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Boxes and Arrows

Stories from Boxes and Arrows

Quick Turnaround Usability TestingSeptember 18

It starts with any number of scenarios: Design and development have taken too long to produce a prototype, you need to release in three weeks, and you suspect there may be design flaws. You are trying to incorporate usability testing into an Agile development process. Or maybe you simply want to pare down your process to make it shorter and less expensive.

Completing usability testing quickly is a challenge anywhere but especially in consultancies, which have to overcome additional challenges, such as learning a new application. To assure success on these projects, I’ve developed a quick turnaround usability testing methodology (QTUT) that minimizes the time needed to complete testing. In Part I of this article, I discuss how to make the first three steps of QTUT—Sales & Kickoff, Recruitment, and Preparation—as short and efficient as possible. In Part II, I will discuss the final two steps: Testing and Analysis & Reporting.

Steps in the QTUT Process

Step 1: Sales & Kickoff
Step 2: Recruitment
Step 3: Preparation
Step 4: Testing
Step 5: Analysis & Reporting

Sales & Kickoff

A new client or a group within your company has approached you about doing usability testing. They need the results next week, which works out to six business days from today. What should you do?

Before a project kicks off, we typically have a number of discussions with the client to understand th

Getting a Form's Structure Right: Designing Usable Online Email ApplicationsSeptember 18

I started writing this article with an emphasis on the financial domain. I then realized that I would like to broaden the focus because my findings are also applicable to a general domain like email account registrations, for example. In this article, I would like to take a simple example of how users register for an email account online. For a first timer, is the transition from a real world of letter writing to the online medium easy? And for a frequent user, is he or she motivated enough to create an email account with another service provider?

Yes, this is for all of you out there—my fellow usability practitioners, information architects, designers, managers, project leads, editors, and people who are looking to develop their UX practice.

In the modern family, where often both parents are working full-time and the children are involved in many after-school activities, people may only have a few minutes to spare on an important task during the day. And it’s the Internet that supposedly helps people achieve this. But do we, as designers and usability practitioners, always help them do it? I say, “No.”

Just the other day, a friend of mine begins to complain of the spam mails that she receives everyday. “I have two separate email ID’s to keep myself away from such mails—one for official purposes and the other for my junk emails. But even my official ID seems to be flooded with these emails. So I found myself moving to another email service p

Information Architecture for Audio: Doing It RightSeptember 12

Content today is increasingly delivered by audio both online and in the real world. We have radio shows and newscasts, and in recent years, podcasts, audio books and navigation/car assistance systems have been added to the field. Audio is more emotional, as sound effects and acoustic atmosphere enhance content to help deliver its messages. It also affords users the opportunity to interact with content while their hands and eyes are busy (i.e. when doing physical work, driving, walking, etc).

However, the inclusion of audio often results in usability issues that make it difficult for users to access and understand content. That is why we need new tools to organize linear content like audio. Luckily, a wide range of techniques employed in information architecture, journalism, usability engineering and interface design are available. All that’s required is the knowledge to combine them effectively. This article presents a practical framework for designing and implementing audio-based content, such as podcasts.

“There is no reason to over-estimate the importance of writing and thereby under-estimate other technologies of information processing.” Harald Haarmann in History of Writing.

The Problem with Audio

When using audio today, we face challenges similar to those of written text about a decade ago. During this time, information was being transferred from hand-held documents to the computer screen, without b

IDEA 2008: An Interview with Elliott MalkinSeptember 12

Even if you’re trying to find one, the connections among Elliott Malkin’s body of work are hard to see. Part family history, part science project, part home-movie, his projects span genres that, initially, seem incidental. Yet many of his web-based projects—whether they investigate “butterfly vision” or install digital graffiti throughout lower Manhattan—are connected in one simple way: they all explore unofficial signals in public space. Taking on the invisible and the imagined, his projects invite viewers to imagine things that operate beyond their perception.

His latest project, Graffiti for Butterflies, is even further afield from his typical subjects as it deals with natural science. By directing Monarch butterflies to urban food sources it “is the equivalent of a fast-food sign on a highway, advertising rest stops (waystations) to monarchs traveling through the area.”

At the upcoming IDEA conference, Malkin will discuss some of his more renowned projects, as well as some material not yet seen online. I recently got some of his time to find out more about it.

Liz Danzico: As an artist, your work investigates the overlap between memory, information, and physical space. How did you begin investigating memory as a key part of your subject matter?

Elliott Malkin: I’m actually not that int

IDEA 2008: An Interview with David ArmanoSeptember 4

As IDEA 2008 draws closer, the IA Institute is conducting a series of interviews with the speakers for the conference. As Event Coordinator for IDEA, I fill a variety of roles, including the Interviewer of IDEA Presenters (which I proudly share with Liz Danzico).

This is the third interview in the series, and I got to spend time with David Armano, VP Experience Design at Critical Mass. David has been seen at many conferences this year, and has quite possibly been seen cruising through Chicagoland on his motorcycle in his down time. He also blogs about experience design at Logic + Emotion.

RU: How did you get your start in the design industry?

DA: At birth. I was born with two eyes and a brain and I’ve been a “visual person” since I can remember. I was always the person in class doodling, or drawing something. Or just daydreaming. I would say that the formal training I received didn’t really happen until I enrolled into design school (Pratt), and that’s where I learned the basics of design as well as how it intersected with technology. Like many, my first job out of school was in graphic design—I then moved into broadcast and in 1997 I made the jump to Web and I haven’t looked back. While I appreciated all sorts of design and the strategie