How to think
like a user
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PE AC E
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Primary purpose.
It should be obvious
at a glance what
each “page” does.
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Effortless ease.
There should not be a
puzzle to solve while
users move through
the information.
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Approved accessibility.
All information needs
to be valid, accessible
and usable via target
technologies.
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Complete consistency.
The interface and its
layout always need
to look and behave
the same way.
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Expected execution.
The interface should
respond as a typical
customer expects it to.
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Primary purpose:
It should be obvious at a glance what each web page does.
Effortless ease:
Customers should not have a puzzle to solve while they move through
the information.
Approved accessibility:
All information needs to be valid, accessible and usable via target
technologies.
Complete consistency:
The interface and its layout always need to look and behave the same
way.
Expected execution:
The interface should respond as a typical customer expects it to.
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PE AC E
...out
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On being a
consultant
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How do projects
operate today?
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Project modules
Research
Web strategy &
best practices
Analysis
Information
design
principles
User survey
Personas
Project
requirements
Web statistics
Design
Expert
Review
Flow &
taxonomy
Wireframes
Stakeholder
interviews
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Engagement
Propose
Contact
Prospect assessment and qualification
Proposal creation and sign-off
Analyze
User and System scenario clarification
Users, Goals & Tasks identification
Persona building
Review
Expert review and/or full Customer Experience Testing
Brief, prioritized "findings & recommendations" report
Deliver
New Design Guide (wire-frames & blueprint) construction
Design and implementation Seminars
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What do (web)
businesses
today need?
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Architects
Masterminds
Communicators
Ideologists
Critical thinkers
Evangelists
Ambassadors...
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Mind
Matter
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So, how do you
think like a
user?
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Strategy
Thinking like a user is a strategic and tactical approach to the design
of an information space such as a website or an Intranet.
Structure and content is driven by the user’s stated desires,
expectations, goals and tasks to create a design that is oriented
towards their tasks and not primarily towards the corporation's
informational structure (e.g.. corporate divisions, functions or
organization chart).
The high demands of fresh, easy to find content (publish or perish) within
this approach is often difficult for many corporate web owners to
swallow. BUT the users are in charge!
Recent years have proven that the corporations who do focus on
designs that are simple, manage complexity well are clean and heavily
reliant on user input (early and often) are the ones that achieve their
goals time and time and again.
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Thinking like a user
Antithesis
Analysis
Data
Wisdom
Information
Knowledge
Synthesis
Organization
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How do you
design to
align?
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Information Design
Personas
Information Architecture
Usability
Accessibility
Internationalization
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Personas
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Persona map
User community
B
A
E
C
D
Shared functionality
Common functionality
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Persona elements
Basics
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Age range
Gender
Educational level
Socio-economic level
Work
Family membership/role
Personality Style (e.g. passive/active, eager/bored, stressed/relaxed etc…)
“Name” in relation to behavior
Picture
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Persona elements
Interactive components
Behaviors
What scenarios do the users get involved in?
What are their expectations going into the scenarios?
Expected level of valid usability?
What are their activities in the scenarios?
What are their roles, goals & tasks within the activities?
Context
What is their style/mode (and /or M.O.)
Text vs. pictures? What are the reading levels of people in this social group?
Urgent or relaxed visit: e.g. are they going to have many short or few longer visits?
Tech barriers: slow PC, internet connection perhaps
Cognitive barriers, e.g. can they read complex arguments or follow “steps”.
Content (Taxonomy)
Lexicon – language level or register
Cognitive abilities
Vocabularies
Structural/Informational concepts
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Persona Profile
Photo
General demographics
Context dimensions
Behavior dimensions
Tracy Teen (A)
Reached 14-year-old female teen. Very dedicated to her Church and
eager to connect with other teens, youth pastors and resources to
help her own daily discipleship. She's tech-savvy but will become
easily bored by a lack of simplicity and interactivity.
Personal
Age
Gender
Marital status
Education level
Family/familial position
Leisure-time activity
Work
Organization role
Organization type/size/age
Years in organization
Organization decision maker/level
Social/Web context
Social grouping
Generational cohort
Defining idea for cohort
Socio-economic service group
(or H/M/L)
US Cultural dimensions
power-distance (e.g. gov't)
individualism
masculine approach
uncertainty avoidance
positive longer term focus
Task orientation
Life goal
End goal (work, life...)
Subject matter expertise
Tech proficiency
Web behaviors
Personality
Tocquigny personality style
Web interaction style
Temperament
Personality type
Desires
Attributes/examples
14
female
single
secondary school, pre-high school
middle child, two brothers
meeting friends at the mall
none
team leader
Church & Youth Group / 200 members / 10 yrs
6
yes , Low
Attributes/examples
Relationship to Knowledge
BattleCry behaviors
Primary motivations
consumer
Gen Y
tolerance
mid-high
L
H
H
M
M
Become a social worker
be more "christ-like every day"
M
M
Attributes/examples
Illustration
Influence
Idealist
"Doer": extroverted, sensing, thinking, perceiving
popularity
Specificity of visit/Expectations
User dedication to task/criticality
Number of visits to "convert"/join
User relevance to success of site
Up/cross-"sell" potential
Goal/Primary Focus within Battle Cry
Activities : Goals
help myself; help others; keep up-to-date; guidance and structure; organize, plan and
grow
H
H
L
H
H
improve personal discipleship
interact, communicate, organize
Activities : Tasks
(ways of achieving goals, based on functionality available)
Call-to-action : path position
Call-to-action : Seeds
Behavioral barriers
Web content
Linguistic preference
Interactive/text/graphical focus
Language/reading age competency
Cognitive/Strategic competency
Visual Hierarchy/ structure requirement
Summary blurb
trust, present, close
Benefit information, News, Downloads, E-commerce purchase (books, videos)
privacy, security, financial, credit cards, boredom, confusion/lost
Attributes/examples
native tongue, US English speaker
Interactive/graphical
M/L
L
H
Content dimensions
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How and when do we use these?
Always and often!
We simply ask our Personas questions to find out what they
would DO and that helps to direct our design decisions.
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Information
Architecture
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How to...
Look at people and tasks : both top-down and bottom-up
Top-down
• What do people need to do to be successful on the site?
• Create Personas (for those tasks, goals, behaviors)
• Organize persona tasks into a prioritized structure
Bottom-up
• Categorize available functionality and content into user-centric chunks
• Categorize the content within those chunks down 2 or 3 levels
Validate & Label (wash, rinse & repeat)
• Validate we have the correct information blocks, chunks, sub-chunks etc...
Then...
1. Name global navigation elements using a task and brand-oriented vocabulary
2. Name sub-category elements
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Global navigation
Search
Selected
section
Section title
Breadcrumbs
Local
navigation
Related
navigation
Text,
images,
links etc
Buttons
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Usability Reporting
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Problem scenario
 Nobody’s reading huge big reports with super-granular detail.
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Usability findings must be openly accepted by Executives.
Usability folks produce reports for Executives (initially)
Executives want to know “what to fix” – NOW!
Reports detail and prioritize every issue.
Reports represent “information overload”.
Report data is not that exciting.
Reports often arrive too late to be effective.
Executives create their own interpretations while waiting.
Executive summaries are not comprehensive by nature.
Executives miss the holistic picture.
 Ergo: Decreased usability report effectiveness (ultimately).
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The way forward
USABILITY
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Mindsets…during usability report presentations
&
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2 Psychological drivers
(for those Executives)
We’re on fire!
We’re not on fire...yet
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Other “driver”: I’ll be a hero!
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Process
1. logging sheet
2. average,
Name:
Hypothesis tasks
Comments
1. You know the name of a
product that you want to find,
found product straight away
but aren't sure where it would
be. Please show me how would
you locate this product?
7 5 3
aggregate &
sort data
+
2. You purchase the same
set of office products each
lots of clicking but found the product in the end
month and would like to be
able to save that information
for use next time you’re on the
site. Show me where would
you click to do this?
task
easy to use
buy toner
Quick order
cart
private sale
checkout
glance
wrist rest
product
e-mails
lists
order a catalog
call company
+
3. You have already selected could not find "view cart" without some additional
some items for your order.
probing
Where would you click to
review those items?
-
(for each participant)
call company
order a catalog
lists
wrist rest
product
e-mails
private sale
0
Quick order
1
buy toner
2
easy to use
3
glance
checkout
cart
4
new
5.11
4.83
1.12
5.00
-0.67
4.54
3.56
3.29
3.15
1.50
0.38
1.00
-2.08
improvement
5.04
4.07
3.56
1.64
1.38
1.24
0.06
-0.71
-1.18
-2.21
-2.79
-3.64
-3.71
3. visual
6
5
baseline
0.07
0.76
-2.44
3.36
-2.05
3.30
3.50
4.00
4.33
3.71
3.17
4.64
1.63
executive summary
-1
-2
-3
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Sample logging sheet
Name:
Hypothesis tasks
Comments
1. You know the name of a
product that you want to find,
found product straight away
but aren't sure where it would
be. Please show me how would
you locate this product?
7 5 3
+
2. You purchase the same
set of office products each
lots of clicking but found the product in the end
month and would like to be
able to save that information
for use next time you’re on the
site. Show me where would
you click to do this?
+
3. You have already selected could not find "view cart" without some additional
some items for your order.
probing
Where would you click to
review those items?
-
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Sample data
task
easy to use
buy toner
Quick order
cart
private sale
checkout
glance
wrist rest
product
e-mails
lists
order a catalog
call company
baseline
0.07
0.76
-2.44
3.36
-2.05
3.30
3.50
4.00
4.33
3.71
3.17
4.64
1.63
new
5.11
4.83
1.12
5.00
-0.67
4.54
3.56
3.29
3.15
1.50
0.38
1.00
-2.08
improvement
5.04
4.07
3.56
1.64
1.38
1.24
0.06
-0.71
-1.18
-2.21
-2.79
-3.64
-3.71
The task data above is calculated by averaging the scores for all
users per task. The baseline can come from a “base-line” task or
from a “previous test data” or be based on data representing
“executives expectations”.
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Visual executive summary
Usability study aggregated qualitative results sorted by: average proposed improvement
call company
order a catalog
lists
e-mails
private sale
0
Quick order
1
buy toner
2
easy to use
3
product
4
wrist rest
checkout
cart
5
glance
achievements opportunities
6
-1
-2
baseline
new
-3
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2
1
0
4
3
easy to use
lists
cart
6
buy toner
checkout
product
glance
e-mails
Quick order
order a catalog
wrist rest
5
private sale
call company
Lather, rinse, repeat
7
-1
-2
-3
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Accessibility
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• You’ll be old one day too – design & code your own future.
• Accessible sites are more accessible to everybody, everywhere.
• Those sites are W3C standards compliant (XHTML, CSS...).
• Want 50 Million new customers? (people with disabilities in the US)
• An accessible site changes people’s lives in a fundamental way.
You don’t often get to radically
change the world
while sitting at your desk.
Locally contact knowbility.org
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Internationalization
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Wait there’s
(a bit) more
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Think like a user!
• If it works for the user then the project will be a success.
• It’s the web. K.I.S.S. It just has to work, simply – it’s not a moon-shot!
• Do intelligent research and the hard work so that the interface is easy.
• Get inside the user’s head via personas.
• Get inside the information space via Information Architecture.
• Understand all (future) audiences: mobile, disabilities, international.
• Test a lot and as simply as possible – this gives you data ammunition.
• Plan, Plan, Plan your framework but do not tie yourself down.
• Be nice to your clients – they have a tough life!
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Staying in the loop
Tom Peters – Professional Service firms.
Harriett Rubin – going it alone (soloing).
Lou Rosenfeld, Pete Morville – IAs extraordinaire
Edward Tufte – data-to-ink ratios
Steve Krug – a guerilla approach to usability – needs a strong background.
Mike Kuniavsky – observing users.
Doug Hall – eurekaranch.com, kick start your business brain
Guy Kawasaki – guykawasaki.com - evangelist
Don Norman – anything!
Newsletters/Sites:
UTASIST, SIG-IA, CHI-WEB, Useit/Alertbox, UXMatters, apogeehk.com,
adaptivepath.com, STCUSESIG_L Digest, UsabilityNews.com, Internet.com
(clickz), grokdotcom.com, informationdesign.org, TecAccess.net, Knowbility.org,
BoxesandArrows.com, gerrrymcgovern.com, http://iawiki.net/PersonaDesign
Conferences: IASummit.org, SXSW...
Watch the Bricks: Brazil, Russia, India, China, Korea...
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Thank you!
Gordon Montgomery
Information Designer
gordon@gmeta.com
http://gmeta.com
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