6 Steps for Measuring Success on UX Projects | UX Refresh – By MARK DISCIULLO The tepid economy is putting pressure on everyone from executives to User Experience (UX) teams to show direct, measurable results. So, I’m often surprised to hear of the many projects that include a UX component to them, yet there isn’t any true, quantifiable success criteria defined for UX. Even more rare, are efforts to baseline the current design experience of an interface or product prior to a relaunch so any newly “defined” success criteria has some context. This is critical information to know so you can quantify whether or not your new designs have truly made improvements compared to past designs. Anything that is done as an organization should have justification – otherwise, why do it? UX is still being treated as though it’s a very subjective topic to measure. “This is not acceptable. Without credible UX success measurements, we all risk not being able to quantify our success. Why are we not measuring our UX efforts? So how do we do this? Start measuring now!
Gephi, an open source graph visualization and manipulation software The product design sprint: setting the stage At the Google Ventures Design Studio, we have a five-day process for taking a product or feature from design through prototyping and testing. We call it a product design sprint. This is the second in a series of seven posts on running your own design sprint. Now that you know what design sprints are good for, you’ll need a few important ingredients to make yours successful. Pick a big fight The first thing you need is an important design problem, and if you work at a startup, chances are good you probably have one lying around the office. As long as it’s an important problem, it’s perfect for a design sprint. Get the right people The ideal sprint team is between four and eight people, but you can get by with more or fewer than that. Designer – If your startup doesn’t have a designer yet, try to bring in a ringer.CEO – At a small startup, the CEO is the key decision-maker and needs to participate in order to get an actionable solution out of the sprint. It’s also great to include:
The Mathematics of Gamification Jan 03rd At Foursquare, we maintain a database of 60 million venues. And like the world it represents, our database is ever-changing, with users from all over the world submitting updates on everything from the hours of a restaurant to the address of a new barbershop. To maintain the accuracy of our venue database, these changes are voted upon by our loyal Superusers (SUs) who vigilantly maintain a watchful eye over our data for their city or neighborhood. Like many existing crowd-sourced datasets (Quora, Stack Overflow, Amazon Reviews), we assign users points or votes based on their tenure, reputation, and the actions they take. Superusers like points and gamification. At Foursquare, we have a simple, first-principles based method of resolving proposed venue attribute updates. The Math Let’s make this more concrete with some math. Continuing, assume that after user 1 casts their vote, user 2 votes H_2 with an independent probability p_2 of being correct (i.e. agreeing with H_0).
» Customer Development Interviews How-to: What You Should Be Learning I wrote earlier about finding people for your customer development interviews. Once you’ve found people for your interviews, you’re probably thinking, “Great, I can ask them if they’d use my product!” Wrong. OK, you’re thinking, “then what should I ask them?” A better way to think about it is, what should I be learning from this interview? It’s really important to understand the philosophy behind the customer development interview, particularly because it runs so counter to entrepreneurial instincts. Why? So, what should I be learning from the customer development interview? How is your customer currently dealing with this task/problem? The important thing about these questions is that they set up an environment where the customer is the “expert”. These questions are applicable for both consumer and enterprise products. Can you give me an example? These questions make a lot more sense when applied to a concrete example, so I’ll make one up: an online grocery shopping application. And finally…
arbor.js #23 – How to run a design critique Unlike a brainstorming meeting, where the goal is to come up with new ideas, a critique meeting is focused on evaluating a set of existing ideas, and possibly identify future directions or changes. Instead of hoping informal discussions will resolve hard issues, its worth setting up a specific critique to drive a design forward. Goals of a design critique A design critique involves a small group of 3-7 to discuss a set of sketches or prototypes. You could focus purely on branding elements, ease of use concepts, or even engineering feasibility, it’s up to whoever leads. The important thing is someone does lead the discussion, define what questions should be discussed and facilitate the conversation. If there are 3 or 4 specific questions you want answered, define them. If you are early in a project, critiques should emphasize the higher level user, customer and business goals, and minimize the focus on specific engineering constraints or aesthetic choices. Secondary goals often include:
Testing Content Nobody needs to convince you that it’s important to test your website’s design and interaction with the people who will use it, right? But if that’s all you do, you’re missing out on feedback about the most important part of your site: the content. Issue № 320 Whether the purpose of your site is to convince people to do something, to buy something, or simply to inform, testing only whether they can find information or complete transactions is a missed opportunity: Is the content appropriate for the audience? A tale of two audiences#section1 Consider a health information site with two sets of fact sheets: A simplified version for the lay audience and a technical version for physicians. You’re doing it wrong#section2 Have you ever asked a user the following questions about your content? How did you like that information? It’s tempting to ask these questions, but they won’t help you assess whether your content is appropriate for your audience. The reading process#section3 Estimate it#section4
Replacing The User Story With The Job Story — Jobs To Be Done I’ve written about the problem with user stories before. At the time, I found it better to just have the team talk over proposed changes to the product. This worked great when the team had gelled and the product is very mature; however, now I’m working with a new team and building a product from scratch. In this case, because our canvas is blank, we are having trouble getting on the same page when it comes to customer motivations, events and expectations. But today, things have turned around. I’ve come across a great way to use the jobs to be done philosophy to help define features.I call them Job Stories. Where It Comes From The idea comes from the really smart guys at intercom. We frame every design problem in a Job, focusing on the triggering event or situation, the motivation and goal, and the intended outcome: When _____ , I want to _____ , so I can _____ . For example: When an important new customer signs up, I want to be notified, so I can start a conversation with them.