website or product but can be quite lengthy. This is a good single question for investigating the usability of a product or service. Possible answers could be ‘Very easy to use’; ‘Easy to use’; ‘Neither easy nor difficult to use’; ‘Difficult to use’ and ‘Very difficult to use’. Also consider asking ‘Why is this?’ if a user selects either ‘Difficult to use’ or ‘Very difficult to use’ so that you can investigate the reasons behind this a little further.

8. Why have you come to <website>?

Even with analytics it can be difficult to work out what users are coming to your website for. Is it to find out some information; to carry out a transaction or something you’ve not even considered? In addition to asking why users have come to your website you might also want to ask ‘Were you successful?’ and ‘What problems did you experience’. This allows you to also investigate how well the website supported someone’s goal or task.

9. If you could change one thing about <website / product> what would it be and why?

This is a great question for unearthing major frustrations or feature omissions. Asking for one thing forces users to consider what is most important to them. You could alternatively ask for up to three things that someone would like to change.

10. What features could you not live without?

This is a good question for investigating killer features. Analytics will often tell you which features are most popular but not necessarily which are most important to users.

11. What do you like best about <website / product>?

Along with finding out what needs to be improved about a website or product, don’t forget to also find out what currently works really well. After all, you don’t want to inadvertently change something that users currently really like.

12. What do you like least about <website / product>?

A good complement to asking what users like best about a website or product. For this question you could either ask what users like or alternatively ask for their top 3 dislikes.

13. Which features could you live without?

37signals in their rather splendid book Getting Real (which incidentally can be read online for free – whoopee) state that when it comes to feature selection, “More isn’t the answer. Sometimes the biggest favour you can do for customers is to leave something out”. I couldn’t’ agree more which is why it can be a really good idea to find out which features might be pruned from your website or product.

14. How can we improve <website / product>? Send us your ideas and suggestions.

This is a great question for getting general user feedback, together with feature ideas and suggestions. You might even want to think about setting up a follow up customer feedback forum, using a service such as Uservoice. This allows users to vote on ideas and suggestions that have been submitted so hopefully you can find out which is likely to be most popular.

15. Anything else you care to share or get off your chest?

This is a great last question as it gives users the opportunity to sound off about anything the survey may have missed and makes it clear that you’re interested in listening to them (just don’t take any rants too personally).

Related articles

• The Three Greatest Survey Questions Ever (Avinash Kaushik)
• A Comparison of Questionnaires for Assessing Website Usability (PDF)
• QUIS – Questionnaire for User Interaction Satisfaction
• SUS – System Usability Scale (Word)
• CSUQ – Computer System Usability Questionnaire

Prototyping tools

Pencil

Pencil is a nice little Open Source tool for creating prototypes, UI mockups, and UX diagrams, such as user journeys. It comes with a good set of built-in widgets covering web, windows and sketchy UI components and allows pages to be exported as HTML, a PDF, an Open Office doc, a Word Doc or an image.
http://pencil.evolus.vn

Pencil – A free prototyping and diagramming tool

LucidChart

LucidChart is an online tool for creating diagrams, UI mockups and prototypes. It allows more than one person to collaborate on a document and comes with a nice set of built-in widgets, including UI components, icons and diagramming shapes. Although it’s not strictly speaking free it does allow documents to be created with up to 60 elements and with two collaborators for free. Documents can be saved and downloaded as a webpage, PDF or image.
http://www.lucidchart.com

LucidChart – A prototyping and diagramming tool with a free trial version

Balsamiq

Balsamiq is another online UI prototyping tool and like LucidChart it’s not fee but does allow you to create simple single pages for free using the trial version (just click on the ‘take a tour’ link). It has an intuitive UI and comes with a good set of sketchy widgets to use. Pages can be downloaded as a PDF or an image.
http://balsamiq.com

Balsamiq – A prototyping tool with a free trial version

Serena Prototype Composer

Serena Prototype Composer is a powerful WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) UI editor, allowing you to create UI prototypes and mockups, and to link these in with user flows and business process diagrams. Unfortunately the free edition (community edition) only allows you to modify some existing sample projects.
http://www.serena.com/products/prototype-composer/

Serena Prototype Composer – A prototyping tool with a free trial version

Annotation tools

Protonotes

Protonotes is a great little tool that allows you to add post-it type notes to a prototype in order to capture feedback. You simply add a little bit of JavaScript to each page of the prototype and Protonotes does the rest.
http://www.protonotes.com

Protonotes – A free prototype annotation tool

WebNotes

WebNotes is a browser plugin that allows you to attach notes and comments to any webpage, and to share these with other people. It’s a great tool for capturing feedback for a design and for capturing comments for things like usability reviews and competitor benchmarks.
http://www.webnotes.net

WebNotes – A free webpage annotation tool

Diigo

Diigo allows you to capture and share annotations for webpages, including screenshots, comments and highlighted text. You can set-up a group for sharing information so it’s a nice tool for capturing comments for designs and for sharing things like design patterns.
http://www.diigo.com

Diigo – A free webpage annotation tool

Design tools

Lorem Ipsum generator

The Lorem Ipsum generator does what it says on the tin and is really useful for generating dummy text for designs. You can generate Lorem Ipsum for a specific number of paragraphs, words or sentences.
http://www.ipsum-generator.com

Lorem Ipsum generator – A free dummy text generator

ColorPic

ColorPic is a great little tool for those instances when you want to grab an onscreen colour. A magnifier makes grabbing the right pixel dead easy and it will give you the web colour along with Hex and RGB values. ColorPic even allows you to build up palettes of colours so you don’t have to keep grabbing the same colours.
http://www.iconico.com/colorpic

ColorPic – A free colour picker for onscreen colours

Netvibes

Netvibes allows you to set-up custom dashboards to track online content such as blogs, RSS feeds and photo feeds. It’s useful for keeping in touch with what’s going on with your favourite UX websites and for getting inspiration for new designs.
http://www.netvibes.com

Netvides – A free online dashboard tool

Screen grab tools

Jing

Jing allows you to easily capture and share screen grabs and videos from onscreen. It’s great for capturing dynamic interactions and behaviours and allows you to export videos as a streaming Flash video (SWF) that anyone can play in their browser.
http://www.techsmith.com/jing/free/

Jing – A screen grab tool with a free version

Screengrab! Firefox plugin

Screengrab! is a great little Firefox plugin that allows you to capture an entire webpage, not just the visible part. Screen captures can be saved as JPG or PNG images, or alternatively can be copied directly to the clipboard.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/screengrab/

Screengrab! – A free screen grab plugin for Firefox

Browsershots

Browsershots is a free Open Source web app that allows you to find out how a webpage will look in lots of different browsers. It gives you screenshots for each browser and along with the usual suspects such as IE, Firefox and Chrome it also includes some really obscure ones, such as SeaMonkey, Konqueror and Galeon.
http://browsershots.org

Browsershots – A free tool for checking cross browser appearance of a website

Sitemapping tools

XMind

XMind is a really nice mind mapping tool that’s great for building site maps; for collating information; and for generally capturing thoughts and feedback. Mind maps can be imported from other mind mapping applications such as MindManger and Freemind and can be exported or shared with others by uploading them to the XMind website.
http://www.xmind.net

XMind – A mind mapping tool with a free version

Freemind

Freemind is an Open Source mind mapping tool that’s really useful for creating clickable HTML sitemaps. It’s not as slick as some of the other mind mapping tools out there but is very quick to use and has more features than the free edition of XMind.
http://freemind.sourceforge.net

Freemind – A free mind mapping tool

Usability testing tools

CamStudio

CamStudio is an Open Source application that allows you to record what’s going on onscreen, including audio from a microphone or the computer speakers. It even allows you to capture a webcam video feed as well so it’s a great tool for recording usability testing sessions. Videos are saved as AVI files and can also be converted into streaming Flash videos (SWFs).
http://camstudio.org

CamStudio – A free screen recording tool

Remote usability tools

Skype

The business version of Skype allows you to carry out screen sharing with an audio and even a video feed, so it’s perfect for carrying out remote usability testing. Unfortunately participants do need to install the Skype client on their computer and it won’t record sessions like WebEx, but then you can always use something like CamStudio to do this.
http://www.skype.com

Skype – A screen sharing tool with a free version

Loop11

Loop11 is a great tool for carrying out unmoderated usability testing. You basically set-up some tasks for people to do on a website and let them try them out at their own convenience. Loop11 is not free but does allow you to set-up a trial test with a maximum of 5 tasks and 2 questions.
http://www.loop11.com

Loop11 – A remote usability testing tool with a free trial version

Five Second Test

Five second test is a great tool for capturing first impressions for a design, or for perhaps carrying out some quick A/B testing. You can have one or more designs, in the form of images and then people are able to view them for 5 seconds before entering some feedback.
http://www.fivesecondtest.com

Five Second Test – A free remote usability testing tool

Survey Monkey

SurveyMonkey is an online survey tool that’s great for carrying out online surveys, or for capturing feedback following usability testing. The free version allows you to set-up surveys with up to10 questions and 100 responses, which is generally plenty.
http://www.surveymonkey.com

SurveyMonkey – An online survey tool with a free version

Usability reviewing tools

Concept feedback

Concept Feedback is an interesting tool for getting second opinions on a design. You can post a design to the site and then a community of designers will give you their feedback for free.
http://www.conceptfeedback.com

Concept Feedback – A free usability reviewing tool

Analytics tools

Google analytics

Google analytics is not only free but also incredibly useful for finding out how a site is being used. You can find out loads of interesting stuff such as the paths visitors are commonly taking and where visitors are entering and exiting a site. It even allows you to carry out A/B testing.
http://www.google.com/analytics

Google analytics – A free analytics tool

ClickHeat

ClickHeat is a tool that allows you to view a visual heatmap of clicks on a web page, showing hot (lots of clicks) and cold (few clicks) zones. It’s great for finding out where visitors are clicking on pages, although it does require a bit of technical know how to get it installed and working for a site.
http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat

ClickHeat – A free analytics tool

Accessibility tools

Accessibility Evaluation Toolbar

The Accessibility Evaluation Toolbar is a Firefox plugin that’s really useful for checking the accessibility of web pages.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/accessibility-evaluation-toolb

Accessibility Evaluation Toolbar – A free accessibility evaluation tool

Total Validator

Total Validator is an (X)HTML validator, an accessibility validator, a spell checker, and a broken links checker all rolled into one.
http://www.totalvalidator.com

Total Validator – A free accessibility evaluation tool

Related articles

• 10 useful tools to develop, monitor, evaluate or debug web pages (Webcredible)
• 10 Free Screen Recording Softwares For Creating Attractive Screencasts (WebResourcesDepot)
• Top 29 Free UX tools and extensions (UX Booth)
• Free Remote Desktop Sharing Applications (WebResourcesDepot)

What are usability reviews?

Usability reviews are a structured means of examining the usability of an interactive system by evaluating it against a set of recognised usability best practice principles. Reviews are usually carried out by usability experts, but don’t let that put you off carrying out your own because with a bit of know how and a good set of guidelines anyone can have a go.

Broadly speaking there are two different types of usability review – scenario based reviews and heuristic based reviews. Scenario based reviews evaluate a system against likely user scenarios, such as buying a product for an ecommerce website. Heuristic reviews on the other hand evaluate an interface against a set of usability heuristics (i.e. best practice), such as links being clear, descriptive and well labelled. The two are by no means mutually exclusive and are often most effective when used together (as you will see).

Usability reviews – the good news

Usability reviews have a lot going for them as a usability technique, including:

• Usability reviews are quick and cheap to carry out. A comprehensive usability review can often be carried in just one or two days.
• Usability reviews can be carried out by relative novices (provided that they have received at least some training in the technique and have a good set of guidelines to follow).
• Usability reviews can have a wide scope. Whereas usability testing generally evaluates a few specific tasks, usability reviews can quickly cover lots of different functions, usage scenarios and usability areas for a system.
• Usability reviews are great for competitive benchmarking. Different systems can be easily compared against the same usability criteria.

Usability reviews – the bad news

Alas it’s not all good news. Usability reviews also have a number of short comings that you should keep in mind:

• Usability reviews don’t actually tell you how usable a system is, just how usable it should be. The only way to really test the usability of asystem is to do just that – test it using usability testing and by examining real world usage.
• Important usability issues can be missed and suspected usability issues might not be issues at all as usability reviews are by their nature educated guesses.
• Usability reviews can be inconsistent. Numerous studies have shown that multiple evaluators evaluating the same system often identify markedly different sets of usability issues (known as the evaluator effect).
• Usability reviews are subjective and because there’s no empirical evidence it can be difficult to argue the case for fixing suspected usability issues.
• Usability reviews are dependant on the expertise of the evaluator. Although usability reviews can be carried out by relative novices, if adequate training and guidance is not provided then results can be inconsistent and significant usability issues can be missed.

How to carry out a usability review

The usability review method that I’m going to walkthrough involves carrying out a scenario based review in the form of a cognitive walkthrough, and then a heuristic based review using a usability review scorecard that I’ve put together (based on usability best practice principles). I’ve found that using the two techniques together works really well because it means that lots of bases are covered and ensures that a system is evaluated against likely usage. Carrying out the cognitive walkthrough first also helps builds up a good understanding of the system prior to the heuristic based review. Want to know more? Here’s how to carry out a comprehensive usability review.

1. Define your usability review scenarios

A cognitive walkthrough provides a means of evaluating the usability of a system by testing how well it supports a common user task in the form of a scenario. You basically take a scenario, such as a punter placing a bet on a betting website, and walk through the steps that this user might take to achieve their goal. To do this you should first define some user scenarios to walkthrough. These should cover common and important user tasks that are crucial to the success of the system. For example, if you were evaluating a mobile phone you might look at adding a new contact; sending a text message and making a phone call as just some of the user scenarios to review. For each scenario you should answer the following questions:

• Who is using the system? Has he or she used it before? You don’t need to build a rich persona for your user, just enough information to start making educated guesses about their behaviour.
• What is he or she trying to do? What task is he or she attempting to undertake? Is this the first time this person has attempted this task?
• Why is he or she using the system? What is their goal?
• Where is he or she using the system? If a website is being reviewed, which browser is this person likely to use?

The number of scenarios you review will depend on how extensive the usability review needs to be, and how wide the scope of the system is. For most reviews you’ll find that you will only probably need to cover 2-5 scenarios. It’s also a good idea to cover multiple scenarios with the same persona wherever possible.

2. Walkthrough each scenario

Having defined each scenario you’ll now need to walkthrough the steps that your persona is likely to take to achieve their goal. Of course it’s impossible to know exactly how someone will undertake a task so this is very much a best guess based on asking the following questions at each step:

1. Will the user know what to do?
   Is there a clear route for the user to take? Is it obvious what the user needs to do at this step?
2. Will the user see how to do it?
   Is the call to action obvious? Is it clear how the user completes this step?
3. Will the user know whether their action was correct?
   What sort of feedback is provided? Is it clear whether the user is on the correct path or not?

You should continue the walkthrough for each scenario until you think the user is likely to have achieved their goal, or conversely is likely to have given up. Exactly how you capture each walkthrough is of course up to you. In the past I’ve found using a separate screenshot on each page with the above questions (Will the user know what to do? etc…) and answers for each step a good template to use.

3. Fill out the usability review scorecard

Having carried out a walkthrough for each scenario you should now be in a good position to carry out a heuristic review. Rather than using Nielsen’s 10 usability heuristics I’ve found it easier to use more explicit usability heuristics based on usability best practice principles, such as making sure that error messages are descriptive and written in plain English. Nielsen’s usability heuristics are certainly useful and are something to keep in mind when carrying out a usability review but I find that they can be somewhat subjective and that less experienced reviewers can struggle to directly apply them. More explicit usability heuristics are more transparent, making it easier to see the link between a system and it’s judged usability, and are easier for less experienced reviewers to follow.

To carry out the heuristic part of the usability review simply download the Excel template below and you enter a score (very poor, poor, moderate, good etc…) and comments for each of the 45 best practice usability principles. The principles cover:

• Features and functionality
• Homepage / starting page
• Navigation
• Search
• Feedback
• Forms
• Errors
• Content & text
• Help
• Performance (e.g. response rate and absence of crashing)

• Usability review template (Excel, 100KB)

The scorecard will deliver a final usability score (out of 100), allowing for different systems to be compared against the same set of usability criteria. This is especially useful for competitive benchmarking but please bear in mind that a high score doesn’t necessary mean that something is usable, merely that it follows best practice principles (if that makes sense). Heuristics are weighted to ensure that more important points, such as ‘Features and functionality meet common user goals and objectives’ have a greater affect on the overall score than less significant ones. If you’re somewhat old school and prefer pencil and paper to typing comments directly in you can also download a PDF template for doing just this.

• Usability review template (PDF, 20KB)

When are usability reviews most useful?

Usability reviews are perhaps most useful for a first pass evaluation of a design (all the way from conceptual to high fidelity), and for evaluating a pre-existing design to investigate potential areas for improvement. Also don’t think that it’s a case of either carrying out a usability review or usability testing because like bananas and custard, or gin and tonic, the two are a great combination. A usability review will give you an idea of some of the usability issues that might exist and usability testing will allow you to validate these assumptions and to explore any areas of concern in more detail.

Usability reviews are also incredibly useful for carrying out competitive benchmarking because they allow you to easily compare the usability of a set of systems against the same criteria. For example, you might work out the usability score for a raft of competitors to see how they compare to your system.

Related articles

• Expert usability review vs. usability testing (Webcredible)
• The Evaluator Effect: A Chilling Fact about Usability Evaluation Methods (International Journal of Human-Computer Interaction)

But there’s no such thing as a typical UX designer

Before I dive in to what in my opinion makes a good UX designer I think that it’s worth pointing out that in my experience there’s really no such thing as a typical UX designer. Although UX related degree and masters courses exist there certainly isn’t a production line somewhere churning out sparkly new UX designers and at the moment there’s very little formal accreditation or certification within the industry (Human Factors International’s Certified Usability Analyst and Certified User Experience Analyst are the only UX related certifications that spring to mind). This is partly because it’s such a new discipline but also because it’s such a varied role and one that invariably requires a wide range of skills and qualities. However, although I don’t think there’s such a thing as a typical UX designer, there are certainly skills, qualities and characteristics that are common across most good UX designers. Here are what I think the most important ones are.

Being like Mr T

I pity the fool! A good UX designer should have a T-shaped skill set

UX designers by nature are a varied bunch. Some come from a technical background; others come from a psychology or graphical design background and others from an industrial design or technical writing background. This means that most UX designers have quite a varied skill set, which is a good thing because to a large extent UX designers should be a jack of several trades, and a master of some. That’s not to say that they should be able to fix a leaking tap, write a best selling novel and run a 4 minute mile, just that UX designers should have excellent design and research skills, along with a good knowledge of related skills, such as graphic design, software development and project management. Such a varied role calls for a varied skill set, one which is typically T-shaped (hence the rather tenuous Mr T reference). In other words, UX designers should have a good breadth of knowledge, with a good depth of knowledge in a few integral areas, including…

Being a designer

First and foremost I think that a UX designer should be just that – a designer. This means having a deep knowledge and understanding of user-centred design techniques and principles and being able to design products, be they websites, desktop applications, kiosks or mobile apps that achieve their goals and deliver the intended user experience. It also means having a bag of design tricks up the proverbial sleeve, such as personas, scenarios, storyboards, design sketching and rapid prototyping; and of course knowing when and where to use them.

Being a researcher

UX designers obviously need to be designers, but they shouldn’t just be designers. They should also be researchers. I don’t necessarily mean the sort of rigorous scientific research that is often undertaken by men in white coats, but design focused research, such as usability testing, ethnography, user interviews, card sorting and analytics. Good designs are founded on good research and feedback, and UX designers should be skilled in gathering this sort of information. Some organisations have traditionally split out UX design and research functions into different teams but I think that this rarely works because the two are so intrinsically connected. One goes hand in hand with the other and to be a really great designer you need to be able to get involved in the research for a design, from the very beginning to hopefully the end.

Being a techie

Whilst UX design is not primarily a technical discipline I do think that it requires a good understanding of how a design might be built and what some of the technical implications for a design are. After all, it’s no good creating a fantastic design if it can’t be built, or building it would take too long and cost too much in its current form. Equally when discussing a design with engineers and developers you need to know whether, “this can’t be done” really means that something can’t be done, or that it can be done, but in a slightly different way. It also pays to know a thing or two about Accessibility (sometimes called Universal design) as it can be difficult to make some designs accessible. Technical skills, such as HTML, CSS, Javascript and basic coding can also be useful when it comes to creating prototypes, especially as developers are not always on hand to help out.

Being a creative

UX design is an inherently visual discipline (in so much as people generally take in the largest proportion of their input visually when using a website, software package or other type of interactive system)  and as such the use of colour, layout, imagery, typography and aesthetics in general play an important role in most, if not all designs. I don’t think that UX designers necessarily need to be accomplished graphic designers, but they should at least be aware of graphic design principles such as the golden ratio, visual alignment and Gesalt theory and should be able to create designs that don’t look like a dog’s dinner. It’s also worth remembering that it can usually be easier to present and sell designs that are pleasing on the eye (even if they are in their most primitive form) to a sceptical client or customer.

Being a suit

UX design nearly always takes place within a business context, whether it’s designing a marketable product, carrying out some commissioned work or setting up a new website. I think that it’s therefore important that UX designers are comfortable in the business world and that they possess a good range of business skills. UX designers need to be adept at not only dealing with users, but also colleagues and clients and should be comfortable chairing meetings, running workshops, managing stakeholders and writing business cases etc… It’s also important to remember that behind every design there’s a set of business goals and objectives, such as selling more products, or converting more customers. UX designers need to be able to understand and interpret what the ultimate goal of a design is and be able to communicate this back to the bean counters in the business.

Being a team player

UX designers are rarely lonesome beasts and can generally be found working very closely with developers, engineers, clients, project managers, fellow designers and all manor of other people. I think that it’s therefore important that they have good team working sills and are comfortable collaborating, mentoring, critiquing, assisting and generally operating within a team environment.

The sort of T-shaped skill set that a good UX designer should possess

• A good UX designer’s T-shaped skill set (PDF, 36KB)

It’s more than just skills

What makes Lionel Messi the best footballer in the world at the moment? Sure he has incredible skills and unbelievable technique, but it’s also his desire, his unselfishness, his work rate and his creativity that makes him a truly great player. The same is true of really good UX designers. Good UX designers, don’t just have the right skills, they also have the sort of personal qualities and characteristics that are so important for the role. Along with possessing an appropriate T-shaped skill set I think that good UX designers should also be:

It's more than just skills and technique that makes Lionel Messi a truly great footballer

• Assertive – UX designers needs to be able to lead and direct a discussion and assert themselves when necessary.
• Co-operative – UX designers needs to be able to work very closely with their colleagues.
• Creative – UX designers should be able to create compelling and original designs.
• Diplomatic – UX designers needs to know when to compromise and how to play politics when required to do so.
• Enthusiastic – UX designers should be infecting team mates with their enthusiasm for UX design.
• Humble – UX designers should be able to accept that sometimes their design sucks.
• Intellectual – UX designers should be able to argue the case for their design, or indeed for taking a user-centred design approach in the first place.
• Observant – UX designers should be able to spot easily missed user insights and nuances.
• Open – UX designers needs to be open to ideas, suggestions and feedback; and be willing to share their expertise with others.
• Patient – UX designers need to be able to accept that good design and good user research often takes a little time and perseverance.
• Personable – UX designers doesn’t need to be everyone’s friend but should be able to easily get along with others.
• Persuasive – UX designers needs to be able to sell a design and bring the intended user experience to life.
• Pragmatic – UX designers should be able to design within constraints.
• Resilient – UX designers should be able to take a knock back.
• Tenacious – UX designers needs to be able to defend their corner when necessary.
• Thorough – UX designers needs to get the nitty gritty details right.

Being dedicated

It’s not just record breaking that requires dedication, being a good UX designer does as well. If there is one quality that I think is common across all good UX designers it’s dedication to the discipline and dedication to being a good UX designer. Dedication means continually seeking out interesting new design examples and ideas. Its means sharing your own expertise and know how with others. It means learning from other design disciplines, such as architecture, industrial design and software design. It means attending UX design talks, conferences and get togethers in order to learn from other UX designers. Above all it means continually building and refining the skills and characteristics that make a really good UX designer and putting these into practice as much as possible. It’s often said that it takes 10 thousand hours of practice to truly master a discipline (sometimes called the 10,000 hour rule). Whilst I don’t think that you need to put in this many hours before you can call yourself a good UX designer, there’s no denying that the more hours you put in, the better designer you will be.

Related books and articles

Some related articles:

• The Five Competencies of User Experience Design (UX Matters)
• Essential and Desirable Skills for a UX Designer (UX Matters)
• Assessing Your Team’s UX Skills (User Interface Engineering)
• Grow your UX skill set (Foolproof blog)
• So you wanna be a user experience designer (Whitney Hess)

Books are an excellent way to build your UX designer skill set. Here are a few that I’ve found really useful over the years.

• Universal Principles of Design by William Lidwell, Kritina Holden and Jill Butler
• Designing for the Digital Age: How to Create Human-Centered Products and Services by Kim Goodwin
• The Non-Designer’s Design Book by Robin Williams