User experience blog

Metrics help to focus user testing

By Alistair Gray on 27 October 2010

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Site metrics is a massive tool for a user experience consultant. It can give us an early view of user behaviour before any testing is carried out, potentially signaling key problem pages and areas of interest.

I’ve used site metrics countless times to direct my research, and I’ve seen that games companies have started doing the same. I read an article in which Bioware show some of the metrics they’ve gathered from Mass Effect 2 (For a much more interesting example of how to use metrics to guide game design, read ‘Master metrics: The science behind the art of game design’ in Game usability).

I have to admit - I was stunned when I found out game developers weren’t able to/haven’t been collecting game play metrics until recently. I suppose consoles haven’t been online until this generation and there may be privacy issues but it’s been such a large part of the user experience toolkit for so long (and they’re so helpful) that I just naturally assumed they were available as a matter of course.

Either way, if you are a developer and you’re not building a method to record user metrics into your game - do it, do it now. Metrics can start opening the window to understanding user behaviour. And once you understand your users you can make more informed, better design decisions.

One thing to remember, metrics can potentially show you where issues are occurring, but they can’t explain why these issues are occurring, e.g. Why was ‘Soldier’ the most popular class by such a long way?

No matter how enlightening metric data can be, there’s nothing that can replace user testing.

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Playing with the Kindle 3

By Yeevon Ooi on 25 October 2010

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amazon-kindle3

I’m halfway through my first book on the new Amazon Kindle and I must say it’s quite an interesting experience.

Being a bit of a purist when it comes to books, I’ve always thought that nothing can beat a good old paperback where you can flip through pages of text and/or images and do whatever it is people do to books such as folding the edge as a bookmark, annotating, using it as a propping tool etc.

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What I like about the Kindle 3 is its nice sleek design with its interesting screen savers. It’s very light and thin, very portable and easy to carry around as it doesn’t take up much space in a bag.

My favourite features on the Kindle include the annotation function where you can highlight passages of text which is then automatically stored, and also the built-in dictionary function which allows you to view definition of words by just positioning the cursor before the beginning of the word.

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However, I do have some issues with the ergonomics of the Kindle. As you need to hold it like a book, the fact that it’s very thin and bigger than the size of one’s palm (at least my palm) makes it quite tricky to have a firm grip on it with one hand without my fingers either pressing on the screen or on the keypad. Some sort of rubber band on the back of the Kindle so that I can slide my hand under the band snugly and not worry about the Kindle slipping off my hand would be nice.

Also, the back and next button on the Kindle needs a bit of getting used to. The usual mental model of right arrow = next and left arrow= back doesn’t work on the Kindle as both of the next and back buttons are located on top of each other on both sides of the Kindle.

Lastly, thanks to the touchscreen invention on mobile devices, it is natural to want to use touchscreen to navigate on the Kindle but as it’s not a touchscreen device, I have to resist the urge to poke around on the reading screen and get used to the keypad buttons which needs a bit of learning.

It’s good for text-heavy books but image-heavy books tend to struggle a bit with the Kindle layout. You can browse the internet and check your emails on it if you don’t mind the entirely black and white display.

Still, it’s a good device to have given it’s very easy to purchase books online and being able to read them almost right after the purchase. All in all, it does support the act of reading but it requires some learning and compromising.

Photo credit: Aurum3 NewTech

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Revive the C.R.A.P. principles

By Yeevon Ooi on 22 October 2010

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It’s the most basic design principle. There’s no excuse for not remembering it. Yet I see it being violated over and over again. So, as a reminder, here we go again:

Contrast

If you want anyone to be able to read your advert, website, presentations etc.,  it’s important to ensure there’s good contrast between the message that you want people to pay attention to and other noise around it so that your message stands out. This can usually be achieved by using appropriate colour contrast, image contrast, text size, image size, plus taking into account the medium where the message will be presented: banner advert, website, mobile phone, magazine etc.

Repetition

If you are using a certain style in your design, try to keep the consistency by repeating the same style across the design. Especially on websites, repetition aids scanning (which is how most people browse websites by the way), so don’t present your text in various styles all around your website. For example if you use a dark blue font size 48 for all level one headings, repeat that across the site. It also makes a website look less cluttered and clean

Alignment

Make sure everything is aligned and organised. Text, images, form fields, bullet points … Nothing is more annoying than having to dart your eyes around the page while reading something. It also reduces the effectiveness of the message if information is not aligned properly. So what’s good alignment ? It depends really. For a long passage of text, left alignment makes it easier for reading from left to right. Central alignment works well for title headings when used properly, but centrally aligned text is just too hard to read.

Proximity

What belongs together stays together and vice versa. Elements on a page which are related to each other should be grouped together and likewise, elements that don’t relate to each other shouldn’t be placed in close proximity as this might confuse its readers. That sounds straightforward but is not always easy to apply to website designs. Hence taking user tasks into consideration is also important in making decisions on organising page elements according to relevant proximity.

If anything, the above principles should be used as a magic mantra the next time you hesitate where to put that little box (or anything else) on a web page. Just chant C.R.A.P. and make sure that all 4 principles are fulfilled before the little box finds its home.

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Head of business development job vacancy

By Trenton Moss on 22 October 2010

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Webcredible is recruiting! We’re looking for that special someone to join our growing team in London as our head of business development.

Historically we’ve been rather reactive with regards to business development, relying on inbound enquiries coming from our (to-date very successful) marketing strategies. We want to significantly grow the business and so are looking for the right person to proactively generate and close new business leads.

In the short-term you’ll be working mostly independently within the company; long-term, we’d like you to build up a small business development team as you contribute significantly to the company growing.

Read the full job description for more, send over your CV and you could be working here sooner than you think!

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Ecommerce Expo 2010

By Abid Warsi on 21 October 2010

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Webcredible had a stand at the Ecommerce Expo again this October which ran on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you came by you’ll have noticed that our stand looked very different. We changed our brand and logo on Monday, and we had a new stand design with the new look and feel to match.

We met some really interesting companies at the event again which we’re looking forwarding to working with. It was also good to catch-up with some of our existing clients who came to the show and stopped by our stand.

We also launched our Ecommerce Usability report: ‘The Online High Street: 5 years of improvement’ at the show. There was a general trend for scores to go up this year and John Lewis jumped from up from 3rd place in 2009 to 1st place in 2010. With the Internet retailing marketplace continuing to grow it makes sense that Internet retailers are continuing to invest time and resources in making their websites effective and persuasive.

Feel free to download the report or listen to the podcast.

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