2010 November

Usability: Steve Krug’s testing tips you want to use

“Usability is a measure of the quality of a person’s experience in interacting with content or services.”

All website designers aim for high-quality usability, but every site has issues says Steve Krug to an audience of 300+ at the November 17^th Boston PHP Meetup in the Microsoft N.E.R.D center.

Follow along with footage of Krug’s presentation from the Meetup.

A website difficult to navigate loses an audience; greater usability equals greater success.

Fortunately, there are tests you can do to enhance the usability of your website. Run these easy-to-do tests to increase your site’s usability.

Test usability

Have rounds of 3 people examine and critique your site
- Make it a spectator sport
Use Krug’s usability test script
Get feedback on ideas in their rawest form (e.g. a napkin sketch)
“Recruit loosely, and grade on a curve”
- When choosing users to test your site, use people with web browser experience
- You do not have to pick the ideal user as a tester
Test your page monthly
- Makes fixing site more manageable
Test your competitor’s sites
Start testing earlier than you think makes sense: the sooner, the better
Record your testing so you can look back on it

Enhance usability

Focus on the smallest number of most important problems
Focus on the issues users have the most trouble with
Work on the issues that you have the capability to handle and fix
It’s more likely there’s too much on your site getting in the way, than too little
- Simplify your site
Don’t redesign, make corrections
- “I’ve never seen a redesign that worked”- Krug
- Focus on fixing observed problems

Usability testing is easy, cheap, and one of the best things you can do for your website. Use Steve Krug’s wise words as you work on increasing the usability of your website.

For more information, Steve Krug’s webpage and books — Rocket Surgery Made Easy and Don’t Make Me Think — are a “common sense approach to website usability.”

Brand identity: Piece together your mosiac

Brand identity isn’t simply a logo and slogan: Factors and tips for building your brand

By Alexandra Smith

Put away your iron and get out your creativity. Branding is no longer a single searing process of creating an identity, but an arrangement of many factors, a mosaic.

At Podcamp 5 Boston, Tamsen McMahon, of Sametz Associates and Brass Tack Thinking, makes branding clear, similar to a mosaic piece of art. McMahon dubs it “Mosaic Branding”

Brands are

A Vision
A Subject
An Audience
Material
Style
Resolution
- A Mosaic: Many factors carefully positioned to best represent the image you want to portray.

Brands are not

Logos
Messages
Public relations

A brand exists in consumers’ minds.

Brands answer the question: What are we about?

The answer must be abundantly clear: It’s what you represent.

Brand creation tips

Location: Where you are located has a lot to do with how you present yourself.
Audience: If you don’t know who your audience is, you know nothing about your brand. Understand all reasons why people find value in you.
Material: Own your logo, custom labels, tagline, and type.
Resolution: You must create clarity with your audience. The more pieces you put into your picture, the clearer it will be.
Consultation: You can get more information by talking to less people than more, as long as each of those people represents different stakeholder groups.
Be prepared: Be ready for something to go wrong. Own negative press. Consistently deliver pieces to your audience, so that when something goes wrong, you still have what you worked to put together.
It’s about context: Move your brand to a culture of creation. Instead of focusing on controlling individual content, focus on the context in which it is understood — the mosaic.

Start sharpening your tools and use all of the above supplies to create a brand that people will care about.

Archives for November 2010