Posts tagged as:

usability

Usabilty and Web Professional Education-Interview with Cia Romano, Founder and Usability Researcher at InterfaceGuru.com

by Fred on August 7, 2008

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

For today?’s podcast, I have the pleasure to be interviewing Cia Romano, Founder and Usability Researcher at Interface Guru based in Arizona.

Cia is a sought after speaker and serves an evangelist for end users, researching and reporting on why user-centered design for the web, intranets, software and kiosks is mandatory for success. A hands-on user interface expert, Romano has developed the Usable Times 5 criteria for ranking computer screen effectiveness. The metric, based on her usability lab studies, focuses on user response to five factors consistently observed in the lab: orientation, permission, interactivity, relevance and speed.

I called on Cia to help me better understand if as a profession, are we making any headway in the areas of Usability standards, adoption rates and Web professional education in general.

For the three minute interview check out today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

A complete transcript of this podcast will be available in twenty-four hours.

Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Web 2.0 Expo New York taking place September 16 – 19, 2008 at the Javits Center New York, NY.

From start-ups to enterprises, the Web 2.0 Expo New York is the event for the designers, developers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketing professionals, product managers and business strategists building businesses on the web.

Seven conference tracks, a vibrant expo hall and plenty of networking events cover business strategy, web design, user experience, SEM, tagging, developer hacks, community building, AJAX, Ruby, web operations, user-generated content, and more.

Check out all of the great links including a discount code for WOW members on the WOW Technology Minute website.

Register today at Web 2 Expo website and use code webny08bm6 to receive 20% off your full conference pass.

Transcript of Usability Web Professional Education with Cia Romano

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. For today?’s podcast I have on the phone Cia Romano, Chief Executive Officer and Founder of InterfaceGuru.com based in Arizona. Cia?’s a sought after speaker and serves as an evangelist for end users, researching and reporting on why user-centered design for web, intranets, software and kiosks is mandatory for success. Good afternoon Cia and thanks for agreeing to this interview.

CIA ROMANO: Good afternoon Bill. Thanks for the opportunity.

BILL: Cia, you?’ve been practicing as a web professional for a number of years now and I?’m podcasting this week on web professional education. I?’d like to ask you to help me better understand a couple of things. Number one, are we making headway with a general understanding and the adoption of usability standards?

CIA: Well Bill, that?’s an excellent question and my immediate answer would be we?’re not making enough headway. In 1999 when we founded the company we were completely understanding that perhaps large organizations had not thought about the need for information design and usability. I?’m very sorry to see that the state of affairs has not changed that much in 2008.

BILL: Why is that Cia?

CIA: I think that the issues are, from the outset, are a lack of knowledge. I think there?’s still a tremendous lack of understanding in terms of the proper phases that need to happen in web development and planning and design, which is the place where usability and information design would occur, is highly misunderstood. So people typically jump into builds because I think they want to see something before actually thinking through how these products should work.

BILL: Cia, can you offer any recommendations for those working in the enterprise? And how about small business?

CIA: Organizations at the enterprise level probably have millions of transactions occurring on screens every year. If you add ten seconds to each of those transactions, because an interface is unusable, you?’re adding millions of dollars to the cost price.

BILL: Good point.

CIA: So that?’s very simple math. I think for the smaller business, how do you know you?’re not going to grow into a larger business? And the issue here is that whether you?’re a sophisticated web user or you?’re a less sophisticated web user you are going to make an assessment about the quality of an organization based on the usability of its website.

BILL: OK, the web?’s been around for a while, and you?’d think that we?’re past that point of justifying a solid web strategy, so what do you think?’s going on?

CIA: Honestly, technology is never the problem and people usually are the problem. And when I say the problem, being to your point, this should be well understood now because we?’re all doing business on the web. So I think what?’s really happening is that there?’s a cultural disconnect between business decision makers and sometimes the implementers who are making, and I?’ll just say IT Department for shorthand, but people who are making that happen. So it?’s a lack of education in the sense that the business decision makers probably don?’t have enough of exposure to the web development process or to best practices to know what to request from IT. And conversely IT, I think, may be so up to their elbows in trying to make things happen that there?’s never a time to stop and actually plan a process or plan a transaction or plan a user type, the definition of a user type and task, which are at the core of usability.

BILL: Very interesting. Well certainly we appreciate your time and your perspective Cia.

CIA: Thank you, Bill!

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Usability Tips with Steve Krug author “Don?'t Make Me Think”

by Fred on June 24, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. I?’m here at the Voices That Matter Conference here in Nashville, Tennessee and I have the pleasure of interviewing Steve Krug, Krug, pardon me, usability consultant and author of the best selling book, DON?’T MAKE ME THINK. Steve thanks for agreeing to this interview.

STEVE KRUG: Sure.

BILL: I?’ve got a question for you, I had mentioned to you earlier that I represent a lot of generalists, webmasters, many of those you know, have a variety of responsibilities and also I represent those that teach those generalists. For that audience, could you give us a couple of, you know, tips on when it comes to usability, what they should focus in on.

STEVE: My favorite tip this year is to watch some people use what you?’re  building, which technically is a usability test, or a user test. But just grab somebody and  give them a task that is the kind of thing that people are going to want to do on your site, and watch them try and do it. And the advanced version is have them think out loud while they?’re doing it and tell you what they?’re looking at, what they?’re thinking about, whatever. And you?’ll find almost immediately they?’ll reveal to you the problems that your site has in terms of usability. They?’ll run into things that confuse them, they?’ll run into things that don?’t make sense to them, and often the fixes are quite simple. But they?’re not things that you can discover yourself, because if you?’ve been working on a site, you?’re too close to it and you?’re not going to be able to see those problems. So it?’s just enormously valuable to drag one person, I tell people to do like three people a month or something, but one is 100% better than none.

BILL: Yeah, I appreciate that.

STEVE: So if you haven?’t done it, then it?’s the one thing I would most highly recommend to anybody if they want to improve the usability of their website.

BILL: I appreciate that. And good point. So if you had the luxury of taking that up a notch, three people a month?

STEVE: Yeah, I tell people to do it one morning a month. And in that morning    you?’re going to bring three people in. And you spend up to an hour with each one of them and give them the same tasks to do. And set it up so that the people, there are people on your team, so that they can observe this from another room. It?’s easy to set up screen-sharing on another pc. And what I recommend is then over lunch, after the three tests in the morning, everybody on the team, the stakeholders and whoever, get together and decide what the problems were that they saw in the morning and how they?’re going to fix them before next month. And that?’s your usability program for the month.

BILL: Fair enough.

STEVE: You?’re all done in one morning.

BILL: I?’m curious to know then, would it be fair enough to say that you?’d want to get somebody who would generally use your site anyway?

STEVE: You want to if you can, but I?’m really careful trying to get people not to hung up on that. I mean, you want to get people, if you can, who are typical users of your site. But if actual users are, typical users are hard for you to come by, then I would say don?’t not test. Instead just test with anybody you can get. Because almost anybody will run into the worst problems, even if they?’re not your typical audience. So it?’s mostly a kind of Nike, kind of “Just Do It” thing, is the most important thing. And if you just try it you?’ll quickly see why it?’s so valuable. Because you just get insights. You can get a very large number of valuable insights in a very short time.

BILL: Excellent. Thanks.

STEVE: So you?’ll get psyched about doing it.

BILL: Yeah, great feedback Steve. I appreciate that. Bill Cullifer here with eth World Organization of  Webmasters (WOW).

STEVE: Nice talking to you.

BILL: With Steve Krug at the Web conference in Nashville.

Check out the three minute video and audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.

 

 

 

 

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Usability Continued and a Chat with Steve Krug author of “Don?'t Make Me Think”

by Fred on June 23, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s podcast is a continuation of the media coverage of the VTM Web design Conference on the topic of Usability.

If you?’ve been practicing on the Web for awhile then you know first hand that Usability is a science and you can spend years studying the topic. That said, if you?’re like me, chances are you don?’t have that kind of time so I?’m hopeful that we can provide you with a better understanding of this topic and a few “walk away?’s” that you can use today with a series of podcast on the topic.

To that end, I?’d like to share with you additional insights from the roundtable with Steve Krug author of the best selling book “Don?’t Make Me Think”.  As you may recall, I sat in on the roundtable discussion with Steve and Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit.

It?’s clear to me why Steve?’s books are so popular and that?’s because he recommends on the surface at least are some pretty straight forward things that you can do today. For example, Nancy asked Steve about the reference in his book regarding the “third law of usability,” and that is one of his suggestions of getting rid of half the words on each page then get rid of half of what?’s left.

Steve commented back to Nancy by saying that it reality it “kind of hard to get rid of half of what?’s left but I could, I could get rid of half the words on most pages.”

Nancy also asked Steve to comment on what she heard someone saying at one his recent workshops regarding “usability testing is like psychoanalysis”. Steve?’s said was that he “always said it was, I said that for years, that it was like psychoanalysis because of the questions you ask” in the usability process.

“The whole point is to keep them thinking aloud said Steve. “You can see what is in the thought bubbles over their head, so that you can see where they?’re getting confused because that?’s the useful information you are looking for to figure out how to make the design better.”

Here are a couple of other zingers from my notes:

Steve continued to explain his comment on psychoanalysis with the explanation of the supporting role of a therapist. And that is “to keep their own opinions out of the process.” said Steve. “As a usability-test facilitator it turns out the hardest thing for amateurs to do is to keep themselves out of it”. His advice is to not give the person help and to not try and steer them towards a particular problem that they want revealed or to not give them encouragement or you know, whatever. So that is like a therapist.

Stay tuned for more coverage on this topic including a one on one interview with Steve where I ask hip for a couple of tips for Web professionals that we can start using today.

Check out the two minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links at: WebmasterSurvivalGuide

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Usability Demystified and a chat with Steve Krug, Author “Don?'t Make Me Think”

by Fred on June 19, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

If you?’ve been following along with this podcast then you?’re already aware that WOW was a media sponsor of the Voices That Matter Web Design Conference in Nashville, TN last week. As a result, I?’ll be covering a wide variety of Web design topics.

For today?’s topic, I?’d like to talk about Usability. For starters, let?’s recap the definition of the term. To assist me with this, I revisited the Wikipedia website on the topic and here?’s what it had to say in short:

Usability is a term used to denote the ease with which people can employ a particular tool or other human-made object in order to achieve a particular goal. Usability can also refer to the methods of measuring usability and the study of the principles behind an object’s perceived efficiency or elegance.
The primary notion of usability is that an object designed with the users’ psychology and physiology in mind is, for example:

* More efficient to use—it takes less time to accomplish a particular task
* Easier to learn—operation can be learned by observing the object
* More satisfying to use

Check out for an in depth explanation of the topic Wikipedia.org.

For the remainder of this podcast, I?’ve lined up a snippet of the chat with Steve Krug and Nancy Aldrich Ruenzel, Vice President and Publisher at PeachPit regarding a question she asked Steve at the conference. Look for additional interviews with Steve in future podcast as well in depth coverage on the topics presented as well for the month of June.

Check out the three minute audio podcast at: WOW Technology Minute.

Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is brought to you by webprotraining.org, offering a complete solution for all your Web professional training needs including WOW certification options. Check it out at Web Professional Training.

A complete transcript of this podcast will be available in 24 hours.

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Web Accessibility – Interview with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC

by Fred on May 12, 2008

Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.

Today s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of the topic of Web accessibility and I?’m on the phone with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC a Web accessibility consulting firm from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Good afternoon Kel and thanks for agreeing this interview. Kel, you contacted WOW in regards to the interview on the topic of Web accessibility with T.V. Raman at Google. Can you expand on the comments made by T.V. Raman and can you share with the listeners of this podcast what Web accessibility means to you?

Kel is a knowledgeable professional with some great things to share about Web accessibility, usability and universal design. To listen to the three minute interview complete with some great links to Kel?’s consultant and blog website Anikto.com check out today?’s WOW Technology Minute at: http://www.webprominute.org WOW Technology Minute

Today?’s WOW Technology minute is sponsored by the “Voices That Matter” series of Conferences. This years Voices That Matter Web Design conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders, the leading publisher of Web design books and resources—and home to the most popular Web design authors, trainers, and speakers. This year’s Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Voices That Matter Conference

Check it out today! http://www.voicesthatmatter.com/webdesign2008/

Transcript:

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW Members and Web Professionals everywhere! Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today’s podcast is a continuation of the coverage of web accessibility and I?’m on the phone with Kel Smith Principal, Anikto LLC a Web accessibility consulting firm. Good afternoon Kel and thanks for agreeing this interview.

KEL SMITH: Thank you, thank you for having me.

BILL: Kel, you contacted the WOW in regards to the interview on the topic of Web accessibility and T.V. Raman at Google. Can you expand on the comments made by T.V. Raman and can you share with the listeners of this podcast what Web accessibility means to you?

KEL: Certainly. I was most struck by one of T.V.’s comments having to do with ensuring that websites, or really any projects designed, can be made without regard to assumptions on who the user will be that winds up benefiting from it. For example, he had said, “When you make a website don’t necessarily assume that a person is going to have a certain-sized monitor, or a certain-size screen or that they’ll be abe to be totally able in terms of vision, color blind.” And I started thinking about that in terms of Universal Design principals. For those who don’t know, Universal Design is a broad-spectrum approach which is intended to benefit everyone, including but not limited to people who have disabilities. And the second principal of that is secondary use, meaning that the design should accommodate a wide range of individual preferences and abilities. Universal Design is largely derived from an architectural term, a good example is a building called [?], I believe in New York, they do things architecturally. For example they have carpet that gets darker as you approach a door, I think they have small changes in the carpet so that as you approach a corner you can sort of feel that the corner is going to be there so you can make a turn, safely. They also have small shelves to the right of doors so that someone in a wheelchair who wants to fish out their keys can put their bags down and be able to access that easily.

BILL: Yeah, it seems to me that Web accessibility has additional benefits outside the scope of just web-users. Universal design is a science that’s been around for a number of years that has a broad range of benefits to a variety of individuals including all users.

KEL: Absolutely. It’s also important to keep in mind the usability accessibility. We include websites that comply with various criteria of Section 508 but we also want to be sure we test them with real users and ensure those variances from user to user and even within the same disability, are covered. The idea behind Universal Design is to make sure that the design is useable across multiple situations and scenarios and multiple people. For example we want to ensure that usability is improved such that it?’s common practice to put a skip navigation link, at the top of a page, so that a screen reader, which reads back a page in sort of a robotic voice, doesn’t read the navigation on every single page when a user clicks on a respective link. The problem with that is users with disabilities may not, and blind users in particular, may not understand the concept of navigation because they’ve never actually seen a map. So the idea of skip navigation is to read not just the context of an accessible website. It may comply with criteria, but it may not get the context. So it?’s better to put in items such as skip command content. It’s important to use an adjective name as the modifier for the word content, so that the screen reader doesn’t read the word “content” as “content” as in happy. So it?’s not just making sure that the page technically complies, it?’s also making sure that it meets a certain usability standard, which you’re going to find out if you’re testing with real people.

BILL: Yeah, I understand that. I appreciate that perspective Kel. You’ve obviously been consulting on this topic for a while. For the listeners of this podcast that might have an interest in consulting services provided by your organization, where might they go to get more information?

KEL: The best place would be go to the website first, it?’s www.anikto.com. It’s the Greek word for “open.” I just started this consulting firm, just this year actually. And there’s a link to contact me directly and there’s also a link to go to the Anikto blog which is where I write about what is going on in the accessibility world and basically helping people get along better with this tricky landscape.

BILL: Excellent. I appreciate that, and your time today, and your perspective. Very valuable and very insightful. We certainly appreciate it. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute on the phone with Kel Smith, Principal from Anikto LLC. Thank you for your time today Kel.

KEL: Thank you. I’m very honored. Thanks very much.

BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by the Voices That Matter series of conferences. The Voices That Matter Web Design Conference is a unique event brought to you by New Riders the leading publishers of web design books and resources and home to the most popular web design authors, trainers and speakers. This year’s Voices That Matter Web Design Conference will take place June 10-13, 2008 in Nashville, Tennessee.

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