Good reads

• Don’t make me think revisited by Steve Krug
• Nielson Norman group articles.

Basic usability rule. Don’t make your users think. Make it easy for your user to use your products. It should be obvious and self explanatory. Don’t overcomplicated.

When it comes to digital products consistency is your friend. Make the aspects of your website easy to process and understand. Th elements in it should resemble their real life counterparts, like for example buttons/call to actions.

Fixation: we only use fixation when the eye is still. This is used when using a digital product or website. Your eye is fixating on words, places and content but the things you fixate on are the only things you will remember. This tells me that the layout of my content needs to be very carefully considerate to make sure my user fixates on what I want them to.

******* Use an eye tracker to see how users use your website. **********

This is why information architecture must be implemented as well as possible to make the process of reading the content much easier.

Try to make use of sensory imagery to trigger the users memory. You can trigger these with words. When you read you don’t actually read every letter but you rely on memory, like for example

You also have to be mindful of the user and their abilities. How old are they? How big is their vocabulary? This is something I need to keep in mind when creating my elements app for kids as using big technical words would result in it being too complicated for kids. Not only does the layout of the information matter but also the selection of the words that are appropriate for the user and demographic.

The idea is not to make users work your way but for you as the designer to create solutions that work best for them.

User testing

If you want a great product you must test. The point of testing is to inform your judgement and decisions. Testing should be an interactive process. It should also be a constant process and not a one off. The more users you get to test your product the more issues you will be able to find to then improve upon.

Before testing your own product it is always a good idea to run a usability test on competitor products – consider it free usability testing with no pressure. Doing this will help you improve your own design.

Types of test:

1. Think aloud protocol: Get someone to test you product by giving them prompts and asking them to talk through their actions and thoughts as they go; this gives a mind-eye hypothesis.
2. Standard usability test: In this type of test you are looking for 3 metrics: efficiency, effectiveness and satisfaction. All you need to do is record your screen and audio and you have your test.
3. Key task testing: Get a participant to do something they would normally do with a product. In this type of test you write your tasks like scenarios and get the user to carry them out.

It’s important to identify 3 or more tasks – it does not have to be the whole product. Have prepared pre-tests and post-test interview questions. Give the participant user written instructions for their first task. Record the start and end time and observations. Then analyze the data.

It can be useful to use a test script highlighting everything you are planning on doing that day.

A good type of post-test surveys is the SUS method (this method provides the most reliable answers) In this type of survey you ask questions about the usability of sections of your site and ask the user to give a number between 1 and 5 with 5 being the best. It gives you numbers to back up your decisions. This then lets you interpret the score.

Users will remember a bad experience. Avoid giving them a bad experience. The more bad experiences the user experiences the more their goodwill for your product will be reduced. This could happen because of information that they want being hidden, Asking for information from the user you don’t actually need, require them to behave in a certain way for the product to work, putting things in their way (Pop-ups). When in doubt apologize to the user when something does not go right for them with your product, this will create a sense of goodwill and trust in a way.

Online usability testing

1. Usabilityhub
2. hotjar
3. usertesting
4. maze – free
5. Screenflow or quicktime are great software to record your screen time  – it also helps as then you can watch things back.

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Reflection

Users will remember a bad experience and so when designing it should always be for the user, to champion them in a sense.