User Experience 2004 User Experience Conference 2004 Las Vegas Oct 3-5 Presented by Nielsen Norman Group

User Experience 2004 Agenda Day 1 – Loose Money –Black Jack –Video Poker Day 2 – Interaction Design 1 –Full Day Workshop Day 3 - Interaction Design 2 Day 4 – Main Event –3 Keynotes

User Experience Attendees Amazon Adobe Systems Cisco Systems Accenture IBM Yahoo Qwest Hewlett-Packard Bank of America Travelocity PayPal Verizon Sprint Dell Sun Microsystems Oracle Napster NYSE PeopleSoft MapQuest Ebay ORC Macro

User Experience 2004 Interaction Design 1& 2 Instructor: Bruce Toganazzi: Principal Nielsen Norman Group, Chief designer WebMD, Original designer for Apple, Sun 2 day workshop High level, theory, conceptual

User Experience 2004 Centralized vs. Decentralized staff Decentralized: –Pro – close to developers, supervisors feel in control, closer to projects –Con – supervisors feel in control, poor resource management; work done in spurts, less learning from each other, less upper support –Improve with communication among decentralized groups Centralized: –Pro – better cross learning, better skills, cross pollination (less reliant on individuals), more powerful –Con- isolation from developers, isolation from marketing and projects, managers fear loss of control –Improve with co-locating designers with developers on projects, primary programmer and designer on projects

User Experience 2004 Life Cycle Engineers like schedules Old: SDLC, Waterfall = Slow –Sequential, Separate New: Fast Track Methodology –Team based, Cooperative, Involve team –Prototyping, Testing –Improves release time

User Experience 2004 Systems Design Never assume the client knows the solution –i.e. “We need a database to store customer phone numbers” Never start with the technology, start with the problem –Don’t solve the wrong problem with the right technology –i.e. “We need to build a system that does X, because Y technology requires us to do it that way” Complexity/Difficulty of programming should not drive system

User Experience 2004 Systems Design There is no average user Requiring pre-registration deters users Use defaults where appropriate: countries, states, etc. Reinforced many usability guidelines Don’t trust your own eyes Don’t trust your own abilities Magic metaphor: Magic works when it is smooth, natural, and unnoticed Any usability testing is good –Early and often –Diminishing returns Prototypes are meant to change

User Experience 2004 Don Norman Expectation Design: The Next Frontier Principal, Nielsen Norman Group Former Vice President at Apple General talk on design and marketing People buy based on design Online experience leaves a lasting impression of a brand

User Experience 2004 Hoa Loranger Teenagers on the Web: Creating compelling Websites User Experience specialist, Nielsen Norman Group Basic usability issues magnified Teenagers are less skilled Task success rates- Teens: 55%, Adults: 66% Teens read less, give up quicker Enjoy interaction: quizzes, polls, message boards, interactive content Many sites confuse teens with sensory overload Many teens not using new technology Teens aren’t kids Volcom, BBCVolcomBBC

User Experience 2004 Jakob Nielsen Web Usability Guidelines Revisited Principal, Nielsen Norman Group “The guru of usability” Mixed emotions among Web professionalsMixed emotions

User Experience 2004 Research Tested 25 Websites –Large, Medium, Small, E-commerce, Govt. Success rates –Site-specific tasks: 66%, 40% in 1997 –Web-wide tasks: 60%

User Experience 2004 Usability Problems 1.Finding (IA, category names, navigation links) 2.Page Design (readability, layout, graphics, amateur, scrolling) 3.Information (content, product info., corporate info., prices) 4.Task Support (workflow, privacy, forms, comparison, inflexible) 5.Search 6.Fancy Design (multimedia, back button, PDF/printing, new window, sound) 7.Other (bugs, presence on Web, ads, new site, metaphors)

User Experience 2004 Results 88% first action was search engine Web-wide tasks: sites visited per task: 3.2 First page visited on site –Homepage 40% 35 sec on page for low-experienced 25 sec on page for high-experienced –Interior page 60% Page views per site –3.3 on temporary sites –5.5 on final site Total time on site –1:49 on temporary sites –3:49 on final site

User Experience 2004 Results 43% low-experienced reading carefully 37% high-experienced reading carefully Others were scanning Even though all text may not be read, all text is important. Typos, incorrect, inaccurate, or outdated information will overshadow good content and jeopardize the user’s perceived credibility of the site.

User Experience 2004 Search Query Strings word81%44%36% 2 words14%33%36% 3 words4%14%16% 4 words1%5%6% 5+ words0%2%7% Mean

User Experience 2004 Revisited Guidelines From Rated for current importance: *** still high-impact problem ** medium-level problem * minor issue now 0 no longer problem Reasons for change –Technology improvements –Behavioral changes in users, e.g. adaptations –Designers restraint

User Experience 2004 Still Equally Important Links don’t change color when visited*** Breaking the Back button*** Opening new browser windows*** Pop-up windows*** Looking like an ad*** Violating Web-wide conventions*** Vaporous content, non-specific hype*** Dense content, non-scannable***

User Experience 2004 Technology Improvements Download time* Frames* Flash** Low-relevancy search listings** Multimedia, long videos** Frozen (fixed) layout instead of liquid layout** Cross-platform design*

User Experience 2004 Behavioral Adaptations Not knowing what’s clickable* Blue links0 Not scrolling “below fold”** Registration* Complex URLs** Pull-down menus, cascading menus*

User Experience 2004 Designers Showing Restraint Plug-ins, bleeding-edge technology* 3-D* Bloated design, overwhelming users* Splash pages* Moving graphics, scrolling text* Non-standard GUI widgets** Not disclosing who’s behind information*

User Experience 2004 Designers Showing Constraint (2) Made-up words* Outdated information** Consistency within a Website** Premature requests for personal information** Having a single site, not splitting up** Orphan pages0

User Experience 2004