Pat’s Point of View

I spotted this in the TechSmith User Experience Newsletter. Although it talks specifically about using their Morae software package, the article by Todd Follansbee is rather useful:

Have you ever clicked a Google search result, taken one glance at the site, and clicked away? For whatever reason, that site made a bad first impression on you.

In this month’s guest-authored article, Todd Follansbee, lead consultant for Web Marketing Resources, shares how user testing can measure visitors’ first impressions of a Web site.

Todd discusses how to use personality profiles, find the best environment for testing, and provide a realistic “starting point” with Google. He lists specific questions to ask, and what you should learn from users’ answers.

Todd’s approach considers both traditional usability factors and persuasive elements of messaging, branding, and benefits.

“…if you cannot motivate the user to enter the site, good usability is wasted,” he said.

Todd often does his user testing on-site, in a business or a home. He uses Morae usability testing software to record users’ interactions with the Web site, uncover patterns in the data, and share highlight videos with stakeholders.

“Using Morae to record messaging, persona behavior and the persuasive elements of conversion will make you money both by improving your Web sites and offering new services as consultants,” he said.

This is a great example of the intersection between marketing and UX, and the approach is really how most usability ‘testing’ should be done in my opinion. Whilst I don’t use Morae myself, I think the general approach of gauging reactions to websites by first time users is very useful. The same results could be achieved using Camtasia (or similar) or without any software at all.

See what people are blogging about: usability testing, morae, personas, audience segmentation

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I’ve enjoyed watching Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares for several years now, it’s a great show and we all love to laugh (and cringe) at the predicaments the owners of these restaurants get themselves into before Gordon resurrects them. But it’s also a great example of a good consultant at work.

Our favourite football-star-turned-TV-chef exhibits several key traits, he is:

• confident – the meek might inherit the earth but they’re rubbish at getting the job done
• experienced – having done it all before he knows what he’s talking about and everyone knows it
• well rounded – it’s not just about the cooking, to run a successful restaurant you need to know about every aspect of the business
• eager to teach – he’s not a pompous prat who refuses to share his knowledge and experience, he gives it willingly

Gordon’s methodology on the TV show is simple but effective. One of the most useful parts of his approach is he breaks it down, demonstrating simple ‘tricks of the trade’ that can be the difference between staying afloat or going under. For example, I love the way he often shows how you can serve simple but elegant meals for mere pence, but sell it for a few quid.

By breaking the dire straits situation down to individual problems, the answers become quite simple. Like a lot of things, these answers are typically quite obvious, when viewed individually. The phrase “it’s not rocket surgery” seems to fit, but you need to work at the right resolution; the whole enchilada is too much to swallow in one go.

However, this is easier said than done. If you know what you’re doing you can salvage almost any situation. Gordon has a lot of experience, so he looks for patterns in each establishment he visits, patterns that reflect things he has dealt with in the past. With the benefit of 20-20 hindsight he can apply a solution. If you’re tackling something for the first time, it can be difficult to see the answer, even for a superstar chef.

Of course, the outsider’s perspective is a big advantage. The people in these failing restaurants are often blinded by their own myopia and apathy, even though they are talented, hard working people with the best intentions. They can’t see what’s happening right in front of their eyes, and in many cases they just don’t care anymore.

The parallels with being a consultant—particularly in the kind of work I do—are clear. And I think Gordon has the right approach to whipping his clients into shape. The swearing would certainly make my clients sit up and take notice :)

This analogy also highlights the importance of observing; spotting the points of pain and the root causes behind the troubles a restaurant is experiencing. This is equally important when working with my clients, for example examining the current situation with their website, intranet or information management practices. Then identifying the actions that would have the greatest impact in the shortest possible timeframe. Because we’re not talking about refinement in these situations, we’re talking about code red emergency, about to fall to pieces. That’s the scene we most often find ourselves in as consultants.

It’s a case of the 80/20 rule; forget trying to tackle everything, just tackle the key 20% of issues to keep your head above water (or the doors open in the case of a restaurant). Then once you’re up and running again you can smooth out the wrinkles and go for that Michelin Star!

Another key part of Gordon’s success is the fact that he aims to get people skilled-up and self-confident. He points them in the right direction then he f***s off (as Gordon would say). He doesn’t step in and do the work for them, otherwise when he leaves they would be back at square one. This is the only sustainable way; being a mentor as opposed to a contract expert.

So what? Well I am a big believer in uncovering useful things in places you’d least expect it. Yep, this is just a TV show, but I think we can all learn a thing or two from Gordon. In a way, this post is the spiritual successor to my earlier post about the Super Nanny. I wonder how many ‘celebrity consultants’ could be role models for the humble IT consultant.

Of course I’ve put myself right in it, I’m going to have to practice what I preach now. Have to get myself one of those funky chef’s shirts.

(Thanks to James for sparking off this idea.)

See what people are blogging about: Gordon Ramsay, consulting, mentoring

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OK, I won’t be coy like most people who are tagged by this viral meme phenomenon :) I’ve been waiting for someone to tag me, gosh darn it! So thank you, thank you, thank you to Liesa for making my day.

Now, the obligatory recital of the rules:

• Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves
• People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules
• At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names
• Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog

Easy peasy, right? hmm no not really. So eight things you might not know about me:

1. I’m a big car fan. I love everything about cars, owning, driving and drooling over them. I try not to let it go to my head most times since it’s an expensive hobby to have. My last car (my WRX) cost me a lot, in many ways. But I oh so loved driving it…rather too rapidly I must admit. My wife almost convinced me to try out for the host of the local version of Top Gear, which I would have loved but I don’t think I’d be a good TV presenter.
2. I’m a big Prince fan. I have all his albums (yes, even the weird ones). Actually, I’ve got fairly eclectic musical tastes; metal, funk, hip-hop, rock, ska, country, blues, soul. About the only musical styles I don’t like are classical, opera, chick-rock and that rubbish pop-trying-to-be-punk that is so popular at the moment.
3. I’m so looking forward to being a father. It may be some form of sympathy cluckiness that rubbed off from my wife, but nothing will make me happier than to welcome our first baby into the world in a few weeks.
4. I can talk a lot. On my school report cards, teachers would comment on how quiet I was, something my parents couldn’t understand: they couldn’t shut me up at home. To this day, my wife says I have verbal diarrhoea.
5. I wanted to be a designer (industrial or graphic). But towards the end of school I got distracted by the cult of getting the best marks (the influence of tragically upwardly-mobile friends) and focused on maths and science. I should have continued at subjects such as art and technical drawing, which I was good at. This sometimes shines through in my obsession with presentation over substance. Something I won’t let my kids do: forget what they are passionate about.
6. I once learned to fly (in a plane not in my head). In fact I grew up around aircraft because my dad was into it, and cars, so it was only natural to give it a go. Didn’t really like the rules and regulations involved with day-to-day aviation—and I’m terrified of heights, so probably for the best I gave it up.
7. I have a habit of suddenly taking to things I previously disliked with a passion. For example, beer, coffee, Apple Macs, tuna, Facebook. Not sure why this is, perhaps I don’t like being ‘with the crowd’ so I wait until later. I’m a late adopter (but I am a sneezer…what do you make of that Seth?).
8. My favourite movies are Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Snatch, High Fidelity, Sean of the Dead, The Abyss, Evil Dead 2, Ocean’s Eleven and Aliens. Generally I like comedies and science fiction. I am a bit of a Treckie too, but my wife is a bigger one!

A dubious selection of facts to be sure, but now for the spreading of the virus! (well something has to fill the void before 28 Months Later). So, Martyn, Peter, Cairo, Matt, Chris, Stephen, David and Joel…consider yourselves tagged. And I would have tagged Kieran, but he doesn’t have a blog per se (but he does have a knack for short stories).

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I am always quite surprised, after one of my workshops, when someone remarks "I didn’t know there was so much to it! I thought IA was just about coming up with the nav".

Whilst I’ve written recently about the many faces of IA, I think there is more to such comments than just a different definition of IA being expressed. Probing a bit further, I found that these remarks were based on a rather superficial view of the work involved. It wasn’t obvious, until I ranted for a whole day, that it takes a bit of effort to whip up the navigation for a site.

There is more to it…honest. Firstly, navigation implies some kind of organisation of the site. But where do we get the labels for the navigation, how do we know what structure is best for the content and what type of navigation will work best?

IA is a UCD practice, that’s user-centred design in that you take input from the actual end-users of the website (or intranet or software) and use that in the design process. I suspect the reason why many people are surprised to hear that IA involves so much work is that they have been thinking of designing navigation as a isolated activity; an ‘expert’ creates it in a matter of minutes and you go off and build it.

That approach is doomed to fail and often results in further costly redesigns, because the end product simply doesn’t work for users. So there is a need to get input from users, both directly using research methods such as interviews, observation and focus groups, but also indirectly through web analytics for example. This builds up a picture of who your audience is, their needs, behaviour and attitudes. You can get their input into labels and content structures, using techniques such as card sorting. This gives you a good idea on how users think of the information they might be presented with, in terms of the names they use to refer to it, but also what they believe should be grouped together. And it can take quite a bit of time and effort to do this properly, especially making sense of what you find.

Then comes the tricky bit, taking what you have learnt through research to design a solution. It could be the overall IA (the site structure), the navigation or the layout of pages. Once you make any design decisions, you also need to validate or test those decisions. To do this you return to the users and seek their direct input again, using techniques such as paper prototyping, Card Based Classification Evaluation and usability testing.

So, yes, navigation is often a key output of IA, but it is just the tip of the iceberg. IA starts much earlier and goes much deeper than this. Attempting to design the navigation—or almost any aspect of a site—without going through the whole process is like working in a vacuum.

It wasn’t my intention to describe the entire UCD process, but I’ve tried to think why people outside the IA field don’t understand that there is more to it. Is it because we practitioners shroud ourselves and our methods in jargon and elitist secrecy? Or is it that so many bad practices are out there, conducted by inexperienced practitioners, that it has tainted the opinion of certain people? Or something else.

It’s not all dire of course, I meet lots of people who are not IAs and don’t have a comprehensive understanding of all the techniques involved, but they do appreciate that to achieve good results you need to invest time in things like research and testing. Yet I’m still intrigued by what people think IA is all about, and possibly more importantly, why they are turning up to my workshop if they think it’s dead easy? :)

(The significance of the picture? Well, these disentanglement puzzles, or ‘blacksmith puzzles’, are often harder than you think. Just like IA might be to the uninitiated. And it was less of a cliché than a ‘tip of the iceberg’ image.)

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