Usability Testing Content

Posted on March 6, 2011 by jillchrist| 2 Comments

For the past three years, I’ve been run­ning usabil­ity tests on soft­ware appli­ca­tions. Most of the tests have been to mea­sure and iter­ate on designs and inter­ac­tions.  How­ever, lately many of my projects my team has taken on have been related to *test­ing con­tent*.  I real­ized that I needed a refresher on how to test con­tent, and wanted to share with you what I’ve been review­ing. High­lighted below are some of the meth­ods iden­ti­fied in the UX com­mu­nity to help eval­u­ate whether the con­tent on your Web sites is use­ful for your cus­tomers and prospects.  Not sur­pris­ingly, test­ing con­tent is actu­ally very sim­i­lar to test­ing design/interactions.

Con­tent Test­ing Meth­ods:

Iter­a­tive Test­ing. Kevin O’Connor and Colleen Jones’s 2010 IA Sum­mit talk: “Test­ing Con­tent: Early, Often, & Well” is a great resource on test­ing con­tent (here is the audio). Not sur­pris­ingly, she talked about how impor­tant it is to test con­tent iter­a­tively, just like we test designs and inter­ac­tions.  She will often start with a base­line test of the con­tent that is on the live site, then fol­low that up with con­cept test­ing, and then do a val­i­da­tion test.  What was inter­est­ing was how she focused the *pro­to­col* on three key con­tent ques­tions:  Can users find and read the con­tent they need? Do they under­stand the con­tent? Can and will they *act* on the content?

5 Sec­ond Tests. Chris­tine Per­fetti wrote an excel­lent arti­cle: “5-Second Tests: Mea­sur­ing Your Site’s Con­tent Pages.”  Using this method, you’d basi­cally show par­tic­i­pants a web page for 5 sec­onds, take it away, and then ask them for their ini­tial impres­sions.  Chris­tine says you can ask them to describe back to you what they saw.  She says users make impor­tant judge­ments in the first moments they visit a page.  This method helps to uncover those judge­ments.  Also, it can mea­sure whether the calls to action on the page are appar­ent enough.  She describes a case study with the Amer­i­can Red Cross, where 5 Sec­ond Tests helped them iter­ate on the design of their dona­tion page, to make sure users knew what all the dona­tion options were (i.e., donat­ing air­line miles, stock, clothes, etc.).

Inher­ent Value Tests. Chris­tine Per­fetti and Jared Spool talk about this method in a cou­ple of arti­cles, and in a pod­cast.  They say you’d want to run an Inher­ent Value Test when your team needs to know how well a Web site com­mu­ni­cates the inher­ent value the design­ers have put into it, and whether new cus­tomers under­stand the true value of the ser­vice.  How it works:  recruit two user groups, in the first phase, you recruit exist­ing users, and inter­view them about what they like about the prod­uct (what they find valu­able).  This will help to iden­tify fea­tures loyal cus­tomers miss.

Eye Track­ing, Gaze Plot­ting, and Web Ana­lyt­ics. I talked with a our Tech­ni­cal Writer, Mau­reen Lau, who had recently attended the Nielsen Nor­man Group’s course on “Writ­ing for the Web.”  I learned from her that the Nielsen Nor­man Group tests a lot of con­tent with Eye Track­ing, Gaze Plot­ting, and Google Web Opti­mizer.  Eye Track­ing tests how long they look at a par­tic­u­lar area (the more red, the more they looked at it).  Gaze Plot­ting, tests where their eyes jump to.  She said you go through a sim­i­lar process with con­tent as you do with inter­ac­tions (paper pro­to­typ­ing, iter­at­ing, try­ing to under­stand users’ needs, etc.).  She said Eye Track­ing and Gaze Plot­ting are great to see where peo­ple look, and what catches their eye, how­ever you need to inter­view peo­ple at the same time, to see if they are actu­ally com­pre­hend­ing what they have looked at. They will use the Google Web Opti­mizer to roll out an AB test, and see which con­tent “per­forms” bet­ter.  She told me about how read­ers typ­i­cally read in an F-shaped pat­tern.  Finally, she said we want to cre­ate tasks around the con­tent. Since users often search for key­words, they sug­gested get­ting a bet­ter sense of what SEO key­words we use, and test­ing to see if they look for those key words, where they’d expect to look for it, etc.

Test­ing Con­tent Con­cepts. Colleen Jones wrote an excel­lent arti­cle called “Test­ing Con­tent Con­cepts” that walks through the spe­cific pro­to­col, probes, and ques­tions to ask par­tic­i­pants about when test­ing con­tent.  Colleen says a “Con­tent Con­cept” is a mockup or draft of your con­tent.  She says if your run a usabil­ity test on your con­tent, and your con­tent is not work­ing well, you should fix the prob­lems and test again until it does. Colleen rec­om­mends test­ing in three lev­els of fidelity:  con­tent only, con­tent in a wire­frame, con­tent in pol­ished design.  What I found most inter­est­ing in her arti­cle was her rec­om­men­da­tion to focus obser­va­tions on how usabil­ity par­tic­i­pants work with the con­tent. I also liked her rec­om­men­da­tion of mea­sur­ing how suc­cess­ful peo­ple are at read­ing, under­stand­ing, and remem­ber­ing key mes­sages in the con­tent. Colleen dis­cusses the biggest chal­lenge in test­ing con­tent:  mea­sur­ing how the con­tent has influ­enced the par­tic­i­pant to take action. She says “don’t press too hard, and thus, end up with mis­lead­ing ratio­nal­iza­tions.” One idea Colleen has that could work well for us, is to con­duct a clos­ing ques­tion­naire  that asks whether par­tic­i­pants would now make a deci­sion that dif­fers from their typ­i­cal deci­sion, and to rate how well the con­tent informed their decision.

I’ve never been so con­vinced of how crit­i­cal it is to test not only how to nav­i­gate to con­tent and how to find con­tent, but to test the con­tent itself.  It is the con­tent itself that dri­ves influ­ence and calls read­ers to action.

If you have any com­ments, ques­tions, or alter­na­tive meth­ods to test con­tent, please leave a com­ment below!

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Asserting yourself — one no at a time

Posted on February 4, 2011 by jillchrist| 2 Comments

Learn­ing how to say “no” is not easy.  Deal­ing with what comes after the no, the dis­ap­point­ment, dis­ap­proval, and rejec­tion from those you said no to, can some­times seem unbear­able. As a User Expe­ri­ence Researcher, I think we are con­stantly told that we are worth ‘less than’ our more tech­ni­cal coun­ter­parts. We are told we are a ‘cost’ to the orga­ni­za­tion, and that we can’t be picky about the work given to us.  If we say no to stay­ing over the week­end to com­plete a project, we fear that we will hurt our pro­fes­sional rela­tion­ships that we have worked so long to build, and jeop­ar­dize our job security.

I started read­ing The Power of a Pos­i­tive No by William Ury, and it has dra­mat­i­cally changed the way I view my work as a UX Researcher. The fol­low­ing are a series a lessons from the book, and how I think these ses­sions in pos­i­tive assertive­ness apply to a UX Researcher.

1. “I need to tell them no in a way that is clear, hon­est, and respect­ful, and then let them react how­ever they react.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

UX Researchers often take on too many projects, and say yes to help­ing too many peo­ple. We don’t know how to be upfront and hon­est about our heavy work­load, because we know that it will cause a neg­a­tive reac­tion to the per­son we are speak­ing with. Also, we worry and can’t bear to say no to a project, or say no to help­ing some­one because we are trained to “go with the flow” as facil­i­ta­tors. We are great at accom­mo­dat­ing par­tic­i­pants, and doing what­ever it takes to make them happy. How­ever, we need to learn to stick up for our­selves — the right way, and that we can­not con­trol how oth­ers will react. All we can do is do our best to be hon­est, clear, and respect­ful, and this means we are doing the best we can.

2. “Give respect not because of who they are but because of who you are.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Giv­ing respect is the best way to have stake­hold­ers and co-workers accept your “no.”  When you show stake­hold­ers and co-workers you respect where they are com­ing from, and under­stand the pain they are going through that would cause them to bring their request to you, it is much eas­ier for them to see that you are not reject­ing them per­son­ally when you say “no.” It is crit­i­cal to put your­self into other people’s shoes, and do what­ever it takes to under­stand what the moti­va­tions are behind their request, and show them that you under­stand where they are com­ing from. It might be painful or dif­fi­cult to show respect to stake­hold­ers or co-workers who dis­re­spect you. How­ever, the rea­son you need to show this respect, as the quote above sug­gests, is sim­ple:  give respect not because of who they are, but because of who you are.  UX Researchers have good inter­ests at heart. They work as advo­cates to improve the human expe­ri­ence of using Web sites, soft­ware, apps, and other tech­nolo­gies. This is very impor­tant to keep in mind when assert­ing your­self — be empa­thetic with your co-workers, and their needs, and it will take you far.

3. “You have done the essen­tial prepa­tory work. You are like an ath­lete who has trained hard. Now dur­ing the race it is time to reap the rewards of that hard work.” William Ury, The Power of a Pos­i­tive No

Before I get to how this quote applies to UX Researchers, I need to dis­cuss an anaolgy brought up in The Power of a Pos­i­tive No. UX Researchers can learn a lot to learn from trees, in terms of how to stand strong.  William Ury talks about how trees have deep roots in the ground that keep their trunks stand­ing strong.  He says, our “no” is the trunk of the tree.  Our “yes” is in what we are rooted in, and in what we pro­duce.  Our trunks how­ever must stand strong, because if they break, what we pro­duce dies.

UX Researchers need to do their essen­tial prepara­tory work:  deep­en­ing their roots in their “yes.” They need to spend time grow­ing in their knowl­edge and belief in advo­cat­ing for users, build­ing empa­thy for users, mak­ing action­able insights, and inspir­ing devel­op­ment teams with user empa­thy.  Spend­ing time “on the bal­cony,” as William Ury calls it, dis­cov­er­ing our deep core val­ues and inter­ests, enables us to have that strong trunk that grows out of them.  The deeper our roots, the harder it is for some­one to uproot us. Even if we are chopped down, if our roots are strong, they will always grow back.  The goal of course would be to have blos­som­ing branches of UX Research, pro­vid­ing use­ful cus­tomer feed­back, val­i­da­tion, and get the voice of the cus­tomer to be lived and breathed into the very prod­ucts we ship.

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Seven Tips for Presenting Usability Issues to Stakeholders

Posted on January 19, 2011 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

In a pre­vi­ous life, I was a Library and Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence mas­ters stu­dent, and part-time ref­er­ence desk librar­ian. I worked in the Bio­med­ical library, con­nect­ing med­ical stu­dents and pro­fes­sion­als to jour­nals, arti­cles, research, stud­ies, books, knowledge…I attended med­ical library con­fer­ences and stud­ied how to help med­ical pro­fes­sion­als with “evidence-based prac­tice.” As a
result, I became adept at help­ing peo­ple find evi­dence to base their prac­tice on in med­ical research lit­er­a­ture. That skill has cer­tainly served me well as a user expe­ri­ence researcher as I work closely with design­ers and stake­hold­ers, and now unsur­pris­ingly, find­ing and deliv­er­ing evi­dence to inform design deci­sions is my absolute favorite part of this won­der­ful job.

I’m in the thick of user research on my cur­rent project, and along the way I’ve been remind­ing myself of all sorts of best prac­tices I learned from the bril­liant Joan Kaplowitz, an Infor­ma­tion Lit­er­acy Librar­ian.  Using her advice, I do every­thing I can to make sure the peo­ple con­sum­ing the infor­ma­tion I present, are get­ting what they need and inform­ing the design ques­tions they have.

My hope is what works well for me, using Joan’s prin­ci­ples, will help you too when you have to com­mu­ni­cate your results to a team of stakeholders.

1. Engage your stakeholders

“Active learn­ing is bet­ter than pas­sive recep­tion for reten­tion and trans­fer of learn­ing.” Joan Kaplowitz

In my expe­ri­ence, the best way to engage stake­hold­ers, and have them actively learn usabil­ity issues is to involve them in the research.  Hav­ing them come to observe usabil­ity test ses­sions and con­tribute their obser­va­tions to an affin­ity dia­gram is a very effec­tive way for them to retain the feed­back they hear, and see trends across users.  One strat­egy I learned from attend­ing the Nile­sen Nor­man Group Usabil­ity Boot­camp in 2007 was from Kara Per­nice: have your observers take notes on post-its (quotes, obser­va­tions, one issue per post-it), and then change color post-its for dif­fer­ent par­tic­i­pants. Then you can start to group issues together with stake­hold­ers, and see usabil­ity trends across users (col­ors). Your dia­gram of groups then can turn into your report, tran­scrib­ing your wall of insights into a pre­sen­ta­tion slide deck or any other format.

2. Keep it light­weight

“Less is more. It is bet­ter to teach a few things well than to over­whelm learn­ers with so much infor­ma­tion that they become frus­trated, anx­ious, and unable to retain any­thing from the instruc­tion.” Joan Kaplowitz

The best way to describe this prin­ci­ple as it applies to report­ing usabil­ity find­ings was best artic­u­lated by Todd Wilkens from Adap­tive Path: “The effec­tive­ness of your research report is inversely pro­por­tional to the thick­ness of it’s bind­ing.”  You will be so much more effec­tive in mak­ing change hap­pen, and get­ting peo­ple to take action on your find­ings, if you don’t over­whelm them with new infor­ma­tion. Your goal is to inspire your stake­hold­ers to address the usabil­ity issues, and have design­ers solve the usabil­ity prob­lems.  Then, val­i­date those changes were suc­cess­ful with another round of testing!

3. Get them talking

“The instructor’s voice should be the one heard least dur­ing teach­ing.” Joan Kaplowitz

The best pre­sen­ta­tions I’ve ever given have been because I met with stake­hold­ers ahead of time to get a sense of what they learned from watch­ing usabil­ity ses­sions. Get design­ers to tell you what they learned, because it doesn’t mat­ter so much what is in your head, as it does what is in theirs. Before giv­ing your final pre­sen­ta­tion to the larger group of stake­hold­ers, talk with your key stake­hold­ers, and have them tell you what they learned, observed, and took away from the ses­sions.  Review the take­aways you intend to present, and invite them to add to it. Your final pre­sen­ta­tion will be far more effec­tive at inspir­ing change to happen.

4. Grab them in the first 5 minutes

“You win or lose your audi­ence in the first five min­utes. Talk to your learn­ers as they enter the room. Pro­vide them with some­thing to do and/or think about as peo­ple are arriv­ing. Engage them from the start.” Joan Kaplowitz

Some­times the begin­ning of the find­ings pre­sen­ta­tion is the most chal­leng­ing, because all your great insights are com­ing later in your slide deck.  How­ever, the begin­ning of a pre­sen­ta­tion ALWAYS sets the stage for the mes­sage you are giv­ing. Get to the pre­sen­ta­tion room early, and build rap­port with each per­son who comes through the door.  Great them with a hello, and say their name (peo­ple love to hear their own name).  The goal before the pre­sen­ta­tion starts is to get “audi­ence mem­bers” on your side, because in my expe­ri­ence, these are the folks that that are most likely to help fend of heck­lers in your defense! Also, you want a strong intro­duc­tion.  You def­i­nitely don’t want to stum­ble through your first 2 min­utes of speak­ing.  Here is a basic intro­duc­tion that I use often — but the more cre­ative you can be the better!

“Great, let’s go ahead and get started. Today we are going to talk about_____________. We have about 45 min­utes for the dis­cus­sion, and I’ll leave some time at the end for ques­tions, but if you have any ques­tions along the way, please feel free to ask. First I want to ask… who had a chance to observe the ses­sions?  Great, well if there is any­thing you would like to add that you remem­ber observ­ing, please feel free…”

5. Demon­strate each key issue

This advice I learned on the ground floor at the UCLA Bio­med­ical Library ref­er­ence desk.  Stu­dents, nurses, patients, etc. would come to the desk ask­ing how to use the library data­bases.  The most effec­tive way for them to learn how to use the data­bases wasn’t just telling them, but actu­ally demon­strat­ing it to them. In fact, it was best if you could hand the key­board to them, and have them drive them­selves.  In an usabil­ity find­ings pre­se­n­a­tion, you really want to re-create the issues that par­tic­i­pants had dur­ing the ses­sion.  Stake­hold­ers tend to be quite visual, and greatly ben­e­fit if you show them what you mean.  Take full screen shots, and sim­u­late the expe­ri­ence of using the tech­nol­ogy using basic ani­ma­tions such as fad­ing in.  This seems to be the best way to re-tell the story, and have your find­ings really sink in with stakeholders.

6. Keep track of your effectiveness

“Always include a way to assess your out­comes. Oth­er­wise you will have no idea if your learn­ers have attained them.” Joan Kaplowitz

In the world of UX Research, the best way to assess your out­comes is to keep track of which issues are on the plan to get­ting fixed, and which ones have not been fixed. You can keep track of these in an Excel spread­sheet on your own, but the best is to have your issues make it to the prod­uct roadmap.  You want to see your usabil­ity issues turn into “user sto­ries” if you are work­ing with Agile teams, or pos­si­bly the roadmap, bug fixes, or “change requests” if you are work­ing in a water­fall envi­ron­ment. How­ever your orga­ni­za­tion keeps track of changes that need to be made to the sys­tem, do what you can to make sure usabil­ity issues are rep­re­sented there.

7. Take a multi-format approach

“Use hand­outs, web pages, and pre and post activ­i­ties to extend your con­tact time with your learn­ers. Offer ways for learn­ers to keep the con­ver­sa­tion going after instruc­tion is com­pleted — through email, blogs etc.” Joan Kaplowitz

A Pow­er­Point pre­sen­ta­tion is a great way to walk through usabil­ity find­ings.  How­ever, you don’t want to only deliver a slide deck. In addi­tion to your pre­sen­ta­tion, you will want to give a “hand out” to your key stake­hold­ers, the peo­ple who need a “check list” of things to address.  Don’t rely on them tak­ing their own notes dur­ing the pre­sen­ta­tion, give them a list that they can eas­ily make notes to.  You don’t need to pass this out to every­one, just to your 1 or 2 key stake­hold­ers. Also, I’ve seen a fol­low up email work really well, with a link to your pre­sen­ta­tion, to the record­ing of the dis­cus­sion, and a cou­ple bul­lets that sum­ma­rize the key take­aways.  Invit­ing users to con­tinue the con­ver­sa­tion using wiki pages is a great way to keep them engaged, and con­tinue with next steps.

So there you have it. This is my very best advice on how to present usabil­ity find­ings so that it inspires your stake­hold­ers to take action. Many of the infor­ma­tion lit­er­acy prin­ci­ples listed here apply to bas­ing design deci­sions on evi­dence.   How do you com­mu­ni­cate your usabil­ity issues?

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Posted in Continuous Customer Learning, Public Speaking, Uncategorized, Usability Testing

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Six Great Articles To Improve Your Writing

Posted on November 26, 2010 by jillchrist| 1 Comment

Do you want to become more com­fort­able blog­ging? Craft­ing a strat­egy to post inter­est­ing posts fre­quently can be a chal­lenge.  Here are 6 arti­cles from expert blog­gers who dis­cuss how to gen­er­ate use­ful posts, how to get over the need to be per­fect, and how to get your ideas out there as often as you can.

1.  “How to write 3 blog posts in one day” by Chris Bro­gan (writes 4000 words per day!).  Chris encour­ages read­ers to get over the need for every­thing to be per­fect in order to write, but to instead find pock­ets of time to write. You can do this if you keep a note­book in your back pocket, take pho­tos of inter­est­ing things, use Ever­note to cap­ture your thoughts, etc. He advises that you get into the habit of see­ing every­thing with curi­ous eyes, and show the world what you are see­ing. He also says not to be afraid to write clunk­ers, and write imperfectly…

2. “How to write a great blog­post in 15 min­utes” by Nerma Moore
Nerma rec­om­mends devel­op­ing an orga­ni­za­tional for­mat for each of your arti­cles (so you don’t have to think about this each time). She says to keep a bank of head­lines (ques­tions, quotes, short story title spoofs, stats). She of course says to time your­self, and strive to write short, com­pre­hen­si­ble sen­tences — then, step away from the com­puter. She says to “think pro­gres­sion, not perfection.”

3. “5 sim­ple ways to open your blog post with a bang” by Brian Clark.
Brian out­lines 5 ways to start your blog posts. The most inter­est­ing ideas were to share an anec­dote that will make peo­ple laugh, and use words like “Imag­ine” or “Pic­ture this” or “Do you remem­ber when…” I think I could also have fun with using analo­gies, metaphors, or sim­i­les, as he sug­gested, espe­cially if I can con­clude the arti­cle with a tie back to the begin­ning. Fan­tas­tic read!

4. “The rea­son you are stuck” by Seth Godin.
“You must find some­thing SO IMPORTANT that it is worth enrag­ing your pre­his­toric fears, SO IMPORTANT that you can’t sleep until it ships, SO IMPORTANT that yes, you are will­ing to go through all the hoops Leo lays out for you in order to ship. Either that, or you could be mediocre instead.”

5. “How to write an exec­u­tive sum­mary” by Eric Markowitz.
Eric starts out his arti­cle with a 2 sen­tence sub-headline, that sum­ma­rizes why you should read the arti­cle — great tech­nique! He also advises that the exec­u­tive sum­mary should tell read­ers what it is that you do, and why they should read the rest of your text, pro­posal, results, report, etc. He says your first sen­tence is the exec­u­tive sum­mary of the exec­u­tive sum­mary, and that you should tai­lor your sum­mary to your audi­ence (much like you tai­lor a resume to a job descrip­tion). Your sum­mary should strike a chord with your read­ers, and describe how you’re report is special/unique in a cer­tain way. Finally, I really liked his idea to cre­ate an exec­u­tive sum­mary that matches the out­line of your report, and to include a sec­tion called Why Now, to show the urgency of read­ing the report. Great ideas!

6. “Rethink your web pres­ence” by Chris Bro­gan.
Chris says we need to think about what users want when they come to our Web site, Twit­ter page, LinkedIn page, Face­book page, etc. First, we need to spell out who we want to come to our sites. Next, we need to iden­tify how they will know they belong there. After that, we need to show what we want them to do — and make this really obvi­ous. Finally, we need to explain how they can stay in touch with us. Great tips!

What mate­ri­als have you read about how to write bet­ter? Please feel free to share in the comments!


Bonus Arti­cles:
“Ele­ments of a Good LinkedIn Rec­om­men­da­tion” by Chris Brogan

“How to write Bet­ter Linked In Rec­om­men­da­tions” by Lisa B. Marshall

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Do you need to be right all the time?

Posted on November 21, 2010 by jillchrist| 2 Comments

Have you ever tried to intro­duce a new idea, but had peo­ple tell you that it is a bad idea? Have you ever voiced a con­cern, or offered an alter­na­tive direc­tion, and heard some­one say to you:

“No, that won’t work…that’s not possible…that’s not relevant.”

It can be unset­tling to face resis­tance, espe­cially when the resis­tance hap­pens in front of oth­ers. It can feel like a huge blow, and can be very hard to swal­low the fact that peo­ple don’t see where you are com­ing from. It seems as though UX Pro­fes­sion­als in par­tic­u­lar feel tempted not to voice their opin­ion at all, when they have faced too much resis­tance. How­ever, we can’t let these things get to us. We need to learn to let things roll off our backs, and move on. Here are five tips and advice that UX pro­fes­sion­als can use to approach conflict:

1. Change your atti­tude. UX pro­fes­sion­als think very highly of them­selves, and have a ten­dency to posi­tion them­selves as higher, or more impor­tant than oth­ers. When oth­ers resist their idea, it comes into con­flict with how they view them­selves — how could any­one not sup­port my bril­liant design deci­sion? How could they not under­stand all this bril­liant research I have done? News­flash: you are not more impor­tant than any­one else. So, change your atti­tude, get over it, drop the ego, and move on.

2. Be hum­ble and gen­tle. You may be very pas­sion­ate about your idea, and you may want change to hap­pen no mat­ter what the cost. You might be tempted to talk about your years of expe­ri­ence and accom­plish­ments, think­ing that it makes you more cred­i­ble, and that they should lis­ten to you more. But this just makes you come off arro­gant and con­ceited. It really does NOTHING for your cause. Also, be sen­si­tive to the fact that maybe those you are talk­ing to are not ready to fully embrace your idea. Give them the oppor­tu­nity to solve the prob­lem as well — treat them the way you want to be treated, and seek out their think­ing and exper­tise on the issue. Be gen­tle and soft-mannered in your response back.

3. Do not intro­duce a new idea out of self­ish ambi­tion. Before talk­ing with your team about a new idea, deter­mine why you are intro­duc­ing this new idea. Your team will be able to sniff out any self­ish rea­son you are try­ing to get them to adopt your think­ing, espe­cially if you are look­ing to get more recog­ni­tion. Think instead about what would be best for the team, and for your fel­low team­mates. Gen­er­ate new ideas and opin­ions that make them shine, advance, give them more flex­i­bil­ity, or help them become a more bal­anced employee.

4. Don’t con­sider per­fec­tion as some­thing you can grasp. Accept the fact that you will fail, and make mis­takes, and that oth­ers will make mis­takes too. You can’t pos­si­bly be per­fect at every­thing, and mis­takes will come, no mat­ter how hard you try to pre­vent them. Keep a notepad with you at all times — when you make a mis­take, write it down, and what you will do dif­fer­ently next time. Then move on. Also, don’t expect oth­ers to be per­fect either — they are human, just like you.

5. Be patient. Your idea may be a good one, or you may have a legit­i­mate con­cern. How­ever it might just not be the right time to intro­duce your idea. You can always come back to it later, if you feel you are still con­cerned. But just be patient for your team to get to a point where they are ready to try your new idea.

You don’t have to be right all the time, and you don’t have to stress when oth­ers don’t see things from your point of view. Life goes on, and if you treat each other right, you might just get more accom­plished than you thought you could have otherwise.

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“The happiest of people make the most of what comes their way.” ~Unknown

Posted on November 16, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Some­times User Expe­ri­ence Research can be stress­ful. It can be dif­fi­cult to man­age com­pet­ing pri­or­i­ties between clients and projects, and it is nearly impos­si­ble to please every­one. No mat­ter how hard you try, you can’t be “per­fect.” How then, can we make sure that we are deliv­er­ing value to the orga­ni­za­tions we serve?

Make the most of your mis­takes. I’m learn­ing more and more, that instead of per­fect­ing a project to flaw­less­ness, it is more impor­tant to make the most of the hours I’m given, and embrace any mis­takes that come my way. Doing your very best, and giv­ing it your all, sud­denly isn’t about putting in all the hours you can, but mak­ing the most of your mistakes.

Address the root cause of your fail­ures. Instead of putting in a ton of hours per­fect­ing your work, embrace your fail­ures, and instead spend more time find­ing new ways to solve the root prob­lem for the fail­ure (lack of resources, clar­i­fy­ing pri­or­i­ties, etc.).

Show your clients & employ­ers that you can pace your­self, and won’t burn out. Clients and employ­ers really want to make the most of our ser­vices, and are hap­pi­est when they can use our tal­ents and skills to their fullest poten­tial. They don’t want us to burn out, hit a wall, or crash. They want us to con­tinue to pro­duce high value to their organization.

The only choice I see, is to work hard dur­ing the hours we are given, make mis­takes along the way, and learn from them. This does not mean we should slack off, and not do our best at work. It means learn­ing to say no to dis­trac­tions, and being highly effi­cient in our work.

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What is User Research?

Posted on September 22, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“User research is the process of under­stand­ing the impact of design on an audi­ence.” — Mike Kuni­avsky, Observ­ing the User Experience

Some­times I feel like we strug­gle to explain what User Research is all about. Too often we get caught up in the day to day imple­men­ta­tion of User Research, and lose touch with how to explain what we do in plain lan­guage. Our job as User Researchers, is not to sim­ply run usabil­ity tests, and com­mu­ni­cate the results. If you tell your friends, col­leagues, etc. that all you do us run usabil­ity tests, they will give you a blank stare. We don’t just run usabil­ity tests, we help dev teams under­stand the impact of their prod­uct, fea­ture, sys­tem on its intended audience.

But I think a more pow­er­ful ques­tion is: what hap­pens when you don’t think about the intended audi­ence? What hap­pens when you don’t con­duct user research? Here are three con­se­quences of not think­ing about the intended audi­ence, and how User Research can help:

* Your prod­uct could become ‘incom­pre­hen­si­ble.’ Often times, prod­ucts and sys­tems are made, but peo­ple say­ing they can’t under­stand what the prod­uct is for, what to do with it, what prob­lem it solves, let alone how to use it. User Research can iden­tify this early, before launch, and can gen­er­ate ideas to bet­ter com­mu­ni­cate what the prod­uct does to the end user.

* End­less inter­nal debates about scope, audi­ence, pur­pose, and func­tion­al­ity. Many times, those work­ing on a new Web design project feel like they can iden­tify with the user. They will say things like, “I never like it when sites do this…” or “I always expect to see…” When project scope, audi­ence, and pur­pose is defined by the those on the project, and not by those who will use the end prod­uct, debates sky rocket. How­ever, when User Research is involved, you can find out what users think is most impor­tant for the project. After doing even a hand­ful of inter­views with users, sud­denly your scope, pur­pose, func­tion­al­ity, etc. of the project can become much bet­ter defined. User Research makes every­one more aware of what is most impor­tant to the end user.

* Cre­at­ing a solu­tion that doesn’t solve any real prob­lem. Solu­tions are sold because they relieve pain points for peo­ple. You need to con­duct User Research to under­stand the prob­lem, and the kinds of peo­ple who have this problem.

Bot­tom line: User Research is about iden­ti­fy­ing and defin­ing prob­lems, not cre­at­ing solu­tions. It is about look­ing into prob­lems, and spelling those prob­lems out for the peo­ple who build the prod­ucts — to those who have the power to solve the prob­lems. Design­ers are inspired to solve prob­lems, and user research inspires them.

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Blogging through “Observing the User Experience”

Posted on September 11, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

I’ve decided that if I really want to learn and grow as a User Expe­ri­ence Researcher, I need to read and apply more best prac­tices. I was really inspired by Julie and Julia, the story of a woman who blogged her way through Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing, as a way to com­mit to learn­ing to cook.

In Observ­ing the User Expe­ri­ence, Mike Kuni­avsky from Adap­tive Path writes why user research is good, and how it fits into prod­uct devel­op­ment. He also addresses var­i­ous research tech­niques, and ways to com­mu­ni­cate results. Much of what I think, worry, pon­der over all day every day.

I look for­ward to read­ing and writ­ing about the book, and how I apply it daily.

Stay tuned!

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Build Your UX Stamina

Posted on August 27, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

“Suc­cess comes from know­ing that you did your best to become the best that you are capa­ble of becom­ing.” — John Wooden

As a UX pro­fes­sional, you will face many oppo­nents — many peo­ple will want to fight you. They will play devil’s advo­cate, mis­treat you, and ques­tion your work. They will resist your ideas and tell you tell you you can’t do what you want to do.

So much of the work a UX Pro­fes­sional does is sub­jec­tive and artis­tic — there isn’t a right or wrong way to do what we do. How­ever, peo­ple will fight you, grill you with ques­tions and dis­ap­prove of your judgement.

This will exhaust you — unless you have the sta­mina to sus­tain you. How do you build the sta­mina needed to con­tinue to stand up for what is right? For me, I need to build phys­i­cal sta­mina. With strong phys­i­cal sta­mina, I have the strength in my heart to:

* remain calm in the midst of con­flict
* con­front con­flict at work and fam­ily
* stand up for myself
* call co-workers out when they do some­thing wrong
* work through con­flict with dif­fi­cult peo­ple
* do the right thing, when oth­ers pres­sure me not to
* say “no” when some­one tries to take advan­tage of me
* set and enforce bound­aries with chil­dren and family

UX Pro­fes­sion­als need strength in their heart to stand up for what is right. If you tend to get exhausted in the midst of con­flict, con­fronta­tion, bul­ly­ing, or pres­sure — try build­ing your phys­i­cal sta­mina. You might just find the strength to do the right thing.

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From Diplomacy to Research: The Road Less Traveled

Posted on August 8, 2010 by jillchrist| Leave a comment

Many peo­ple ask me, “how did you get from study­ing Polit­i­cal Sci­ence as an under­grad­u­ate, to work­ing for a soft­ware com­pany test­ing the usabil­ity of their prod­ucts?” Well, the truth is, it wasn’t a straight path, and I had no idea I would have come down this road to usabil­ity research. How­ever, what really hap­pened was that I was pur­su­ing dif­fer­ent careers, and check­ing them off my list for var­i­ous rea­sons. So here is the truth — three sto­ries of what pointed me to work­ing in research instead of law, pub­lic affairs, bio­med­ical libraries, etc.

Story #1: Work­ing in a Pub­lic Affairs Firm. Just before I grad­u­ated from col­lege, I decided I would like to put my degree to use by work­ing on pub­lic affairs cam­paigns at a PR firm. I was put to work as their “media mon­i­tor,” and it was my job to clip arti­cles that their clients were fea­tured or men­tioned in. I also had a part time job at the UC Santa Bar­bara David­son library that started at 1pm, and I could not be late. How­ever, the media clip­ping took me a while to grasp, and I could not fin­ish the work in the time given to me. I found myself stressed with dead­lines daily, and that every­one around me was the same way. After com­ing home cry­ing too many times, I decided to try work­ing for a law firm instead.

Story #2: Work­ing in a law firm. After I grad­u­ated from UC Santa Bar­bara, I started work­ing in a local law firm. I was a recep­tion­ist and clerk, and wanted to see what it was like to work in a law office. I was also study­ing to take the LSAT exam at the time, and work­ing part time in the UC Santa Bar­bara David­son Library. What I remem­ber most from that expe­ri­ence was how infe­rior some of the attor­neys treated me. When I’d try to trans­fer calls to them, they would yell at me, telling me not to dis­turb them. I over heard another say I should be replaced because I couldn’t scan their “evi­dence” into the machine fast enough. And another told me that I would never make it as a lawyer. I had so many neg­a­tive expe­ri­ences there, I decided to try another field.

Story #3: Work­ing in a Cor­po­rate Library. I applied to UCLA’s Infor­ma­tion Stud­ies pro­gram, and the fol­low­ing sum­mer started work­ing for Amgen’s cor­po­rate library. I was put on sev­eral projects to updates web sites, and cre­ate demo videos to teach sci­en­tists how to use the library data­bases. I enjoyed the energy of the busi­ness world, but found it was really chal­leng­ing to make change hap­pen in the com­pany. They also didn’t have very much fund­ing, which told me the com­pany didn’t value the incred­i­ble work the library offered to the orga­ni­za­tion. This trou­bled me, and I really wanted to find work where the value of the work I was doing was evident.

I took a Human Com­puter Inter­ac­tion class at UCLA, and learned how com­pa­nies test prod­ucts they make with cus­tomers first before releas­ing it. I learned how this research informed the design process, and helped make the prod­uct more user-friendly. The research was actu­ally mak­ing a dif­fer­ence. I had been so frus­trated in so many work­ing envi­ron­ments, being treated as though my work was not mak­ing a dif­fer­ence, but it seemed like if I could work in Human-Computer Inter­ac­tion, my work might actu­ally mean something.

I started work­ing as an intern at Cit­rix Online, and have loved work­ing there ever since. The com­pany truly val­ues the cus­tomers, and is truly cus­tomer cen­tric. I’m incred­i­bly lucky, and grate­ful to have found a com­pany like this.

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