Posts written by Elisa del Galdo

UCL Interaction Centre John Long Prize

By Elisa del Galdo on 6 October 2009

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Webcredible is very proud to announce that two of our User Experience Consultants, Francesca Pagnacco and Philip Webb, are the joint recipients of UCL’s Interaction Centre (UCLIC) John Long Prize. The John Long Prize is awarded to students (full or part-time) who show outstanding research promise in their MSc project work. Both projects were based at the Victoria Line control room and were concerned with observing and understanding how the line control staff collaborate to keep the Underground train service running smoothly. If you would like more information on either of their projects visit the UCLIC website.

Congratulations, Frankie and Phil!

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EEG as a measure of website success

By Elisa del Galdo on 17 September 2009

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As people continue to strive to find new measures of website success, a method which is currently under scrutiny is electroencephalography or EEG.

Lightning ballSimply put, EEG measures conductance (electrical activity) in the brain, which can be associated with certain emotions, such as surprise or anger. EEG, first developed for testing epilepsy, is most certainly not a quick method and most likely not an effective way to understand emotion in users. Firstly, the practitioner needs to understand the science behind the tool. It can be a very in-depth discipline, so it is crucial that any study is implemented by a professional researcher who is an expert in cognitive neuroscience as well as psychology.

EEG is not a technique that will give the clear black and white results that the industry wants. In the analysis of data, the research must make a lot of deductions when interpreting the results. It is not a test that gives conclusive results on its own, but it can offer useful indicators of emotion, the key being the mapping of the results to particular emotions.

In addition, all of the results can be affected by mood, attention levels and environment, making the interpretation of results even more difficult. Hence, any testing of this sort would require participant numbers of 30 plus. The more participants, the more data there is, and the more time it takes to collect and analyse – pushing the costs up.

EEG may have some interesting potential, but perhaps not in the near future. The key before investing in any research is to thoroughly investigate existing (tried and tested) methodologies, such as usability testing and evaluations of persuasiveness of your site, to ensure that you are using the correct method to achieve your desired results.

Photo credit: Stone Mayson via Flickr/Creative Commons

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The IMRG Experience

By Elisa del Galdo on 15 July 2009

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I had a very refreshing experience last week. I was invited to speak at the IMRG Usability Workshop in London. The IMRG is the leading industry body for global e-retailing. I wrongly assumed it would be a line-up of user experience practitioners preaching to the not-yet-converted or just slightly sceptical audience of e-retailers about the benefits of usability and how great their companies are at delivering these types of services. I couldn’t have been more wrong. It was a selection of non-usability people talking to an audience of non-usability people about their positive experiences with implementing usability and their return on investment from these activities.

The people speaking weren’t just usability enthusiasts who dabbled in the ‘art’ and wanted to drum up support.  They were marketing and online merchandising managers, heads of e-commerce and commercial development, IT directors, and heads of sales who had implemented usability programs and seen the return on their investment and wanted to tell their peers all about it. These are the people who can make a big difference to the UX community.

Although from a practitioner’s point of view, they don’t always get it completely correct, by relaying their positive experiences of implementing usability they’re acting as our ambassadors. They speak the same language as their peers and have similar objectives and goals and can more easily deliver a convincing message. By showing their support (and funding) for integrated usability, and talking to their peers about their experiences, they are delivering a very powerful message and opening  the doors to more and more clients. How refreshing!

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Art vs. design

By Elisa del Galdo on 25 June 2009

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I recently attended a symposium where the objective was to explore the use of typical Human Computer Interaction evaluation methods for the assessment of creative work. Basically, they wanted to understand how best to evaluate art and design from the viewers’ perspective. I thought it was interesting how the disciplines of art and design were grouped together, with the latter, in my opinion, only requiring any serious consideration for evaluation.

Art is simply evaluated by the beholder (and I suppose the critic as well). Either it is liked and appreciated, or it is not. The artist is usually using some medium to express their views or interpretation of many things including an image, event, or emotion. The user, viewer, or the person who experiences the art does not have (in most cases) the opportunity to provide feedback that would affect the result.

Design, has a greater responsibility. Unlike art, it usually has a purpose beyond expression and is used in some way (there is an identifiable receiver or user), and therefore can be evaluated based on that premise. Design also has a whole host of challenges that art does not have.  Firstly, designers usually have to work to a brief or framework that can limit their creativity. These could be constraints as a result of the target audience, size of a product, limitations in technology or user interface structure. They also will, more than likely, have to work collaboratively with a team made up of people from a variety of disciplines, all with a contribution to the final outcome.

As a result of this, they will have to adjust their designs based on stakeholder requirements and user evaluations, and still produce something creative within what may be very constrained boundaries. Alternatively, the artist, although partial to public praise, needs only to please themselves.

The artist would lose much by having to submit to an iterative process of third party evaluation and re-design - Essentially this type of evaluation needs to come from within. The artist looks inward and creates,  where as the designer must look outward and create - Potentially a much more difficult task.

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The importance of Human Computer Interaction to UX

By Elisa del Galdo on 10 June 2009

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I have often been involved in conversations on the differences between those user experience practitioners who are trained and educated in the more traditional areas of industrial engineering, ergonomics, cognitive psychology, or human factors and those who have come to the profession via a degree in Human Computer Interaction (HCI). Those who have the more traditional degrees are eligible to work on things like air traffic control systems and the design of nuclear power plants, but a great many of these people, like myself, have chosen to work in the IT industry on more commercial applications.

As a result, the debate often focuses on the skill-sets possessed by practitioners who have taken the different routes, and the key questions asked are:

  • How important is it for a practitioner to have a deep understanding of the visual, intellectual, motor, and memory capabilities of the users when they are designing commercial systems?
  • How important is it to have the knowledge of implementing empirical research techniques for evaluations when they are rarely used?

The answer to these questions obviously depends on the situation, but the growing demand for usability work in recent years has meant that individuals with very little training in this area are also conducting evaluations and creating designs. In addition, the cost and time pressure of today’s IT industry means that empirical research is not always viable or even understandable by our clients, so simpler and quicker techniques need to be employed in order to get data to inform design.

Therefore, is it necessary, when employing these ‘discount’ techniques for evaluation and creating user interface designs, to have a deeper understanding of cognition and empirical techniques? There is also the question of whether the use of user interface design standards and guidelines, and the knowledge gained in a couple days of training is enough to get effective results. In this fast growing industry, HCI is becoming increasingly important along with how to provide quality services in a fast moving and economically strapped environment.

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