UCD methods list (click to embiggen)

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• UCD methods list (188KB png)

All this is about setting very clear expectations before any design work is undertaken. It ensures the business knows why we’re taking a UCD approach, how long it will take and what it will cost.

Transcript

1. User-Centred Design:

   Building an effective, efficient and engaging user experience

2. What is User-Centred Design?
   An approach that involves the user throughout the design and development process
3. Understanding users’ needs
   By understanding user’s needs we can design products that are:
   • Usable: Effective, efficient and satisfying to use
   • Desirable: If a product is desirable to a user, they will be motivated to learn how to use it
4. Involve users early
   By involving users early in the process we aim to ensure we build the ‘right’ things and minimise the need for high cost changes late in the project
   Build the right thing. Build the thing right.
5. What are the benefits?
   • Development: Reduce time and costs
   • Usability: Improve efficiency and effectiveness
   • Conversions: Increase benefits to agents
   • Overall value: Improve user experience

6. How do we ‘do’ UCD?

   How will we test? When will we test? Who will we test with?

7. Make sure we’ve got the right tools
   There are various methods we can use to talk to, observe and interact with users throughout the design process.
8. [Picture of UCD methods list]
   We’ll talk about some of these methods at the end. A full list of methods and their application is on the Design Twiki
9. Which methods do we choose? 
   The recommendation engine allows us to create recommendations for your project
   Working with BAs and BOs we’ll generate two options with costings and timeframes
10. [Picture of recommendation engine]
11. How do we find users?
    • Internal users: Marketing, CST
    • Existing users: Rightmove Improvement Program
    • New users: Trade shows, cafes, external agency
12. Who’s involved?
    • Design
    • Marketing
    • Business Analysts
    • Analytics & Optimisation
13. How do we measure success?
    • Conversion rates
    • Development time & cost
    • Confidence (Are we certain the product works well?)
    • Customer feedback
    • System Usability Scale (SUS)
14. So, what are we actually doing?
    • Bunnyfoot: Usability testing on main flows with eyetracking
    • Beta feedback: Analyse comments to inform future projects 
    • Trialling recommendations and methods on upcoming projects

15. Preparing for UCD

    How we’re getting Rightmove ready for UCD

16. Training programme
    • 1-hour intro to User-Centred Design
    • Weekly practical sessions on methods for user testing: Paper prototyping, user observation (including Silverback), interviews, surveys, multivariate testing
17. Rightmove Improvement Programme
    • We’ve contacted registered or active users in 12 key locations
    • As part of the programme they will help us with surveys, usability tests and preview beta functionality
    • If successful, we’ll widen the net to include non-Rightmove users

18. Let’s look at methods

    A quick overview of key methods, their strengths and weaknesses

19. Paper prototyping
    • Lo-fi mockups on paper with key interactions
    • User interacts with the paper mockups, verbalising their thoughts and what they’re looking for
    • Used early in design phase as quick changes can be made with minimal development
    • Users feel they can still have input into the design
20. User observation
    • Otherwise known as ‘usability testing’
    • Users interact with a working version of the site using the ‘think aloud’ protocol
    • Used during or after development phase
    • Users are interacting with real data and can use real tasks
21. Cognitive walkthroughs
    • After compiling a task analysis, tasks are broken down into sub-tasks and the project team questions each step
    • Used in the research phase to compile potential issues 
    • Generates results quickly for very low cost
22. Expert reviews
    • Measure each page against accepted heuristics (rules of thumb)
    • Conducted by ‘expert’ not working on the project
    • Used in design or development phase
    • Very cost-effective but users are not directly involved
23. Multivariate testing
    • Develop multiple versions of the same page or interaction and measure key metrics to see which is most effective
    • Used in release phase but must be developed in design and development phases
    • Absolute, quantitative data on usage
24. Build the right thing. Build the thing right.

Okay, it’s just a spreadsheet. And it doesn’t even have any macros. But we find it very, very useful. It just lays out the cost in time and money for each of the UCD methods.

The columns are as follows:

• Method
• Source: Who’s involved in the test. This can be:
  • Internal: We do it with internal Rightmove staff
  • In-house: We do the research in-house but with real users
  • Agency: We let an agency do the work for us
• Users: Number of users covered by the cost
• Cost: Includes things like the monetary incentive for users (well, vouchers)
• Days: Number of human-days involved including preparation, administration, facilitation, evaluation, and analysis
• Duration: How long it will take from beginning to end (recruiting to analysis)

Note:  All prices are in GBP. And some pricings are guesstimates but it’s enough to start a conversation.

How do we use it?

When we have two recommendations and know which UCD methods we want to use for a project (using our UCD recommendation engine), we refer to this spreadsheet to work out what the costs will be. For example, say we decide we’ll need to do some paper prototyping with external users. The spreadsheet tells us this will cost:

• £300 in incentives
• 6 days of work
• over the course of 4 weeks

Download

• Costs of UCD methods (16KB Excel doc)

What next?

Given the recommendations and the costs involved we can then create our UCD estimates at the beginning of a project and start setting expectations with the project owner.

• UCD methods list
• Choosing which UCD methods to use
• The costs of UCD methods
• Creating a UCD estimate

And, in sharing knowledge, teams have been encouraged to learn more about the different ways we can involve users:

• Identifying team roles in Agile 
• User-focussed training sessions
•  ‘What is UCD?’ presentation