Low cost usability testing

UserTesting.com is fast, cheap, quick and dirty testing - and that's a very good thing! You can commission one or more 15 minute tests specifying the demographic profile of your target audience, how many users you want, and what tasks you want them to perform on your site. The deliverable is a screen recording with think-aloud audio which is typically ready for viewing in 24 hours or less.

I heard about this via Steve Krug's e-newsletter, who passed along this fantastic deal: "until the end of May they're letting people buy pre-paid test credits at the old price, which are good for a year. If you haven't tried it yet, do it now (they have a 30-day money back guarantee) so that if you like it you can stock up on some credits while there's still time." If Steve Krug recommended it, you know it's good. Thanks Steve!


http://www.usertesting.com/index.aspx?Price=19

UX inspiration from Konigi

Konigi is a beautiful site chock full of inspiration for user experience designers. They showcase examples of interface and visual design in their galleries and point you to some interesting UX resources in their notebook section.

Ideas for ideating online

For the past 2 weeks I've been ideating mashup concepts for my UX design for web class. The students have been sharing links and observations through our class Google Group. Some of us use IM and phone to discuss each other’s projects. But the one thing that we haven't shared much of outside of class is our actual sketches. This has proven a challenge, as the kind of feedback you can give and receive from sharing sketches is much different, and better, than sharing ideas strictly with words.

Here's some interesting tools we could explore in our quest for online collaboration:

Cozimo
It's a real time multi user whiteboard! One of my clients recommended this to me and says it works like a charm on Mac and PC.

Flickr Photo Groups and SlideShare Groups
Flickr is the ubiquitous forum for viewing and commenting on images. SlideShare is like the multipage cousin of Flickr. And how great is it that there's a group that's collecting slide shows about Web 2.o tools for effective teaching? I did a quick scan and thought this one about Web 2.0 educational applications had a lot of great resources, some of which we've experimented with in our class, like Zoho and Google Docs. Personally, I found Google Docs to be more stable and robust than Zoho Writer, but there's a whole suite of tools that look worthy of exploring, such as web conferencing and project management software.

VoiceThread
"A VoiceThread is an online media album that can hold essentially any type of media (images, documents and videos) and allows people to make comments in 5 different ways - using voice (with a microphone or telephone), text, audio file, or video (with a webcam) - and share them with anyone. A VoiceThread allows group conversations to be collected and shared in one place, from anywhere in the world." Think of the potential this has not only for our critiques, but for client presentations and online portfolios. My first (quick) impression is that it's also a great example of a user friendly GUI.

Who wants to test drive these tools with me?

The wonderful world of prototyping tools

Last week I attended the LA User Experience Meetup at Wongdoody, a marketing ideas agency in Culver City. The focus of the evening was an iRise demo, a tool that makes wireframes and hi fidelity mock ups interactive and annotatable. It uses layout and functionality paradigms familiar to anyone who uses Adobe CS3 apps. iRise is definitely a big team tool, as it allows multiple people to work on 1 doc simultaneously, and the licensing price starts at 5k.

After the demo a few classmates and I got into a conversation about all the different prototyping tools available. So which ones should we be using? In my quest for the answer, I discovered a world of opinions, not just on the tools but how they're used together to communicate everything from rough ideas to polished presentations.

I recently joined IxDA and found some excellent threads on this topic. Check out What tools do you use for prototyping? and the feisty debate that sprang from that, Paper is not a prototyping tool. Here's just a few of the tools UX designers use:

1. Paper. Where ideas are born. Besides the shower.

2. Visio & Omnigraffle: Often referred to as Mac & PC equivalent of each other.

3. Axure & iRise. Similar in the fundamentals, but not in price.

4. Intuitect: First heard about this on Boxes and Arrows

5. Flash, Dreamweaver and After Effects: While Flash and Dreamweaver are often top of mind on the visual design/production end, they're commonly used for simulating interactions, such as a drag and drop. After Effects, a motion graphics app, can often express in movement what would be hard to describe in words.

6. HTML, CSS & AJAX: More control, but without the WYSISWG interface.

7. Photoshop, Illustrator, & InDesign: The crossover apps between print and web design.

8. Powerpoint and Keynote: Some people add their Visio wireframes in Powerpoint to create a client demo.

9. Canvas 11: Haven't heard much about it. Looks similar to Illustrator.

10. GUI magnets: Enhance your whiteboard or your fridge! Not a product you can buy... yet. But I want to. You can also make your own with magnetic backed paper from Staples.

There are more. Many more. Bottom line? The tools you use will most likely be determined by your company. Some companies test drive new tools while others stick to the tried and true. The most important things you need as a UX designer are your ideas. How you communicate them can take innumerable forms.

Image by scui3asteveo via flickr, used under a Creative Commons license