Building a Usability Practice
- 1. Building a Usability Practice Madison Experience Design Meetup 6/15/15
- 2. Schedule ● Socializing/Mingling ● Intros/Announcements ○ Jobs/Opportunities ● Brief Presentation ○ Techniques ○ Market Fit ○ Deliverables ● Afterparty?
- 3. About Me
- 4. Brad Orego me@bradorego.com @bradorego B.S. in Computer Science, B.A. in Psychology Development Lead, MobileIgniter MadXD Organizer Dancer, Curler, Ultimate-er, Cyclist, Beer-batter pancake blogger
- 6. Usability Studies Goal: gathering qualitative data about a product Things to think about: ● Think-Aloud, Paired/Partnered Interaction ● Wizard of Oz, Conceptual Modeling ● Critical Incidence Drawbacks: ● Costly! (time, resources) ● Easy to miss the point if not designed well
- 7. Focus Group Goal: Discovering higher-level perceptions about a problem space Things to think about: ● Structured, Free-Association ● Non-direction, Transition Drawbacks: ● Open to bias (by facilitator, cohort) ● Almost never interacting with actual product
- 8. Ethnography Goal: observing users in their (natural) habitat Things to think about: ● Design Ethnography (remember: say, do, use) ● In-situ usability studies Drawbacks: ● Almost impossible to do properly ● Extremely Costly
- 9. Analytics Goal: aggregate actual user interactions with the system to see trends Things to think about: ● How to analyze data ● What to measure Drawbacks: ● Extremely difficult to do right ● Have to infer causality
- 10. The “who” Discovering Market Fit
- 11. What are your strengths? Are there certain areas you have expertise in? ...certain techniques? ...certain industries? Do you have specific interests…?
- 12. Who do you want to work with? What are their needs? ...financially? ...politically? Big companies? Small?
- 13. How do you reach them? How do they acquire your services? ...discover your practice? ...know they need it? ...leverage what you produce? How do you empower them?
- 14. The outcome Putting the “practice” in
- 15. Deliverables Raw data ● full video/audio ● direct quotes ● analytics data Benefit: Let them see for themselves Good for: product people
- 16. Deliverables Processed Data ● snippets/highlights ● high-level summaries ● infographics, data reports Benefit: provide an overview without getting bogged down in data Good for: management, executives, etc
- 17. Deliverables Prepared ● whitepapers ● usability summary report ● metrics suite Benefit: show the value in your work Good for: the industry, potential clients
- 18. Summary
- 19. Building a Usability Practice Goal: determine which services you wish to offer, at what levels of fidelity, and to whom Benefits: the world needs more/better usability. Plus there’s money to be made out there
- 20. A brief plug - MobileUXLab MobileIgniter is creating a usability practice Focus on mobile apps/services Lab itself is mobile - technology can come to you Interested? Email brad@mobileigniter.com
- 21. Thanks!