Given at the Higher Ed Web Symposium at U Penn Wharton

1. DIY UX
Give Your Users
an Upgrade
(Without Calling In a Pro)
Whitney Hess
whitney@whitneyhess.com
@whitneyhess
http://whitneyhess.com

2. Hi, I’m Whitney Hess
User Experience Designer
Consultant
New Yorker
@whitneyhess

3. ﬔisIsIndexed.com

4. You
are a
user experience
designer

5. Shawn Liu & Danny Wen
Founders
Iridesco
New York, NY

6. http://getharvest.com

9. Design research
Web analytics
Usability testing
Experimentation
& iteration

10. Design
research
What do our users actually need?

11. Footer

12. Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

13. Kaizen means “continuous improvement” in Japanese

15. http://iridesco.wufoo.com/forms/harvest-survey/

16. “We don’t just want to
patch; we want to
address the core
problem.”
– Iridesco

17. “Customers love to tell
you their workflow.”
– Iridesco

18. Design Research
Make it easy for customers to
reach you
Log their requests & use them to
prioritize new features
Dig deeper to discover the
underlying problems
Keep in touch

19. For more on design research...
Observing the
User Experience
Mike Kuniavsky

20. Web
analytics
What are our users actually doing?

21. “We don’t believe in
data-driven design,
but data doesn’t lie .”
*
– Iridesco
* Sometimes it does

22. One month of visits
Mon Mon Mon Mon
Highest usage at
beginning of week
Dropoffs on weekends
Somewhat lower
usage mid-month

23. Crazyegg.com

24. Crazyegg.com

25. Google Website Optimizer
Same exact page with three
different Free Trial buttons
Found green and blue buttons
performed much better than
muted gray button
10% improvement in trial
acquisition over two buttons
(Learn More and Free Trial)

26. Matthew Marco
Visual Designer
House of Representatives
Washington, D.C.

27. Chief Administrative Officer ->
House Information Resources ->
CAO Advanced Business Solutions ->
Web Solutions Branch

28. House.gov

31. 97 most frequent queries on House.gov
and top 10 results of each

32. 97 most frequent queries on House.gov
and top 10 results of each

33. Queries are, in fact, case-sensitive.
“Nancy Pelosi” and “nancy pelosi” produce
different quantities of results
ﬔe Pell Grant Underfunding PDF by the
Oversight Committee appears in the top-ten
results of most state searches; more relevant
than any member-generated page in Colorado,
Missouri, North Carolina, and Texas
ﬔere is no apparent weight given to the title of a
document. Untitled documents are not subdued
in the results
http://www.matthewtmarco.com/studies/2007/pathetic-to-absurd-to-disheartening-in-97-queries/

34. Sunday, September 28, 2008
1347 bailout
419 bailout bill
282 bail out
208 bailout plan
184 financial services
132 Search Other Sites
130 Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008
103 bail out bill
95 financial bailout
80 Bailout
78 tarp
68 email
68 700 billion
66 rescue plan
66 rescue bill
66 old AND eye AND 6
64 financial
62 rescue
62 financial markets bill
58 contact

37. “Stats let me refute the
client’s notion of how
their constituents were
behaving.”
– Matthew Marco, House.gov

38. Web Analytics
Understand your traffic cycles
Use analytics tools to uncover
usage patterns
Test design variations
Explore your search logs to see
what people are looking for

39. For more on web analytics...
Web Analytics:
An Hour a Day
Avinash Kaushik

40. Usability
testing
How well does our stuff actually work?

41. NOT Shawn & wife

42. Usability Testing Light
Shows a build, a prototype, a comp, a
sketch, whatever
Doesn’t tell participant what she’s
supposed to be doing
Asks “What are your general feelings
about this?” and then lets participant talk

43. “‘It looks good’
is the worst feedback
we can get.”
– Iridesco

44. “You need to have
humility and listen.
Users aren’t always right,
but you need to
hear them.”
– Iridesco

45. Where to Find Participants
Friends and family
Folks in your office who don’t work on
the project: receptionist, HR, sales
Twitter followers
Starbucks
Craigslist

46. Tools to Capture Feedback

47. #1 Most Common Question:
What about testing
online?

48. Online Testing Tools

49. Online Testing Tools
Moderated
Self-Moderated
For A Long Time
Automated Live
Conceptual
Automated Static
http://remoteusability.com

50. Drawbacks of Online Tools
Don’t see the participants’
expressions and body language
Can’t ask probing, follow-up questions
A lot harder to internalize the findings
It’s cowardly – you need to feel the
embarrassment of a sucky design

51. Usability Testing
Test your designs early and oen
Informal tests are just as valuable
Use people in your environment who
aren’t involved in the project
Choose participants of different
backgrounds & capabilities
Do it yourself & acknowledge your
poor design choices

52. For more on usability testing...
Handbook of
Usability Testing
Jeffrey Rubin and
Dana Chisnell
http://www.slideshare.net/danachisnell/quick-cheap-insightful-
usability-testing-in-the-wild-presentation

53. For more on remote usability testing...
Remote
Research
Nate Bolt and
Tony Tulathimutte

54. Experimentation
& iteration
How are we always getting better?

55. Sketch
Photoshop
Test
Static HTML prototype
Test again
Working prototype
Test again
Tweak
Launch quietly
Get feedback
Tweak

56. Roz Duffy
Web Developer
Comcast Interactive Media
Philadelphia, PA

58. Refresh Philly - June 2009

63. “We aren’t always
working on the most
interesting stuff, but we
always want to work
smarter.”
– Roz Duffy, Comcast Interactive Media

64. An amazing thing
happened because of
this presentation

65. A relationship formed

66. An Experiment:
Engineering Lab Week

69. Experimentation & Iteration
Never stop improving your product
Make your working environment
a creative one
Encourage everyone on the team
to solve problems together
Soak up inspiration from
everywhere

70. For more on experimentation and iteration...
Sketching User
Experiences
Bill Buxton

71. Putting it all together
In a university setting

72. Sorin Stefan
Front-end engineer
McGill University
Montreal, Canada

73. @syktek

74. “I don’t care how it’s
going to look. I need the
information to guide me
on how it’s going to
work.”
– Sorin Stefan, McGill University

75. Who is your
target audience?

76. Who is visiting
your site?

78. What are the goals
for the redesign?

79. What isn’t working
on the site today?

81. “Staff oen puts up with
poor usability
because they feel it’s
part of their job
to learn it.”
– Sorin Stefan, McGill University

82. What does our target
user really need?

84. Persona = “group of people
visiting your website with
things in common”
Scenario = “what people are
trying to do on the website”

86. New
Old

87. Process Education
Creating a Culture of UX

88. Karen Berntsen
Information Architect
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

92. http://www.cmu.edu/cms/

95. “Using the CMS,
and our services,
is completely voluntary.
ﬔat is the key to our
success.”
– Karen Berntsen, Carnegie Mellon University

96. ﬔe Process
Initial Consult
Content Outline
Site Requested
Site Created
Site Reviewed
Site Launched

97. Initial consult – 30 min meeting
to determine if they’re eligible
(95% of them are)
Must have:
Project Sponsor (FT faculty/staff)
and
Project Lead (day-to-day)

98. Computer Store Content Outline:
Hardware
Soware
Freshman

99. “I can suggest that they
don’t shoot themselves in
the foot, but by all means
if they want to, I let them.
ﬔat psychology works.”
– Karen Berntsen, Carnegie Mellon University

104. Design research
Web analytics
Usability testing
Experimentation
& iteration

105. IMPORTANT STUFF
Always be listening
Ask questions to get to underlying problems
Use data and anecdotes to inform the design
Test your designs and have the humility to
admit you’re wrong
Complete the feedback loop
Never stop trying to make things better

106. Make your users happy
and they will thank you

108. ﬔank you!
Whitney Hess
whitney@whitneyhess.com
@whitneyhess
http://whitneyhess.com
Special thanks to:
Danny Wen, Shawn Liu, Matthew Marco, Roz Duffy,
Sorin Stefan and Karen Berntsen