Analyse your information design

Information design is one of those things that is hard to get right on the first attempt. So once you’ve built a site you should be analysing it to see how people use and digest the information, how they behave and where you can improve your design.

A neat tool in this regard is Google Analytics. For example where I mentioned User Paths earlier, Analytics lets you track paths through pages using the Goals feature. You set up a sequence of pages and Analytics will report the %’s of visitors who make it through (and by extension click away) at each point.

Another Analytics feature you can use is search term tracking which lets you see what users are searching for on your own site’s search field. Knowing what people are looking for tells you what information needs to be mor

OK, we’re only at number 19 so far, there’s still a way to go. Still, what’s there so far suggests it’ll be an amazing series. As the site doesn’t make it easy to see all of the methods so far, here’s a list of what’s there to date:

1. Concept Interviews: Users write down statement to do with the use of a product, and rank them.

2. Brainwriting: generating ideas quickly by getting people to write them down rather than say them

3. Freelisting: a complement to brainstorming where people list examples in relation to a particular question.

4. Reverse Brainstorming: asking a question that generates problems or criticisms rather than solutions.

5. Metaphor Brainstorming: guiding brainstorming by framing with metaphors

6. Future Workshop: four phase futures technique (preparatory, critique, fantasy, and implementation phases)

7. Claims Analysis: looking at how changing an existing feature on a product will affect various user groups

8. Repeated Card Sorting: doing card sorting repeatedly in order to find out the underlying product characteristics.

9. Reverse Card Sorting: a variation of closed card sorting where you measure users’ cards sorts against a proposed solution.

10. Perspective Based Inspection: getting users to review a product from a specific perspective (e.g. disabled user, power user)

11. Bodystorming: Physical scenario modelling.

12. Teachback: Testing the robustness of a product’s mental model by having an expert teach a novice and the novice ‘teach it back’.

13. Consistency Inspection: Like QA, but for product consistency across a product experience.

14. Yes, And: Taking from improv to further ideas.

15. Misuse Scenarios: looking for situations for unintentional (accidental) and intentional (e.g. malicious) misuse.

16. Backcasting: a strategic method where you start from a desired future and work backwards.

17. The User Interface Race: challenging users to compete to complete tasks under time pressure

18. The User/Task Matrix: plotting task frequency against groups

19. Laddering Questions: the IDEO ’5 Whys’ and other methods

A few months ago I went on UX Design course. This course really opened my mind to the whole user experience testing thing. I never thought that it was actually such complex yet fun thing to test user reactions to certain design elements on your web designs and actually learn something from it.

All though I knew a few things like banner blindness, there were quite a few things I never thought of like where you place a button, the size of a button and color on certain elements.

Just think for a moment, the smart phone that you use every day went through UX design testing. The shape of the phone, the button layout and even the phones software, all of it went through some kind of User Experience test.

So why do UX testing on your web designs?

UX testing actually could make your site more pleasing to your visitors, make visitors stay longer; get them to click on something. Here is an example, I’m sure you’ve seen popups on blogs that ask for your email to subscribe you to their newsletter.

Well that usually goes through quite a few testing phases to get the best conversion rate.

By now you get the idea of what the User Experience testing is all about, so let me start giving you that 5 free ways of doing User Experience testing.

Дата добавления: 2015-11-16