Designing for Users

PowerPoint Slides: More on Users

Readings for Class 5

• Guesses vs. Data as Basis for Design Recommendations - Even the tiniest amount of empirical facts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.
• Donation Usability: Increasing Online Giving to Non-Profits and Charities - User research finds significant deficiencies in non-profit organizations' website content, which often fails to provide the info people need to make donation decisions. acts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.
• Interaction Elasticity - Usage goes down as interaction costs increase. User motivation determines how fast demand drops, following an elasticity curve. acts (say, observing 2 users) vastly improves the probability of making correct UI design decisions.
• Aspects of Design Quality - Usability scores for 51 websites show some correlation between navigation, content, and feature quality, but no connections to other usability areas.
• Age Groups (some are from last class):
  • Children: Our usability study of kids found that they are as easily stumped by confusing websites as adults. Unlike adults, however, kids tend to view ads as content, and click accordingly. They also like colorful designs, but demand simple text and navigation.
  • Teenagers: When using websites, teenagers have a lower success rate than adults and they're also easily bored. To work for teens, websites must be simple -- but not childish -- and supply plenty of interactive features.
  • Middle-aged: Between the ages of 25 and 60, people's ability to use websites declines by 0.8% per year — mostly because they spend more time per page, but also because of navigation difficulties.
  • Seniors: The Internet enriches many seniors' lives, but most websites violate usability guidelines, making the sites difficult for seniors to use. Current websites are twice as hard to use for seniors than for non-seniors.

Readings for Class 6

1. The Elements of User Experience, by Jesse James Garrett Chapter 2: Meet the Elements (PDF)
   See also the Simple Planes Diagram and the complete Elements of User Experience Diagram
2. PowerPoint Slides: Organizing Content (Preliminary)
3. Card Sorting: Pushing Users Beyond Terminology Matches It's easy to bias study participants, whether in user testing or in card sorting, if they focus on matching stimulus words instead of working on the underlying problem.

HOMEWORK: Identifying Primary & Secondary Users, Goals & Tasks, and Performance & Preference Measures

Write up a report on your responses to the following questions. Be thorough.

Upload the report to your IT 382 web site on wyrd and put a link to it in your Table of contents.

1. Explain the difference between primary and secondary users. Identify two different examples of systems that have primary and secondary users (not the examples in these notes). Describe who those users are for each system.
2. Explain the difference between a goal and a task. For each of the examples you provided in exercise 1, describe both a goal and a corresponding task for both primary users and for secondary users. (2 examples with 2 categories of users each => 4 goals & 4 tasks)
3. Explain the difference between performance and preference measures. For each of the goals and tasks from exercise 2, identify both a performance measure and a preference measure.