How to Make a SharePoint Site Intuitive

The Science of “Easy-to-Use” Presented by Marcy Kellar

Your Speaker: Marcy Kellar

• Principal, SharePoint Soapbox

• Co-author of Beginning SharePoint Designer 2010 (Wrox, October 2010)

• Professor, Art Institute, Intro to User Centered Design” and “Usability Testing.”

• Specialties include

– SharePoint – Over 7 years experience – User experience design (UX) – SharePoint Branding and UI customization – Information architecture – Web content management – usability testing

Twitter: @marcykellar Blog: http://thesharepointmuse.com Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/marcykellar

What You Will Learn Today

• How to articulate and define “easy-to-use” (and how to measure it)

• Fundamentals of user experience (UX) design

• Techniques and Tools used to design intuitive sites

• Examples of intuitive and non-intuitive solutions in SharePoint 2010

DEFINING EASY TO USE Part 1

3 Things Must Be Defined For a Site To Be “Easy To Use”

User Task Metrics

Question: Who is the Intended User?

This Sink Should Be Easy to Use

Sink, 33rd floor, Hard Rock Hotel, Chicago April 2012

Adding the User Changes Everything

Sink, 33rd floor, Hard Rock Hotel, Chicago April 2012

Where do I put my Stuff????

Question#2 What is the Intended Task?

What is the Intended Task/Use?

Photo Courtesy icanhascheezburger.com

Question #3? What Does “Easy-to-Use” Mean and How Will it be Measured?

Defining Metrics

• What are you measuring? – Time to Task? – Completion? – User Satisfaction?

• Be Specific – % – Seconds

Two Ways to Define/Collect Metrics

• Qualitative – Users provide anecdotal evidence; Informal; “feedback” Subjective

• Quantitative – Data. Scientific. Don’t Really Need User. (Search Fails. 404s. Logs) Objective

Better Than “Easy to Use”

• Administrators of the site should be able to add content using the user interface after 1 30 min session of training.

• Users should be able to access their profile data through each tab of the profile web part without training.

• Users should be able to upload a document through the user interface in under 5 seconds.

• 80% of Users of the site should report satisfaction with the site use

Part 1: Takeaways

• You must know who the user is before you can define “easy to use”

• Define tasks without subjective terminology

• Metrics can be measured subjectively or objectively

DEFINING “INTUITIVE” Part 2

Intuitive = Readily learned or

understood

Defining the Intuitive Factor

What Your Users

Already Know

What You Want

Your Users To Do

Target Knowledge

Current Knowledge

Defining the Intuitive Factor

What Your Users

Already Know

What You Want

Your Users To Do

Target Knowledge

Current Knowledge

GAP

Defining the Intuitive Factor

What Your Users

Already Know

What You Want

Your Users To Do

Target Knowledge

Current Knowledge

GAP

Expectations Culture

1. You must know what the user knows to make something “intuitive”

2. Narrowing the gap between what a user knows and what you want them to know makes a site intuitive.

Part II: Intuitive Takeaways

SO HOW DO YOU MAKE A SITE INTUITIVE?

Part 3

Step 1: Design Around Users Expectations

• Get Inside Users Minds (Interviews)

• Know How Users Use the Web (Conventions)

• Follow Best Practices (Design Patterns)

• Develop Archetype Users (Personas)

Jakob's Law of the Web User Experience

Users spend most of their time on other sites

What Is Inside Users Minds

Photo Courtesy iStock

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford

Know When To Make An Executive Decision

Follow Conventions

Found at Universal Usability Guidelines

Design Patterns

• Follow Design Patterns

• Design Pattern Sites

– http://patternry.com

– http://ui-patterns.com

First Law of Usability

• Don’t Make Me THINK!! • Thought Bubbles = The

Moment When User is Pulled Out of Task

• Buy Steve Krug’s book, “Don’t Make Me Think”

Users don’t like to feel dumb Be Consistent

Be Consistent

Takeaways : Tips for Making a Site Intuitive

• Design around users expectations

• Learn Design Patterns

• Follow Visual Design Best Practices

• Be Consistent

QUESTION: What 3 things should be defined to successfully make a site “Easy to Use”

EXAMPLES

Alignment: Example

Example: Not Easy to Read

Corrected

By Correcting Alignment, the Site is easier to read, and easier to use.

Where To Find Me

• Twitter: @marcykellar

• Blog: http://thesharepointmuse.com

• Linkedin: http://linkedin.com/in/marcykellar