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

What I love about ThisNext

I love the cool, eclectic products I discover on ThisNext - fashion, gadgets, eco friendly products, art, design objects and cupcake accessories. There's something for everyone here, and I get a kick out of browsing the site every time.

Going to the UIE Web App Summit

The UIE Web App Summit is a 4 day event in Newport Beach starting this Sunday. I'll be attending Robert Hoekman's full day workshop "Web App Anatomy: Effective Interaction Design within Frameworks." I checked out Robert's 1 hour session at SXSW and liked what he had to say, so I'm really looking forward to a full day of learning from him. Here's the workshop description:

One of the hardest parts of any web application design project is the starting point. Making the jump from a high-level understanding of the application’s goals to the fine-grain detail necessary for the application’s design can be a brutal experience. After all, how do you know if you've captured all the essential elements or if you're leaving something crucial out?

That’s why we’ve asked Robert Hoekman, author of the bestselling books, Designing the Obvious and Designing the Moment, to talk about his nifty process for helping teams get started faster, whether they’re building a new application from scratch or enhancing an existing design. In his process, he’s put together a set of frameworks and principles aimed to jumpstart and focus the team’s design efforts.

In this new full-day seminar, you’ll learn to think about your application anatomically—to break it into essential subsystems that interact to make it fully functional. You’ll use frameworks—compiled sets of interaction design patterns—to form your design’s starting point. You’ll see how a complete set of frameworks can ensure the team includes all the important details you’ll need for important usage scenarios and creating enjoyable user experiences. Robert will also demonstrate how you’ll use his concrete set of interaction design principles to quickly resolve the hundreds of important decisions that will crop up during your design process. Robert has created a proven list of guiding principles with a record of empowering teams to reach new levels of excellence.

Check out the other full day workshops from Luke Wroblewski from Yahoo!, Dan Brown from Eight Shapes and more.

Lea Ann Hutter's Portfolio

I'm currently a User Experience Designer at LinkedIn. My PDF portfolio features past UX and UI design solutions, branding and creative direction for companies such as:

Kaboodle.com
I worked as Senior UI Designer at Kaboodle.com, one of the earliest innovators in the social shopping space. My work at Kaboodle goes beyond visual design of core features to encompass product strategy, feature analysis, writing and wire framing complete task flows such as Facebook Login. I also work closely with product and engineering to develop iterations of the SEO catalog page and SEM landing page for A/B testing to increase affiliate monetization.

ThisNext.com
As the User Experience Designer at ThisNext.com, I developed UI solutions that balanced meeting revenue goals with creating an engaging user experience. I provided creative direction, maintained ThisNext’s brand across the network, concepted partner integrations and developed competitive analysis (industry wide and feature specific). I also lead a scrum team and managed other designers.

From 1999 to early 2008, I was Principal and Creative Director at Hutter Design. My focus was building solid, long term client relationships and delivering successful design solutions on time and budget. Most of my clients retained my services for 3 or more years for projects that ranged from branding, advertising, email marketing, web sites with CMS, UI design and usability consultation. Here's a few highlights:

Glow.com
I consulted with Glow on UI design that simplified the online shopping experience. I also designed the Glow logo and art directed the section graphics.

Wazap.com
I created high fidelity mock ups of proposed site features, search plug ins and supporting graphics for Wazap.com, the US gaming search engine.

The full scoop on these projects (with annotated visuals) is just a click away. I welcome you to check out my PDF portfolio and my résumé on LinkedIn.

The first LA UX book club

There's so many excellent UX groups in LA and I'm thrilled to be part of a brand new one - the LA UX Book Club. We met for the first time at the Santa Monica library to discuss Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences. Our collective take on the book was that it was an epic sketch that needed editing. But it did provide a fantastic springboard for discussions about wireframing techniques, sketching as a tool vs as a deliverable, setting expectations as part of the design process, stealing time to sketch, the challenge of UX designing in agile, communicating and establishing trust with clients, and personas - useful or useless?

Check out some of the resources we discussed:
• Balsamiq, the online wireframing app that makes your wireframes look hand drawn
• GUI magnets for enhanced whiteboard sketching
• 3 book recommendations about communicating and pursuasion: Crucial Conversations, On Dialogue and Nudge
...and if you decide to skip the book, do check out Bill Buxton's talk at Interaction 08 (thanks for the link Elise!)