Perfetti Media Blog
March 12th, 2009
For over a decade, I’ve consistently told design teams that the most effective way to ensure they build usability products is to start incorporating usability tests into their process. I’d say, “Usability test now. Test as early as possible. Test as many times as you can before launch.”
I have a really good reason for this recommendation. All too often I’m brought into organizations that haven’t had the opportunity to learn first-hand about their users. In many cases, the design team has never interacted with an actual user of the product. No up-front user research, no usability testing. Not even a focus group or survey. The team is often forced to base the design on their (sometimes faulty) assumptions about what users want in a product.
When teams haven’t had a process for incorporating user needs into their designs, I recommend they conduct a usability test right away. I’ve found that usability tests are the most effective method to sell the importance of a user-focused design to teams. By conducting usability tests, teams get an opportunity to see how real people interact with their products. In many cases, this unfortunately means they see users struggling. The good news is that when this happens, I have very little trouble convincing the design team to start conducting more rigorous research with users. These activities typically include field studies, ethnographic user interviews, and user profile (or persona) development. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in customers, usability testing - 3 Comments »
October 20th, 2008
I just returned from the highly informative (and fun) User Interface Conference. At the conference, I taught the full-day seminar, Product Usability: Survival Techniques, sharing the results of years of research examining how successful development teams incorporate usability practices into their process. As part of the day, I share several best practices including:
1. Usability test early and often
One of the best ways to prevent launching unusable products is to identify any issues early on in the development process when it’s still simple to make design changes. Yet, many struggling development teams save usability testing for the final stages right before a project launch. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in usability testing, user experience - No Comments »
August 7th, 2008
This October, I’ll be teaching the full-day workshop, Product Usability: Survival Techniques, at the UI Conference in Cambridge, Massachusetts. I will be discussing the most successful techniques for incorporating usability practices into the development process. The highlight of the day is the design exercise where attendees create a working interface in only a few hours — and usability test it with real users.
If you register for the conference, and use the promotion code PERFETTI, you will receive $30 off each day of the conference. If you sign up for all 4 days, you’ll receive a free Flip Video Ultra camcorder.
I hope to see you in October!
Posted in Speaking - No Comments »
July 2nd, 2008
As both a loyal Netflix customer and a Macintosh user, I’ve always been disappointed that I can’t take advantage of Netflix’s Watch Instantly feature on my computer. The feature isn’t currently supported for the Mac, and for months, I’ve been asking myself why Netflix has chosen to ignore the needs of a large subset of their audience.
Thanks to Netflix, I now know the answer.
When Mac users visit the Watch Instantly page, they can read clear and concise copy that explains why Netflix can’t help them watch movies on their computer.
They state:
“Our apologies — instant watching is currently not supported for Macintosh.
Our goal is for Netflix members to enjoy movies and TV shows on whatever screen they want. We’re required to use Digital Rights Management to protect movies watched instantly online, and right now we only have approval for this protection on Windows Operating systems, not the Mac.
Apple does not license their DRM solution to third parties, which has made this more difficult, but we are working with the studios and content owners to gain approval for other solutions.”
In addition to the detailed explanation, the page also offers several alternative suggestions for Mac users, so they can try and take advantage of the feature.
In my research, when users can’t accomplish a task, they still want to understand why they can’t do what they want. In the case of Netflix, one page of online copy effectively helps customers understand that Netflix was considering them — even if they couldn’t help them. While Mac users are still inconvenienced, the designers have demonstrated they’re thinking about their audience.
Posted in customers, user experience - 1 Comment »
June 17th, 2008
On your site, the content page is the user’s most frequent final destination. This page contains the information the user came to the site to find. Sites often have hundreds, if not thousands (and in some cases, millions) of these critical pages.
How can design teams be confident their content pages are understandable to users? How does a team ensure they’ve designed content pages that communicate the essential information effectively?
A simple usability testing technique can help design teams quickly measure how a content page performs with users. It’s called the 5-Second Test. In case you missed it, a few years back, I wrote an article about the 5-second test methodology, outlining how to set up these types of tests and when they are most effective.
Posted in Articles, usability testing - No Comments »
