Comment on the Usabilty Course in Madrid

There are many reasons why I really liked the Usability Course two weekends ago in Madrid. The course consisted on theory and exercises on a few of the main usability processes that are used. It was very fulfilling since we did a lot of practical exercises on the class including Heuristics Analysis, User Testing and Card Sorting.

Heuristics Analysis
We started by doing a general analysis on an example site. The iberia.es website was chosen for the evaluation. We found out that it has so many serious problems that you start to think if there’s really someone with responsibility for the website or if the main goal is really to sell tickets… We then proceeded to make a formal evaluation using the heuristics list and writing down on the process deliverable (aka. word document). For this step me and Ivo choose the chip7.pt website. We already knew from previous experiences in using the website that it has some serious problems. The conclusions of the evaluation confirmed that with some minor changes the chip7 website could be much much better. The chip7 case is even worst since it considered the biggest e-commerce website in Portugal and it’s mother company claims to be experts in Usability…

User Testing
On User Testing we prepared all the process with maximum detail. On the day before the tests we designed the scenarios and the tasks in order for the user to evaluate the website. With the help from Eduardo we choose optize.es has the testing site. Lara (spanish girl, 20 years-old, good Web knowledge) was our user and we all watched has she managed to complete the tasks successefully. The conclusions showed that she did complete the tasks successfully but that it took too much time than it would take in normal conditions. All this form a power user that used to buy air tickets from the Internet… The results were have tremendous value and it showed that Real User Testing is one of the most powerful tools in doing Usability Evaluation on a Website.

Prototyping and Card Sorting
Evaluation techniques are very useful when you have to test interfaces that already exist. But you can start having user-centered design even before that. Prototyping and Card Sorting are 2 techniques that let’s you start doing just that. Prototyping is the technique that allows you to do rapid prototyping design with low or high level mockups that can be used to evaluate a design or layout.

Card Sorting is the best known Information Architecture technique. It consists on the selective grouping of several name, ids, etc so that the information in order to organize website information just as it is on the users mind.
Prototyping is a technique used to allow the fast design and testing of websites. Using low or high-level mockups you can begin designing your storyboards which can be used to do Heuristic or User Testing. Idealistically, with a few design-test iteractions this process will provide a much better interface.

Usability in other devices: mobiles, ATMs and tactile screens.
On the last talk that was given by the kindly Miquel Nieto from evolucy we spoke about Usability on non-Web devices. Much of this talk was focused on the issues regarding doing user-centered design and development for non-standard interfaces. We covered such diverse devices as mobiles, tactile screens and ATMs. One of the key points I took from Miquel’s talk was the difficulty in designing for the mobile industry. In the Web world we have 2 major incompatibility problems: Internet Explorer and Firefox. But on mobiles that number can multiplied by hundreds. Dealing with different screens and keyboards is probably the biggest challenge in this industry.

Note 1: Eduardo and Miquel were tireless all the time. They were completely available every time anyone had any specific or general question.

Note 2: Everyone at the course was very nice. Despite some insignificant initial language misunderstandings teamwork was achieved with great success during all the weekend. Thanks you to you all!

One final note: I had talked to Eduardo tens of times before this course but only on the opportunity to meet him personally I was able to confirm this (personally) long time idea that Eduardo is a great communicator. When Eduardo is explaining something he’s always concerned that you really understand what he is talking about and he is unrestless about it. Thank you Eduardo for all the suppport.

update: a few photos from the course are now online.

March 9, 2005 | Tags: day to day, usability

comments

One Response to “Comment on the Usabilty Course in Madrid”

Carlos Jorge Andrade on March 10th, 2005

The chip7 case is even worst since it considered the biggest e-commerce website in Portugal and it��s mother company claims to be experts in Usability�Ķ
Well, to be accurate, Chip7 is *the* mother company. SearaSoft began as a spin-off of Chip7’s IT department. Like Introduxi was created to be logistics arm of Chip7. Both of them(Chip7 & Introduxi) are now in a holding called Avanport.

But yes, the site sucks and the Seara/Usability thing is just a marketing stunt. And they rule in marketing…