Compete on Usability

Tips for presenting screen mockups

I just finished Dan Brown's excellent Communicating Design. It's a very practical cookbook of design documentation: how and when to use ten different types of deliverables. Brown writes from a consulting background, which is different from mine, so it was interesting to contrast it with my methods of working with internal company stakeholders.

When presenting a design to coworkers, I try to remember the following guidelines:

Do outline your specific goals at the beginning.  One mistake I used to make was presenting people with a mockup (whether in a meeting or over email) and simply asking for feedback without context. This laissez-faire approach tends to result in incorrect assumptions and irrelevant feedback.

Instead, introduce the mockup by explaining the rationale behind your design process, and ask for feedback on the specific aspects you need. If the conversation wanders, explain that parts of the visual aren't final enough to be ready for comments.

Don't show people many design alternates, even if you explored them yourself.  As Brown points out, this often brings about the dreaded Franken-design, when the stakeholder says "I like the header component from mockup 1, but the content component from login 2."  Research shows that comparing multiple choices can lead to greater dissatisfaction than if the stakeholder simply had one design to evaluate.

Moreover, stakeholders don't have time to look at your different directions and listen to you ruminate on the inevitable tradeoffs of design. So hang onto all your work, but don't introduce alternates unless they're needed to address a specific point that comes up.

Do tailor the process to individuals. On an internal team, you can learn what's aspects of design are important to each stakeholder and colleague. Ensure that your design addresses likely concerns and requirements and be ready to articulate how it does so.

Don't leave interactivity to a stakeholder's imagination. Web page mockups as a design deliverable are on the way out -- or, at least, they're no longer sufficient.  The nuances of how screen elements respond to users' actions can be critical for your larger team to understand, particularly when you're defining a new behavior not reflected elsewhere in your product.

Low-impact ways to model interactivity include keyframing and annotation.  For higher-fidelity prototyping, you can employ the interactive features of Visio or Powerpoint, or code a prototype using Axure or Flash.

Google Charts API

If you do any display of usability result online, try out the Google Charts open API at http://code.google.com/apis/chart/. Unlike other chart APIs I have seen (Yahoo, for example), you don't need Javascript or any embedded code.  Just a correctly formatted URL.  There are plenty of examples at the Google code URL to get you started.  Don't forget to avoid legends whenever possible, though I'm disappointed the API doesn't currently support much in the way of labeling.

I wouldn't mind seeing a Web form to help with formatting the URLs though.  Anyone seen one yet?

Usability ROI: metrics aren't enough

Does your boss tell you, "If you can't measure it, you can't manage it?" One of the reasons usability doesn't mesh with business at some companies is that it can be difficult to quantify the benefits of good usability. In response, usability gurus have spilled barrels of virtual ink trying to transform usability's qualitative nature into something closer to Six Sigma. One hundred percent ROI on average, they trumpet!

I find these arguments don't survive examination. Face it, websites differ so much in their audiences, tasks and business models that it seems ridiculous to average out their usability ROI. Now, there are all kinds of metrics to quote related to usability, such as time on task, task completion rate, and user satisfaction. However, only rarely can these metrics can be generalized, or compared directly across product lines.

In addition, many companies (especially those where usability is new) are not  interested in running careful studies and analysis that exclude all other factors. So often, a usability professional must contend with vectors like content updates, marketing spend and seasonal differences all contributing to a before / after analysis.

I have mixed feelings about usability ROI. If your higher-ups insist on you proving it, chances are they're already biased against funding usability. There's better return on your time by emphasizing qualitative benefits along with the numbers:

• Positive customer experiences strengthen your brand.
• Having a usability group helps sales and marketing promote products.
• Don't forget user experience: the overall delightful quality of the user's involvement with your company, offline and on, transcends narrow usability metrics.

Automatic usability monitoring

Wouldn't usability be easier if you could just fold it into web analytics? Your web analytics vendor thinks so. Companies like Tealeaf are selling add-ons that catch errors and watch metrics to find usability problems with your website. But web analytics is not real usability.

First of all, the usability best practice is to catch problems before they happen, through good user-centered design and usability testing of prototypes. Analytics are only good for finding usability problems after they've bothered your users.

Second, an analytics package can only do half the work. It'll tell you something is wrong, but in usability it's even more challenging to know how to fix a problem. Let's say you publish an online newsletter, and too many users are submitting incomplete signup forms. There could be all kinds of reasons for this: misleading language, an overly lengthly form, or an error in the form code, to name a few. Tweak the wrong thing, and you actually could worsen performance.

Third, when it comes to usability, it's easy to misinterpret statistics. If you update your product design and users begin taking longer to accomplish tasks, is that really a problem? It could be they're being more careful and getting better results. Perhaps it's a temporary change that will fade as users grow accustomed to the new look and feel. Maybe they're watching that new video advertisement you implemented.

I'm very skeptical of automatic usability monitoring, though I expect to encounter it more and more over time. After all, usability experts are expensive, and the technology industry has a natural bias  towards technical solutions.