usability services
project types
Researching how to improve your interactive products
If you tailor your interactive product to the real needs of its users, your products will be more successful. Users will achieve the goals more easily and feel more satisfied with your product. They will use your product more and become loyal to it, and your brand.
When I conduct inquiries, I obtain information about users' likes, dislikes, needs, and their understanding of the system by talking to them individually or in groups, observing them using the system in real work, or letting them answer questions verbally or in written form.
There are several techniques available for finding out more from your target users. After meeting you and finding out more about your project, I can use these techniques to help you discover your users' ultimate goals and preferences.
Contextual inquiry
Contextual inquiry is a structured field interviewing method. It involves conversation as well as observation. Contextual inquiries require a high degree of skill from the usability specialist, in order to ask appropriate questions without interrupting the participants' work flow or influencing their responses. Sometimes two usability specialists are used for a contextual inquiry project, one to conduct the interview, and one to observe and record participant behaviour. You can discover unmet needs and understand existing behaviours in greater depth with this method.
Field observation (ethnographic study)
Field observation is simply observing users at their work and how they manage without your proposed system, or how they use the system you want to improve. Observing them in their own environment may help pinpoint problems that you might not think of in your own office or even in a testing lab. However, even though a skilled observer can be subtle, the very nature of the observation process will likely change the way the user works.
Group participation
Group discussions form valuable sources in examining the customers', or rather the respondents' attitudes to a product. Predetermined and impromptu questions are formulated in a casual atmosphere.
Group discussions have proven to be a significant and time-efficient means of gathering the opinions of several users, while at the same time bringing the field test to a close.
I facilitate informal group sessions, probing the users for their views and requirements with open questions such as
- What would you change, if you were responsible for this product?
- What information should be on the intranet to help you complete a [pre-specified] task more easily.
The user comments can be recorded in several formats depending on your requirements.
Typically the group views are stored as digital photos of whiteboards, completed paper based question sheets, video and audio.
Surveys
Surveys are ad hoc interviews with users, where a set list of questions is asked and the users' responses recorded. Surveys differ from questionnaires in that they are interactive interviews, although not structured like contextual inquiries nor formally scheduled and organized like focus groups.
Questionnaires
Questionnaires are written lists of questions that you distribute to your users. Often, questionnaires are used after sites are launched to assess customer satisfaction with the product. Such questionnaires often identify usability issues that should have been caught before the site goes live.
Questionnaires are an inexpensive way of gathering a great deal of information from a large number of users. Most of the cost involved is in designing (or printing, if it's offline) the questionnaire.