Userfocus Usability Newsletter

What makes a great UX practitioner? Hint: It's not what you think

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — >Mon, 6 Feb 2012 08:01:42 GMT

Most of the work on user experience (UX) competency focuses on an individual's ability to show evidence of technical skills. But technical skill is just one sphere of expertise required by UX practitioners. A fully-rounded UX practitioner also needs competence in two additional spheres of practice: process and marketing.

20 things you can do this year to improve your user’s experience

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Wed, 4 Jan 2012 08:18:42 GMT

The new year is as good a time as any to review and improve the way you work. With a good user experience now widely seen as the key attribute of many high-tech products, it makes sense to review your own products to see how you can give them that user experience edge. Here are 20 quick, simple and virtually free ideas you can apply in 2012.

4 ways to prototype faster

ritch.macefield@userfocus.co.uk (Ritch Macefield) — Mon, 5 Dec 2011 09:08:12 GMT

Lean UX is the new black. We can summarise the philosophy behind it by saying: If a picture is worth a 1000 words, then a prototype is worth a 1000 pictures (with apologies to Ben Shneiderman). But given that we are increasingly working in environments where we need to deliver more with less, how can we speed up the process of prototyping?

How to manage design projects with user experience metrics

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 7 Nov 2011 08:14:12 GMT

User experience metrics are measures that help you assess how your design stacks up against the needs of your customers and the needs of your business. Lab-based methods of collecting UX metrics are too slow and expensive to be part of most design projects, especially those using agile methodologies. But with online usability testing tools, regular user experience benchmarking is now cheap and quick to carry out.

What user researchers can learn from Sherlock Holmes

philip.hodgson@userfocus.co.uk (Philip Hodgson) — Tues, 4 Oct 2011 08:24:12 GMT

The parallels between good research and good detective work are striking. In this article I take a close look at what user experience researchers can learn from the investigative methods used by detectives. And, in the spirit of all the best detective stories, we draw an important conclusion: if you want to become a better researcher you should learn to think like a detective.

Do you make these 4 mistakes when carrying out a usability review?

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Thu, 1 Sep 2011 7:07:12 GMT

When properly carried out, usability reviews are a very efficient way of finding the usability bloopers in an interface. But there are four common mistakes made by novice reviewers: failing to take the user’s perspective; using only a single reviewer, rather than collating the results from a team; using a generic set of usability principles rather than technology-specific guidelines; and lacking the experience to judge which problems are important.

A CRAP way to improve usability

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 1 Aug 2011 8:02:12 GMT

Visual design is often dismissed as eye candy. In fact, we can use four key principles of visual design to create more usable interfaces. These principles are Contrast, Repetition, Alignment and Proximity.

Games Usability Trainers Play

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 4 Jul 2011 8:09:22 GMT

Lecturing to people is a poor way to help them learn new facts. People learn better when they are actively engaged in their learning. Here's a training game that we use on one of our training courses to help people learn about usability heuristics. Why not play this game with your user experience team during your next team meeting?

ISO 13407 is dead. Long live ISO 9241-210!

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 6 Jun 2011 09:15:22 GMT

An important usability standard has been updated for the user experience era. The standard describes 6 key principles of human centred design and serves as a manifesto for the field of user experience.

How to design like Leonardo da Vinci

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 2 May 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Trying to recruit a single individual with all of the skills needed to create great user experiences is like trying to hire a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci. A better strategy is to build a multidisciplinary team with people specialised in the following areas: Management, Research, Information Architecture, Information Design, Visual Design, Technical Writing and Prototyping.

Making usability metrics count

philip.hodgson@userfocus.co.uk (Philip Hodgson) — Mon, 4 Apr 2011 09:15:22 GMT

In spite of a proliferation of books, articles and blogs explaining how to measure usability, few companies seem to put their usability metrics to good use. In this article we show how you can link the numbers from usability tests to the numbers that steer business decisions -- and in the process, influence your company's business.

4 forgotten principles of usability testing

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 7 Mar 2011 09:15:22 GMT

Many usability tests are worthless. Researchers recruit the wrong kind of participants, test the wrong kind of tasks, put too much weight on people's opinions, and expect participants to generate design solutions.

5 kinds of 'alt' text

david.travis@userfocus.co.uk (David Travis) — Mon, 7 Feb 2011 14:23:00 GMT

There are five different classes of image used on web pages and each class of image requires a different approach to writing the 'alt' attribute.