usability ed

Micro content - it's the little things that matter

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 27 Apr 2013 08:53:00 +0000

Well crafted web pages or great features in an app will be undermined if the micro content associated with it isn't right. The little snippets of teaser text, form labels and help text give users confidence and encourage deeper engagement.

I think micro content is one of the weakest points of our website. Why? Because it's difficult. Clear, concise communication is difficult. Reduce this to a small number of characters (like 140 for Twitter) and the job gets harder.

Getting it right takes time and attention. Draft, test or monitor, compare, refine...

But the rewards make the effort worthwhile. Website visitors navigation improved, increases in calls to action undertaken, reduced support calls and queries...

Some great examples of when a little microcopy has had a big impact on the effectiveness of an interface: Writing microcopy - article on bokardo.com

Tips on writing interface microcopy - going beyond help text: Micro Copy: Content Strategy and Writing the User Interface - article on Contini.com by Amy Thibodeau

Going a little broader, Georgie Cohen again talks about interfaces but also talks about the importance of microcontent in social media and 404 error pages amongst others, including some good examples: It’s the Little Things: Why Microcopy Matters - article by Georgy Cohen for meetcontent.com

Related post: Of course Jakob Nielsen has been saying this for years. In this post I highlight a couple of his articles that talk about the impact of microcontent on headings, links and search engine results pages: Search, and the importance of good summaries (November 2009)

Top tasks vary by medium - McGovern

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:27:00 +0000

Gerry McGovern presents an overview of his research for Cisco highlighting that your target audience is likely to have a different set of top tasks depending on how they engage with you.

He observes that Cisco's audiences have a different (but related) set of priorities when engaging via social media to when they visit the Cisco website.

Not surprising really, but evidence that we need to think harder about our use of social media. We need a genuine rationale for Facebook or Tweeting or whatever rather than just regurgitating what we're publishing on the website. Understanding what our audiences actually want from any one of these social media channels means we can target our messages and deliver something that is genuinely useful to them.

Understanding social top tasks - aticle by Gerry McGovern

Mobile in Higher Ed survey results 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 09:13:00 +0000

We all know use of mobile touchscreen devices is on the rise, but little is written specifically about the university sector. Karine Joly has repeated her annual survey of US Higher Ed web managers to provide a summary of analytics data and colleges' approach to accommodating these visitors.

Her article reports on the main trends, comparing to 2012 but to access the 12 page PDF report download she asks that you share the page via your preferred social network. Fair enough I think...

The State of the Mobile & Responsive Web in Higher Ed Survey - summary and report download by Karine Joly for collegewebeditor.com

Collaborative user research recording

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sun, 14 Apr 2013 08:44:00 +0000

If you've ever done user testing, you'll know that one of the most onerous aspects is reporting on findings. And then getting stakeholders to read them. This collaborative recording approach - including a spreadsheet template - could well be worth a try.

Tom Sharon writes in Smashing Magazine, explaining how he's used a spreadsheet template accessed by all observers simultaneously to minimise the recording and reporting overhead. His template covers all the main things required, with the article providing ideas for how it might be customised for specific projects or requirements.

This lean approach to user testing is one I can see myself using in upcoming agile development projects where user insight is going to be needed quickly and regularly.

A Collaborative Lean UX Research Tool - article and spreadsheet by Tomer Sharon for Smashing Magazine

Confab Content Strategy Conference write up

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Tue, 02 Apr 2013 22:59:00 +0000

Gutted that I couldn't go to the London content strategy conference, Confab 2013 as it has a number of sessions with authors, thinkers and speakers I admire. Thankfully, Martin Belam has written blog posts to summarise each session.

With people like Karen McGrane, Erin Kissane and Kristina Halvorson speaking it's an event I really would have liked to have been to.

Martin's done a great job, covering the key points of each session and infusing his own opinions along the way. Well written, and nicely bundled into a single download should you want it that way.

Martin Belam's Confab 2013 conference blog posts

I'm keeping an eye out for slide decks and further write ups which I'll add as and when I find interesting stuff.

Confab 2013 London organisers' blog

One more write up. Colin Meney blogs on Content Strategy Scotland and has included links to related videos, podcasts, slides etc on each of the presenters he saw.

Colin Meney's Confab 2013 write up

The cost of adding

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Mon, 01 Apr 2013 18:11:00 +0000

Gerry McGovern writes about the hidden costs of adding content and features. It's easier and in our nature to look to add rather than remove, but we rarely think about the implications.

As he writes primarily about content, Gerry draws parallels with a similar article by Dharmesh Shah of Hubspot who warns against the urge to add more and more features to an application.

This is something we feel keenly with software such as content management systems where the extra features desired by the few bring complexity to the many, and increase support and maintenance overheads.

Anyone can add. It takes a professional to take away - article by Gerry McGovern

STOP! Before You Add That Feature, Do You Know The Real Cost? - article by Dharmesh Shah for Hubspot

Some UX myths debunked

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sun, 31 Mar 2013 21:59:00 +0000

Frank Guo explains why 3 commonly held 'rules' of usable websites aren't true for uxmatters.com

It's a well written and argued piece, although I must confess I'd like to have seen some references to research to back up what, for me, makes a lot of sense.

The only slight alarm bell on reading was his reference to website visitors being willing to use the browser's in-page search function (typically [CTRL+F]) on long pages which I haven't seen that much of first hand.

Frank's advice on 3 myths:

There’s No Need to Worry About Long Pages
There’s No Need to Worry About the Number of Clicks
High Information Density Is Not Always Bad

What he shows through a range of examples is, as ever, it depends...

Demystifying UX Design: Common False Beliefs and Their Remedies - article by Frank Guo for uxmatters.com

Calls to action tips

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 30 Mar 2013 22:22:00 +0000

What's a call to action? It's the reason a web page exists. The thing you want your reader to do next. This presentation provides 20 do's and don'ts, covering a range of graphical and editorial considerations.

You might not be looking to get your reader to 'buy now' but you should be wanting them to do something, even if it's just read another page.

While the range of tips here is wide, there's still plenty to be of interest to a content editor without access to design.

20 do's and don'ts for clickable calls to action - Hubspot presentation on Slideshare

UX Apprentice - a beginner's tutorial

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:38:00 +0000

A nice resource from the Basamiq people that takes you through the fundamentals of user experience design quickly and simply.

They take us through the key concepts and techniques, with great examples (all using Balsamiq of course!) and links to excellent articles and books.

The related reading alone made this one for me to bookmark and return to. Recommended.

UX Apprentice - a great way to learn the basics

Search enhancement - invest in people

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 22:06:00 +0000

Gerry McGovern writes about search, inspired by a New York Times article. The point? No matter how smart technology gets, the best search experience needs human involvement.

Site search is so often the poor relation. And ironically it's probably the one area of the website that delivers most UX bang for your website investment buck.

Inspired by Lou Rosenfeld's book 'Site Search Analytics' it's something that I've pushed on in recent years, with my nagging and prodding and proposing starting to pay off now as we have a new site search tool and active results management strategy in place at Edinburgh.

(Related posts: Search analytics book - free chapter (June 2011) and Analytics, site search & understanding user behaviour (September 2010))

So Gerry makes a very similar point - site search is so often the poor relation in website management and so many companies do a bad job of it. We put services like Google on a pedestal and think they're doing something so clever we can never get close. Well, true, they are doing some very clever things but one of those clever things is using real people and actively monitoring search behaviour and priority content.

From the New York Times article Gerry references and links to:

“Twitter uses a far-flung army of contract workers, whom it calls judges, to interpret the meaning and context of search terms that suddenly spike in frequency on the service.” In the presidential debates when Mitt Romney mentioned “Big Bird” in the context of cutting funding for public broadcasting, the term “Big Bird” spiked in search behavior. The human experts helped immediately steer these searches away from Sesame Street and towards political topics.

Quality search requires quality people - article by Gerry McGovern

UX presentation for CIM

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 23 Mar 2013 21:32:00 +0000

This week I had the pleasure of presenting at a Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) conference in Edinburgh. My presentation? "Marketing is dead, long live user experience!" (I didn't get lynched).

While I was being at least a little tongue in cheek, I really do think that user experience management is the future. The role of traditional marketing is on the wane. The billboard, the slick ad, the glossy brochure will always have a place in higher education but the odds of them influencing a prospective student are reducing year on year.

Why listen to what the organisation is saying when you can listen to what customers are saying?

Here are the slides I presented with my boss...

Marketing is dead, long live user experience from Neil Allison

Considering the message and the audience, the session went very well :)

Lots of people came along to hear what we had to say, with lots of follow up questions and comments in person and on Twitter.

Twitter conversation during and after the presentation

Today's top web design & UX mistakes

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Fri, 15 Mar 2013 23:05:00 +0000

A couple of articles with one thing in common - mistakes being made today on websites again and again. One focusing on user experience and one on web design boo-boos.

Susan Weinschenk applies her psychologist's eye to pick out her 5 top user experience mistakes being made today. The only one that was a slight surprise to me was "Mistake #3: Relying too much on Text", but I suppose it depends on the business you're in and what you're looking to achieve with your website.

In the higher education sector, with complex information to consume and process I can't see (right now, at least) how video or audio can trump text. Video and audio are so passive - only with text can we decide how much content to consume, and the pace at which we do it.

The Five Worst UX Mistakes Websites Make - article by Susan Weinschenk for uxmag.com

Chris Lake identifies 14 lousy trends making a comeback, thanks mainly to the opportunities presented to developers by HTML5, CSS3 and Javascript.

It's like Flash never happened. What were these people doing 10 years ago?

14 lousy web design trends that are making a comeback - article by Chris Lake for eConsultancy.com

How organisations stifle good design

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:40:00 +0000

An excellent opinion piece by Leisa Reichelt on the challenges faced by designers. Not tricky design problems though. Organisations, politics, ego and immovable complex processes. Sound familiar?

The thing that struck me was that this isn't just a problem for designers and consultants. It's faced by every content editor and website manager trying to become more user focused, or just make their website do the job they need it to do.

A colleague used a great line this week when working with a customer on a new website and trying to convince them to let us cut back the content: "If the content isn't working for you, it's working against you."

Leisa's article is reassuring in the sense that the challenges we face seem to be the same the world over. (I sort of get the same reassurance from Dilbert). I also liked Leisa's approaches to overcoming the challenges, and the subsequent reader discussion.

Design is the easy part - Leisa Reichelt for disambiguity.com

Customer journey mapping resources for better UX

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sat, 09 Mar 2013 20:16:00 +0000

Leisa Reichelt, a user experience consultant, sells her services and at the same time does a great job of succinctly explaining what a customer journey map is and why it should be important to you.

She also provides links to further reading, only some of which I've read and blogged previously. The new ones are worth a read and I'm unashamedly referencing them here :)

Customer journey mapping explained - Leisa Reichelt on disambiguity.com

Bruce Temkin's paper on mapping the customer journey leads us through a 5 stage process to generating a map, provides some examples illustrating the variety of approaches used and then provides some advice on making the most of the map once it's created.

Mapping the customer journey (PDF) - Bruce Temkin

Service design tools have pulled together resources and activities to help facilitate a group of stakeholders working together to generate a customer journey map. Some of these look excellent - I'm definitely going to be trying out the game at the soonest opportunity.

Customer journey map resources - Servicedesigntools.com

And a couple of articles explaining what it's all about and why those of us involved in service design and delivery should be embracing the technique:

Using Customer Journey Maps to Improve Customer Experience – Harvard Business Review

The Value of Customer Journey Maps – UX Matters

Mapping customer journeys (November 2011)

Experience map examples from Adaptive Path (December 2011)

University applicant experience enhancement (October 2012)

Boag on social media

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:46:00 +0000

An excellent article on how we're not making the most of social media and not providing the experience between networks and our websites that our users want. And this ultimately is to the detriment of our business.

Paul has followed up the article with a 40 minute presentation in which he elaborates further. Well worth a watch if you have time.

To summarise what Paul's getting at:

Social networks do not exist solely as a way to drive traffic to your website. They have value in their own right and do somethings better than traditional websites. As a result our sites need to support them and play its role in the ecosystem, rather than behave like spoilt only child.

It's time for your site to play nicely with social media - article by Paul Boag

Social Media is a user experience issue - presentation video by Paul Boag

Intro to finding your website's tone & voice

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:32:00 +0000

An excellent article explaining the difference between tone and voice, explaining why it's important to your website and helping you get started.

The author worked on Mailchimp - probably the most striking and successful example of getting a brand's tone and voice right - and there's a link to Mailchimp's interactive guide which is well worth a look.

The examples in the article illustrate how the right voice can make even difficult situations easier to work through with your users.

Tone and Voice: Showing Your Users That You Care - article by Kate Kiefer Lee for uie.com

Omni channel experience management

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 21:08:00 +0000

UX consultants Webcredible released a report last year analysing the performance of ten UK high street retailers against what it calls 'omni channel' experience criteria. Many companies have strategies for particular communications and commerce channels - online, mobile, in-store etc. Webcredible class omni-channel as the customer experience across channels.

We already know that customers expect a joined up experience across channels and that users switch between devices in the process of completing a task (I wrote about Google's cross channel research last year - see below). This expectation is only going to grow over time and Webcredible's analysis is really interesting - highlighting the flaws that currently exist.

What can higher ed web managers and customer service professionals learn from this? We're a long way behind the experience that retailers seek to provide to their customers, but we need to be learning from reports such as this.

Some of the customers of these high street chains are also in our target audiences. Expectations are being set and in time we'll be judged against these standards.

Technology is part of the solution, but ultimately organisational structure and culture, internal processes and business focus are what determines success or failure. As section 3 of the report (covering barriers to implementing an omni-channel strategy) outlines breaking out of the silo mentality and giving attention to managing the user experience across the piece are what is ultimately needed.

New industry report: omni-channel on the UK highstreet - Webcredible.com

Related post: Google cross-platform research findings (September 2012)

The hidden costs in devolved content management

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 28 Feb 2013 20:48:00 +0000

An interesting article reporting on the annual Society of IT Management (SocITM) review of local government websites and calling into question the cost-effectiveness of devolved web publishing. Something that Gerry McGovern has been saying for a long time and a point equally valid in the higher education sector.

The annual SocITM report summary is always insightful - Higher Ed and local government share many of the same challenges - and worth tracking back through previous years if you've not come across it before.

A couple of quotes from the article:

"Apart from the inconvenience, failed web enquiries also cause councils unnecessary cost. The reason for this is that frustrated web users will turn to the council's phone or face-to-face facilities to answer their enquiries, and these cost the council significantly more to support than their website..."

And:

"People out in service departments are writing this content, but to write things simply on the web is not the easiest thing to do. There are always examples of people who have got it right, but they are very much in isolation. It is a major issue, and calls into question the devolved content model."

Jargon still a plague on devolved council websites - news article on ukauthority.com
Of course this isn't a new idea and one that Gerry McGovern has been highlighting for a long time. In a recent post, Gerry says:

"Decentralized web teams rarely reflect a professional approach to web management. They tend to be a cost reduction tactic."

And he's absolutely right.

Decentralized publishing equals amateur web management - article by Gerry McGovern
I work with an enormous devolved web publishing community. Loads of great people who really know their stuff, and are keen to deliver good website content and learn more about improving their visitors' experience.

But they have little or no time and are not specialists. We've raised the bar considerably in terms of website experience and content quality in recent years with significant attention given to CMS user training and support but there's only so far you can go.

And as these two articles highlight, ultimately the cost-saving exercise of devolving website management responsibility ultimately is a costly experience. It's just the cost of poor user experience is spread further round the organisation.

EuroIA conference comes to Edinburgh

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Wed, 27 Feb 2013 20:14:00 +0000

The Information Architecture conference EuroIA comes to Edinburgh this year.

This will be the eighth such conference and takes place 26-28 September 2013.

EuroIA Conference website on Lanyrd.com

Previouis EuroIA conferences

Related post: UX Conference Edinburgh June 2013

Responsive design strategy

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Sun, 24 Feb 2013 09:29:00 +0000

Jared Spool has written a really nice article pulling together the key considerations when devising a strategy to achieve a responsive design - a site layout and content structure approach that adapts according to the device your website visitor is using.

I previously wrote about content strategy considerations for CMS design, which included a primer on responsive design which while good, was basically an overview of what it actually is.

See my previous post: CMS design needs content strategy (October 2012)

In this article Jared pulls in elements of other experts' work, reflecting on what they've said and suggesting tactics towards a responsive design strategy that avoids common content, usability and performance issues.

While his tactics are not revelations (establish the breakpoints at which the layout changes, optimise page load speed and image size) it's what he says about content and page elements that I found most useful.

Again, probably most of this has been said before, but Jared has pulled it together, and draws on the expertise of Luke Wroblewski (Mobile First author) and KarenMcGrane (Content Strategy for Mobile author) along the way.

As ever, research is crucial. Jared says:

...understand which functions are important and which are nice-to-have. Using a well-understood set of scenarios can grease the skids for the discussions about what to cut and what to keep in. Without that research and those scenarios, teams likely find themselves arguing with opinions and struggling with every design decision. Shortcutting user research is a near-term cost-cutting strategy that will cost the design team in the long run, once the opinion wars start...

Devising a Strategy for Responsive Design - article by Jared Spool for uie.com

UX conference Edinburgh June 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 31 Jan 2013 18:39:00 +0000

Looks like there is going to be a user experience (UX) conference held in Edinburgh this summer

There aren't a lot of details right now, but you can keep up to date with developments via the Lanyrd social event that's been set up. The team behind the event ran a similar thing in Cambridge last year.

UX Scotland 2013 - Lanyrd event site

CIM HE conference Edinburgh March 2013

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 23:08:00 +0000

The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) Higher Education Interest Group annual conference is being held in Edinburgh this March. I'm presenting on the totally uncontroversial topic: "Marketing is dead, long live user experience" (UX).

I'm really looking forward to engaging with marketing professionals across the sector and having the opportunity to reflect on the relationship between marketing, advertising and user experience.

As well as banging the UX drum as I've done at the University of Edinburgh since arriving, I'll also be illustrating my ideas with a couple of projects I've been running over the past few years - introducing user centred design techniques to postgraduate recruitment processes and to our content management system development.

While the latter may not seem so relevant to a room of marketing professionals I hope to show that the user experience of staff involved in online engagement is just as important. If they have a tool that doesn't cater to their needs, they're unlikely to do an excellent job - especially important when we rely on so many time-poor non-specialists to plug the gaps in web marketing resources.

The conference is being held in central Edinburgh on Thursday 21 March. Early bird registration until the end of January.

CIM Higher Education annual conference details and booking

UX & senior management awareness

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 22:54:00 +0000

It seems that (at last) user experience (UX) is beginning to appear on the agenda and in the vocabulary of senior managers. A couple of articles I read recently illustrate the gulf between the corporate and public sectors.

We're not quite at the UX awareness point in Higher Education yet I think (at least from what I've seen and heard from colleagues across the sector) but at least the term 'student experience' is beginning to creep in. That's a start.

I found these articles heartening for the future of UX in big organisations but the difference between public and private is stark. I look forward to public sector and particularly Higher Ed UX professionals breaking through at a sufficiently senior level to be able to write influential and thought-provoking pieces.

Mike Bracken, Executive Director of the UK Government Digital Service recently wrote a blog post warning that

"when it comes to digital, the voices of security and the voices of procurement dominate policy recommendations. The voice of the user barely gets a look-in... How the needs of a department or an agency can so often trump the needs of the users of public services is beyond me."

Bracken insists government should focus on 'real user needs' - article by Charlotte Jee for governmentcomputing.com

Meanwhile in the US, Robert Fabricant writes for the Harvard Business Review about how UX is to this decade's corporate leaders what brand management was ten or so years ago.

He highlights that there just isn't enough expertise to go round, and suggests ways in which organisations can make the expertise they have go further and embed practices in wider teams. This really resonated with me; I've always railed against the idea of there being usability experts and worked to engage and empower as many colleagues as possible. It's just something we should all do.

"It is easy to see that there are a few common ingredients across these different strategies, such as executive commitment, access to customers, new technical prototyping skills, and small, interdisciplinary teams. All of these ingredients are critical not only to UX, but also to developing the sort of bottom-up, risk-taking culture that is central to succeeding in the 21st century market."

Scaling Your UX Strategy - article by Robert Fabricant for Hardvard Business Review blog

UX-usability event Edinburgh 29 January

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:23:00 +0000

This month's UXPA Scotland session on 29 January sounds interesting - a case study in healthcare technology highlighting the difference between usability and user experience.

Gordon Baxter from the University of St Andrews will talk about his research around the use and usability of blood pressure monitors commonly sold in chemists.

The session is being held at 6.30 on Tuesday 29 January in central Edinburgh. £10 entry fee for non-members (£5 students).

When usability and UX collide - UXPA Scotland session January 2013

Web writing quick tips videos

noreply@blogger.com (Neil Allison) — Thu, 10 Jan 2013 22:08:00 +0000

Five short videos on improving your web writing, with a focus on higher education.

These videos are short tasters promoting an online course. At 2-3 minutes per video, with some sound advice included, there's no reason not to take a quick look.

Topics covered:

Readibility levels
Keywords
Editorial calendars
The art of storytelling
Creating content for sharing

Improving your web writing for 2013 - 5 resolutions videos by Mike Powers collegewebeditor.com