Paths of Desire or, how to connect with people so they ......搀 氀攀愀瘀椀渀最...
24
Paths of Desire ... Or, how to connect with Paths of Desire ... Or, how to connect with people people So they So they want want to beat a path to your door... to beat a path to your door... 1
Paths of Desire or, how to connect with people so they ......搀 氀攀愀瘀椀渀最 瀀愀最攀猀 焀甀椀挀欀氀礀⸀ 吀漀 猀漀洀攀 攀砀琀攀渀琀 眀攀 愀爀攀
Paths of Desire ... Or, how to connect with Paths of Desire ... Or, how to connect with peoplepeople
So they So they wantwant to beat a path to your door...to beat a path to your door...1
User-centered design...Because we have to.
A desire path is a path created by usage, not a pre-determined path. Normally these paths are created by people taking shortcuts across fields to get from Point A to Point B more quickly than the pre-determined paths (like sidewalks) that have been put in place.
- Gaston Bachelard, from his book “The Poetics of Space,” from Wikipedia
2
photo is fromSweet Juniper! blog
Presenter
Presentation Notes
A desire path is a path created by usage, not a pre-determined path. Normally these paths are created by people taking shortcuts across fields to get from Point A to Point B more quickly than the pre-determined paths (like sidewalks). This is a great metaphor for the way human endeavor bends the rules to a purpose, for how design can sometimes obstruct rather than guide. If our stuff can't be found, or the site is aggravating to use or disappointing in its offered results, we all lose out. But particularly if we are trying to serve undergraduates or the public at large. Younger people are used to clicking links quickly, and leaving pages quickly. To some extent we are all being trained in these ways of the wild Internet of tomorrow, getting more impatient by the minute. Desire paths tell us we need to listen. NOTE: the blog entry is really interesting! pictures from Detroit, and musings about “les chemin du désir”; just click on the words “Sweet Juniper blog” to read more… http://www.sweet-juniper.com/2009/06/streets-with-no-name.html
Why are you here?You can't find something on your own website!
You know your user interface needs work but aren't sure what to do
3
You have a hunch you can improve access & believe that your users hold the key... You're right!
imag
e by
Afri
ca, p
ortfo
lio:
http
://w
ww
.free
digi
talp
hoto
s.ne
t/im
ages
/vie
w_p
hoto
g.ph
p?ph
otog
id=1
803
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Why are you here? Can't use your own website? Our profession is service-oriented, as a rule, so we are ahead of the curve in focusing on our patrons and trying to adapt to changing needs, changing approaches, changing technology and the ways we use technology to get things done or find stuff. http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=1803 Image: africa / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Perceived constraints...Too hard, Learning curve
Too expensive, for lots of reasons:
No time, need special training & staff
Need special equipment or labs
4
QuickQuickUsability can be fun!
EasyCheapCheap
Presenter
Presentation Notes
You may have gotten push back or reluctance to consider new approaches to improving services. But my experience with quick, easy, cheap and FUN usability work has made me a passionate advocate for it. Everyone can do something to make their sites and access tools and even their reading rooms or signage more effective, more understandable, and provide a more enjoyable experience for everyone both on location and online. All you really need are observers, test recruits, pad and pen, and some cheap incentives, like coffee, donuts or an iTunes gift card. Once people see the difference user-centered design makes, they will become new converts.
BASIC CONCEPTSBASIC CONCEPTS
5
Iteration is essential Iteration is essential
Lather, rinse, repeat. Again... And again….
6
Presenter
Presentation Notes
You may have already encountered this idea before, and you'll hear it over and over because it's so important. Goes along with that "good enough" philosophy I've been hearing at MAC. Don't try to do it all at once or wait until it's done. It never is. But that's OK. Doing something is progress, IF you ask your users what you need to do! (and keep on asking…)
AffordancesPerceptual psychologist J.J. Gibson, as popularized by Donald Norman in The Design of Everday Things.
What is possible should be perceived & understood
If the user can't find what they want, it's your fault
Constraints & conventions
Perceptual psychologist J.J. Gibson, as popularized by Donald Norman in The Design of Everday Things.
What is possible should be perceived & understood
If the user can't find what they want, it's your fault
Constraints & conventions
7
These handles ...Pull, or push?
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Definition: The word "affordance" was originally invented by the perceptual psychologist J. J. Gibson (1977, 1979) to refer to the actionable properties between the world and an actor (a person or animal). Concept was opularized by Donald Norman, a user-centered design guru who wrote The Design of Everyday Things, and Emotional Design. See his webiste jnd.org, and his blog essays: “… concept has caught on, but not always with true understanding I should have used the term ‘perceived affordance’…. What the designer cares about is whether the user perceives that some action is possible (or in the case of perceived non-affordances, not possible).“ Use Constraints & conventions to help user, e.g. Search box in the expected place, with appearance and function as it’s implemented on other very popular sites Applies to real world, not JUST UI. Doors are a great example of affordances & confusion in their design is a common experience Can the user grasp how it works by how it looks?
Mental modelsWhose? Does the user's idea of how it works match the designer's?
Related to sense of place, space: how can I move within this place; where can I go & how do I know where I am?
8
user
exp
erie
nce
desi
gn a
rticl
e on
uxm
ag.c
om
image from an article by Susan Weinschenk,click link above to read
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Mental models? Does the user's match the designer's? Traversing or navigating the space: LOTS of usability hinges on comprehensible navigation through the virtual place/space on the web. And a sense of how I can move within this place & what happens when I get there is a big part of my mental model when I visit your site. Familiarity breeds not contempt in this case, but comfort, ease of use, understandability. Does this do what I expect it to? Conventions are scroll bars, mouse, clickable areas on a screen. Metaphors can help the user (but be careful!): here the graphic shows the user conceptualizing the book app on the iPad as functioning the same as a real print book.
A sense of placeWhy are we here? Mission
Real location, virtual space
Online sites easy to leave quickly: what draws someone to your portal? What keeps them exploring your space & stuff?
Good user experience: stick around, explore. Satisfaction = return visits
9
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Mission and identity: why we are here. If you communicate who you are well & quickly, that helps the user guess correctly what they will find there Ideas from David Weinberger’s Small Pieces Loosely Joined : space & time are different on the web A sense of place is essential online, & is the basis for many of the heuristic principles & design guidelines you will discover Real world & virtual can be integrated for maximum branding, recognition and knowing where I belong What draws someone to your portal, or your door? Don't lose your quick on the draw undergrads. High bounces & impatience are common responses to sites that are hard to navigate or don’t deliver what’s expected
Where to start?
Rediscover your clientele, constituencies, patrons
10
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Where to start? Rediscover your clientele, constituencies, patrons. Your ideas and mental models may not be an immediate match!
You are not a user....
Don't assume you know, ask them!
Who are your current users? Who do you want to appeal to or serve?
Do you know what they know?
How do they search?
Don't assume you know, ask them!
Who are your current users? Who do you want to appeal to or serve?
Do you know what they know?
How do they search?
11
Presenter
Presentation Notes
What's obvious to you often is not for your patrons. How many times have you been looking for something, and ask a bystander only to discover that the door or sign was right in front of you all along? The user is never wrong; the design is. But they feel wrong, or stupid, or tech-unsavvy. You need to know what's most important to them, what their mental model is of your service & access points As an added plus, knowing your current & target constituents is key to furthering your mission... You CAN discover who your users are & how they work in a variety of ways...even users that aren't "yours" yet. And you should use all the UI and design tricks you can to guide the user to feel and be right! That's exactly what usability testing helps you do!
12
Steal this site!Steal this site!
Use ConventionsUse Conventions
Presenter
Presentation Notes
In usability, this is called following conventions. Stealing a site user interface (UI) that is so popular as to be a cultural convention is not unethical, it's smart. Stealing is a best practice! Users feel immediately comfortable with your site, and quickly create a mental model for how it works. This is a usability guideline: follow conventions & user expectations. How a nav element on your site works should not surprise the user. If you are following cultural norms as implemented in the top sites, their model will match! Look up most popular websites and analyze their metaphors, placement of functional elements like search and navigation and compare. Look at sites with similar demographics, but don't be shy about stealing any good idea you find out there... Just make sure you test it with your user groups!
DIY, or small groupHeuristic Analysis: Jacob Nielsen's Alertbox@ useit.com
Web usability guidelines & checklists
Webpagesthatsuck.com
Card sorting
Rapid Paper Prototyping
13
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Applying guidelines & heuristics to really bad or personally annoying sites is useful. Helps you know what to look for on your own site, and internalize why fixes are needed. and what the solutions can be. Webpagesthatsuck is brash, even offensive, but also instructive... Card sorting helps with overall site structure; info architecture. Rapid paper prototypes are way faster to create and iterate than working software, and VERY cheap to discard and start from scratch. Get Creative! All of these techniques are surprisingly effective, & cheap!
Heat maps: Crazy Egg shows you where users click on your site
Personas: make actual people into representative avatars
Ethnographic approach
Tests using tasks & think aloud method
14
Empathy &
Observation
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Google Analytics can show when have too high a rate of people bouncing off your pages. Crazy egg more detailed, but NOT free. They do have pricing plans, though, and you can budget your plan using a phase-structured redesign. Heat maps will show exactly where users thought functional elements were. Indicates level of frustration if they are clicking on non-active spots! Personas distil your actual users into composites who can then be led through a scenario or use case. Helps to pinpoint tasks to user groups. Especially useful if a particular group is hard to recruit for in person testing, or you simply aspire to reaching them. Do what's called a “Cognitive Walkthrough” with these avatars to see how they might complete tasks. This method is also good in small teams. An ethnographic approach consists of observing people in their native habitats, doing their work, and conducting interviews as well. Michelle & Emily will have more later about in person tests.
Or just ask...Surveys, focus groups, solicit comments....
15
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Nielsen asked readers of his usability blog to send in their top 10 design mistakes. He usually did his yearly summary of bad site highlights on his own. He asked his newsletter readers to vote for their pet peeves! Here is what he discovered that the website users really want (from their opinions about what sucked): text they can read; content that answers their questions; 3) navigation and search that help them find what they want; 4) short and simple forms (streamlined registration, checkout, and other workflow); and … 5) no bugs, typos, or corrupted data; no linkrot; no outdated content. That doesn’t seem to be asking too much, now, does it? ; ) Center for Black Music Research in-person and online survey (using Survey Monkey). Purpose was to discover first of all what basic knowledge students have about archival materials, and how they might use these things for their coursework, or even just for fun (imagine!) A secondary purpose was discovering their understanding of library and archives terms (a common obstacle) and how they get their information or look for research materials, in addition to a little info about their social media and in person social habits. To my delight the IRB decided it was not necessary for me to go through that process, since the survey was just meant to improve our service to patrons. Side benefit of survey= raising awareness of archives & what they are (what kinds of stuff we have) on campus, as well as our organization. Don't forget to iterate your tools too, especially if you observe or talk to people taking your survey. Or have some test users give you feedback to fine tune & avoid confusion from vague or misleading wording.
Initial Findings...In person survey: 20 done
Survey Monkey collector open: need to add a bribe
Hardly anyone knows what "finding aid" means; even those who had visited an archives!
Key to increasing student visits? Good relationships with faculty
16
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Jargon and not understanding terms that seem obvious to us is a recurring issue with library and archives sites. See Kupersmith's study on library terms and user confusion. Other terms issues: “primary sources” familiar to only 50%; “Boolean operators,” “repository” only 3 out of 20 knew these terms. Surprise: students thought they might visit out of curiosity! Make sure to include some wild or outlier answers too! Most had used archival materials due to a direct assignment by a professor or learned about archives during a class visit, if they had been at all.
Thoughts & recommendationsrecommendations
17
Get a baseline of stats on how your site is used, so that when you later test you can track improvements
Make changes incrementally, so that you know what worked in that round, then... Yes, you guessed it:
TEST AGAIN! Fix, test, fix...
and re-run your stats to log your results
18
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Learn the techniques in a low stakes, fun environment. Build knowledge with a team. Start small, pick the low hanging fruit. Do a test with recruited users, see what you discover. Make quick and easy fixes to get most impact and increase in usability with the least effort. Test again. Celebrate improvement! Use the energy and momentum you generate. Make sure those that can support further efforts notice the marked improvements. Get everyone excited about how much ROI you've gotten!
Don't forgetAccessibility
Usability guidelines for optimum accessibility: often part of heuristics
www.webaim.org Web Accessibility in Mind
Use web accessibility design compliance checker tools like WAVE wave.webaim.org
Flexibility in your UI for user adjustments
19
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Dont forget accessibility!!! Use free compliance checker tool (WAVE) & webaim site for checking accessibility guidelines. Many people have add-ons or other utilities installed that work with their browsers, often customizing font appearance, automatic read aloud and so on... Make sure your site plays nicely with user customizations.
More thoughts...Read about writing for the web: mince words
Show AND tell: words are more easily understood than graphics, but use both for best effect
Integrate your visual communications: real world + virtual world(s)
20
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Read about writing for the web: mince words. Sparse text, visual white space; be concise, and watch out for the “fold”…. Put important content above the fold, look at studies on how people read web pages, including Jakob Nielsen's results—on his Alert essays. Show AND tell: words are more easily understood than graphics, but use both for best effect. See Nielsen’s Alert for more research on this one too. An illuminating experience testing a digitization guide for student workers: explanations & descriptions alone made for an intimidating amount of solid text & was confusing. Fail! Added pix, deleted long descriptions. Success! Integrate your visual communications: real world + virtual world(s) Creating a sense of place, orienting your clientele in the world of online space can be enhanced if your location relates visually to your website. Entice visitors to come to your bricks & mortar via cool web presence & sense of satisfaction with your online services. AND the other way around! Retailers exploit this; why not us?
TipsWhen doing think aloud tests, listen carefully for the unexpected. This is gold!
Remember kindergarten: cut & paste, use crayons & scissors & glue! Make quick non-functional mockups of web pages
21
Presenter
Presentation Notes
When doing think aloud tests, listen carefully for the unexpected. This is gold! Remember kindergarten: cut & paste, use crayons & scissors & glue! Make quick non-functional mockups of web pages Attention to detail is a liability for rapid iteration & brainstorming Don't spend time programming something you may decide to implement differently tomorrow. Use the wizard of Oz method. One team member operates the UI “behind the curtain” (in plain view!) to reflect the user’s choices on the mockup or prototype. Test subjects think this is wacky and fun too. Or on a web page mockup, simply create links for function choices to display a prefab page of results of that operation. (NOT a full, published website, just a directory of documents.)
Tools & infojnd.org
Nielsen's alert box: useit.com
Jared Spool: uie.com
usability.gov
usabilityfirst.com
AskTog blog
Boxes and Arrows22
Fireshot browser extension
Any screen grabber
Survey Monkey
Crazy Egg
Kupersmith, Library terms study
Podcasts on usability
Fireshot browser extension
Any screen grabber
Survey Monkey
Crazy Egg
Kupersmith, Library terms study
Podcasts on usability
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Don Norman (jnd.org), Jakob Nielsen & Jared Spool are three well-known usability advocates. Bruce Tognazzini does the AskTog blog; he’s part of the Nielsen-Norman Group now; the blog isn’t as active as it used to be. usability.gov is surprisingly resource-rich! and NASA’s toolkit is widely applicable. Screen grabber utilities are essential—the Fireshot extension allows selections or full web pages to be grabbed as graphic files & edited with callouts and arrows as needed. Good for explaining usability results to stakeholders, and for creating quick cut and paste “pages” and documenting the process. Survey Monkey is free for 10-question surveys (more than that overwhelms people anyway, especially students!)
Books and stuffDavid Weinberger, Small Pieces Loosely Joined (2002)
Don Norman, Design of Everyday Things
Jakob Nielsen, Usability Engineering
Jared Spool, Website Usability
Ed Tufte, visual communication
Clayton Lewis, John Rieman: Task-Centered User Interface Design $5 shareware
HCI, CSCW, UCD proceedings from ACM database
23
Thank you.Laurie Lee Moses, Archivist & Digital Librarian
Center for Black Music Research, Columbia College Chicago
lmoses[at]colum[dot]edu24
photo by Kake Pugh, on Flickr
http
://w
ww
.flic
kr.c
om/p
hoto
s/ka
ke_p
ugh/
1307
2559
98/
Presenter
Presentation Notes
Please feel free to contact me! Let me know what you’ve been able to do! Find the above Kake Pugh photo here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/1307255998/ To see more of her work, here is the main link: http://www.flickr.com/photos/kake_pugh/
