Topics
Topics
10 Things To Know About Usability Problems
If you collect nothing else in a usability test it should be a list of problems encountered by users. It seems so simple yet there is a rich history of how many users you need to test, what constitutes a problem and which method to use. A usability problem should have a name, description and
Is That A Usability Problem Or A Feature?
If you ask independent usability evaluators to run a usability test and report the problems found you’ll get largely different lists of problems. While there are many causes for the differences, one major reason is that evaluators disagree on what constitutes a problem. Usability is often at odds with security and business interests—what’s best for
Net Promoter Scoring: The Mean Works As Well As Promoters Minus Detractors
Ask your customers if they’d recommend your product using a scale from 0 to 10 where 10 means extremely likely. Now find the average of the responses. Is an average score of say 7.212 good? It’s hard to say. Interpreting averages from rating scales is notoriously difficult unless you have something to compare the average
14 Burdens Placed On The User
Computers are supposed to make life easier. There are many reasons why users are forced to take extra steps, remember things or be inconvenienced just to accomplish tasks. Not all of them are good reasons. I’ve listed 14 of the more frequent/painful burdens I experience in the hope we can shift more of the burden
Three Easy Metrics For Improving Website Navigation
If a user can’t find the information does it exist? The inability of users to find products, services and information is one of the biggest problems and opportunities for website designers. Knowing users’ goals and what top tasks they attempt on your website is an essential first step in any (re)design. Testing and improving these
Five Important Things To Do Before Any Redesign
It’s time for that major redesign. A long list of bugs, feature-requests and usability problems have accumulated and it’s time to fix that website, intranet or software application. Where do you start? Do look for a new technology, feature requests from the VP, the oldest, most neglected problems in the bug-tracking database? All of these
How To Estimate A Survey Response Rate
How many people will respond to your survey? It would be nice if you knew ahead of time. Here’s a simple technique I use to get an idea about the total number of responses I can expect from a survey invite. Perform a Soft-Launch (aka Pre-Test): It’s always a good idea to pre-test your survey
Usability and Net Promoter Benchmarks for Consumer Software
Many software companies track and use the Net Promoter Score as a gauge of customer loyalty. Positive word of mouth is a critical driver of future growth. If you have a usable product, customers will tell their friends about the positive experience. And alternatively, a poor user experience will lead customers to tell their friends
Should You Care If Your Rating Scale Data Is Interval Or Ordinal?
It’s fine to compute means and statistically analyze ordinal data from rating scales. But just because one rating is twice as high as another does not mean users are really twice as satisfied. When we use rating scales in surveys, we’re translating intangible fuzzy attitudes about a topic into specific quantities. Overall, how satisfied are
Four Terrific And Four Terrible User Experiences
When we look to improve the user experience of software or websites, sometimes the best improvements aren’t slight tweaks to the interface but involve eliminating steps altogether. Here are four examples from the physical world that may inspire improvements in the digital world followed by four experiences that can use some refining. Four Terrific User
How much does the usability test affect perceptions of usability?
It is one of the most important questions to ask when measuring usability. Just how much does the process of measuring impact the metrics we collect? In measuring perceived usability of five popular websites, I found that a single difficult task lowered post-test usability scores by 8%. This was largely driven by users with the
How To Interpret Survey Responses: 5 Techniques
Closed ended rating scale data is easy to summarize and hard to interpret. Ideally you can compare the responses to an industry benchmark, a competitor or even a similar survey question from a prior survey. In most cases this data doesn’t exist, it’s too expensive or too difficult to obtain. This leaves product managers and