This is a talk I gave to students of the Manukau Institute of Technology, focusing on key usability heuristics, and giving them tips on how to run their own user research or usability testing.

1. Usability in Practice
Usability in Practice – Tips from the
Field
Justine Sanderson | 2 May 2007
© 2007 Justine Sanderson

2. Today
1. User Centred Design
2. You are not the user
3. Interviewing people
4. Creating personas
5. Running heuristic evaluations
6. Doing a Navigation Stress Test
7. Making sense of the data
8. Book recommendations

3. User Centred Design

4. User Centred Design

5. User Research: Contextual Enquiry

6. Iterative Design: Prototyping

7. Development: Usability Evaluations

8. You are not the user

9. hang out with
Hang out withwho don’t
people people
use a computer 8
hours a day

10. Typical occupations
architect cleaner
waitress policeman
teacher gardener farmer
midwife receptionist musician
builder marine biologist
nurse florist photographer
sales assistant nanny
plumber sharetrader banana
ripener accountant journalist
coach politician student machine
operator

11. People do strange things on their
computers

12. You do not have their undivided
attention

13. Interviewing People

14. Active Listening
• Asking open-ended, clarifying questions to gain further
information and insight.
• Paraphrasing, or repeating back in our own words what the
speaker has said, in order to clarify or confirm understanding.
• Probing - questioning in a supportive way that requests more
information or that attempts to clear up confusions
• Providing nonverbal communication, like body language and
facial expressions, to show we are paying attention.
• Learning when to be quiet. Giving the other to time to think
as well as to talk.

15. Open-Ended vs. Closed Questions
Open Questions
• Begin with how, what, or why
• Are used to clarify information and keep the conversation
open by encouraging a person to share as much as they wish
Closed Questions
• Result in a simple “yes” or “no” or in short, factual answers
• Tend to bring the conversation to a stop, requiring more
questions to get the full story

16. Lead-Ins for Paraphrasing
• Did I hear you say…
• So what you’re saying is…
• You’re telling me that…
• Am I hearing you correctly that…
• Am I hearing you clearly that…
• So what I hear you saying is…
• I believe that you are saying…
• Okay, let me see if I got what you said…
• So let me summarize what you just said…
• I want to be on the same page as you, so let me go over what
you just said…

17. Creating Personas
• Archetypal representation
of your target audience
• Based on user research
(ideally)
• Aggregation of your users’
goals, attitudes, and
behaviours
• Presented as a vivid,
narrative description
of a single “person” who
represents a user segment

18. Personas

19. Sample Persona
• Jordan is a 22 year old college senior
majoring in graphic design. He is pretty laid
back and fairly social. He frequently goes
clubbing with friends. Jordan also does some
of his own DJing for parties. He enjoys music
and the ability it has to entertain and to
make other people happy.
• Jordan takes some pride in his extensive
digital music collection. He gets music from
his own CDs and from sharing with his
friends. He is constantly looking for new
music, often by browsing through Newbury
Comics and other record stores that carry
unusual things.
http://hfid.olin.edu/sa2005/engr3220-gouda/phase1_persona_jordan.htm

20. Goals
• Listen to a wide variety of music.
• Find out about new or unusual music.
• Entertain and/or help his friends.
• Easily identify and play music to suit his
activities.
• Remain aware of all of his music.

21. Task: Share music with friends
• Determine what specific songs, artists,
albums, etc. that he likes or has liked
• Make this information available to his friends
• Find out what particular music his friends
like
• Determine what of this he likes

22. Task Analysis

23. Task Analysis

24. Task Analysis

25. Doing Heuristics Evaluations

26. Jacob Nielsen’s Heuristics
1. Visibility of system status
2. Match between system and the real world
3. User control and freedom
4. Consistency and standards
5. Error prevention
6. Recognition rather than recall
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use
8. Aesthetic and minimalist design
9. Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from
errors
10. Help and documentation

27. Visibility of System Status

28. 1. Visibility of system status

29. Match between the system and
the real world

30. 2. Match the system and the real
world

31. 2. Match the system and real world

32. 2. Match the system and the real
world

33. 2. Match the system and the real world

34. User Control and Freedom

35. 3. User Control and Freedom

36. Consistency and Standards

37. 4. Consistency & Standards

38. 4. Consistency & Standards

39. 4. Consistency & Standards

40. 4. Consistency & Standards

41. Error Prevention

42. 5. Error Prevention

43. Recognition rather than recall

44. 6. Recognition rather than recall

45. Flexibility and Efficiency of Use

46. 7. Flexibility & Efficiency of Use

47. Aesthetics and Minimalist Design

48. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design
http://dev.uxmatters.com/MT/archives/000015.php

49. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design

50. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design

51. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design

52. 8. Aesthetics & Minimalist Design

53. Help Users Recognise and
Recover from Errors

54. 9. Help Users Recognise Errors

55. Help and Documentation

56. 10. Help & Documentation

57. Other Guidelines
• Bruce Tognazzini’s First Principles of
Interaction Design
http://www.asktog.com/basics/firstPrinciples.html
• A good introductory summary from a
fellow student
http://www.charlieguo.com/web_design_readings.php

58. Doing a Navigation Stress Test

59. Navigation Stress Test
• "Randomly" pick a low-level page, not a
home page, from your site
• Print the page out in black and white,
without the URL listed in the header/footer
• Pretend that you are entering this site
for the first time at this page and try
to answer to questions below
• Mark-up the piece of paper with what you
think the answers are

60. Navigation Stress Test
What is this page about? Draw a rectangle around the title of the
page or write it on the paper yourself
What site is this? Circle the site name, or write it on the
paper yourself
What are the major sections of this site? Label with X
What major section is this page in? Draw a triangle around the X
What is "up" 1 level from here? Label with U
How do I get to the home page of this
Label with H
site?
How do I get to the top of this section of Label with T
the site?
What does each group of links O: Off-site pages
represent?
How might you get to this page from the Write the set of selections as: Choice 1
site home page? > Choice 2 > .... Connect the visual
elements on the page that tell you this.

61. Making sense of the results

62. Affinity Diagramming

63. Recommended Books

64. Donald Norman

65. Steve Krug

66. Alan Cooper

67. Jenifer Tidwell