Perfetti Media Blog
September 7th, 2010
I'm super excited to announce Perfetti Media will be offering two new workshops this October in Boston, Massachusetts. The feedback for our first workshop, the Usability Bootcamp, was excellent and we're pleased to be bringing these latest topics to you.
On October 25th, my good friend Joshua Porter, will be presenting the one-day workshop, Designing for the Social Web: How to Create Engaged and Passionate Users. Josh is an interface designer and co-founder of Performable, and the author of the wonderful book, Designing for the Social Web. In his workshop, Josh will go beyond what he covers in his book, discussing how to take advantage of social features to get your users engaged and passionate about your products.
On October 26th, I will be presenting the one-day workshop, Paper Prototyping: Sketching and Evaluating Your Design Concepts. In this hands-on workshop, you'll learn how to create a fully working paper mock-up of any proposed design, which you can use to collect early feedback through usability testing. You'll discover what aspects of your design work well, and what users have trouble with. Using paper mock-ups, you can make changes very quickly, even during a usability test!
Until September 10th, you can sign up for the workshops for only $695 per day. I hope you can join us for both days in October!
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August 25th, 2010
By Christine Perfetti – August 25, 2010
Social web sites and applications are everywhere: Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, YouTube, Craigslist, and Digg are just a few of the web sites taking advantage of the power of the Social Web. Web sites and applications that incorporate social features are the fastest growing properties on the web for good reason: they connect people, motivate, and engage them. As a result, they grow very quickly and successfully.
Design teams working on all types of products, ranging from e-commerce web sites to financial web applications, want to take advantage of social features to get people engaged and excited about their offerings. Unfortunately, most teams aren't sure where to begin.
That's why we recently talked with interface designer and co-founder of Performable, Joshua Porter. Josh is the author of the wonderful book, Designing for the Social Web, and has been focusing for years to help organizations incorporate social features into their designs. Josh will also be teaching his one-day workshop, Designing for the Social Web, in Boston, Massachusetts this October.
Here is what Josh had to say about Designing for the Social Web:
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June 7th, 2010
By Christine Perfetti – June 7, 2010
The tasks you create for a usability study are essential for gathering the right data. The tasks determine what you'll test and impacts what parts of the design your team fixes. If you give users the wrong tasks, you risk focusing on the wrong parts of the design and providing your design team with misleading recommendations. Yet, teams often overlook the importance of creating robust tasks for their studies.
When creating tasks for a usability study, you'll want to ask yourself the following questions:
- What are your users' goals with the product? List out the specific actions users most commonly complete with your product.
- What are your business goals? In what way does your product or web site help increase revenue or reduce organizational costs? The best tasks focus on areas of the design crucial to your organization's business goals.
- What are the greatest risks with the design? If there are certain areas of the design where you have little knowledge as to how users interact with it, this is a good place to focus the tests.
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June 3rd, 2010
We're pleased to announce Perfetti Media's new two-day workshop, the Usability Bootcamp. This August, we'll offer these interactive and hands-on events in Boston and San Francisco.
Christine Perfetti has helped dozens of companies and agencies improve their designs by bringing research into their process. In this workshop, Christine's put together a program designed to improve your user research, usability testing, and evaluation skills. You'll come away from these two days knowing how to:
- Plan your user research, conduct user interviews, and analyze the data
- Run your in-person and remote usability tests without any outside help
- Conduct advanced usability tests, including 5 second tests and first click tests
- Design a paper mockup and test the design with real users in only one hour
- Develop personas or user profiles to communicate the users' needs throughout your organization
Plus, for our readers, we're offering a special discount. Sign up using promotion code PERF01 and you can attend the event for only $795 – a savings of $300 off the final registration price.
As a special gift, if you sign up by June 24th, we'll give you two complimentary UX books from our good friends from Rosenfeld Media: "Remote Research" and "Prototyping." Find out more about this offer.
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May 26th, 2010
By Christine Perfetti – May 26, 2010
In March 2010, WebEx launched the beta of their new product offering, WebEx Meet. The designers of WebEx Meet intended to create a solution that helps users meet and collaborate with each other in a faster, more efficient way.
I recently had the opportunity to talk about the beta launch with Jon Nakasone, one of the product design leads within the User Experience Group at Cisco WebEx. Jon's group is responsible for bringing innovation to WebEx's online collaboration products and focusing on doing more for the users.
Back in the summer of 2009, Perfetti Media worked with Jon and the WebEx team to conduct a series of usability studies to evaluate the WebEx Meet design. In our interview, I talk with Jon about the launch of the WebEx Meet beta and the WebEx team's approach to design and user research.
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